Enterprise Web Mapping Design in a Diverse Organisation

Enterprise web mapping design in a diverse organisation

Alan Rogers (Presenter)

Paul Dowling

Kris Canasa

Jacobs, Spatial

Executive Summary

The Public Transport Authority of Western Australia (PTA), while primarily dealing with the management of the public transport network in Western Australia, has a diverse set of roles and responsibilities. Providing mapping functionality to suit the whole enterprise presents a unique challenge.

For more than a decade, the Transperth Route Information System (TRIS) has been delivering important information to the business. TRIS has become much more than a “Route Information System” and is used by most divisions within the PTA as well as external contractors. It manages public transport contracts, bus stop maintenance, customer feedback, lost/seized property, land management, asset management and much more.

TRIS’s modular design allows applications to be developed and deployed in an efficient and relatively short timeframe. Many of these sub-applications have a geographic component.

In early 2013 it became clear that a “combined mapping application” would not suit all purposes in the department: they each required their own mapping application.

For example, School Bus Services required routing tools; PTA Lands unit required lease editing; Program and Projects required thematic symbolisation. All had one thing in common – they each required a mapping application with basic pan/zoom capability, layer control and base maps, combined with custom functions unique to that department. But creating one corporate web mapping application with all this functionality would result in either an overly cluttered interface, or role-based hidden functionality that is difficult to manage. In response to this PTA decided to extend the modular design of TRIS to web mapping. By modularising functions, separate web mapping applications could be rapidly developed.

A base mapping application was developed with all the generic digital mapping functions: pan/zoom, measure, layer control and base map selection. From this base, extra functionality can then be added as a plug-in object. As such, PTA’s mapping “applications” have become nothing more than a record in the database. Custom modules such as routing (network analysis) can be added by simply linking the modules to the applications in the database. By storing these objects modules in the database they can be added, modified, or removed from applications, and entirely new applications can be deployed, without having to touch a line of code.

Applying the same principles of code modularisation to web mapping applications for a large organisation provides greater flexibility and simplicity.

This paper explores the benefits of modular web mapping applications, drawing on key lessons from the PTA TRIS experience.