Submission to Geomatics Atlantic 2013 - A collaborative rural approach to GIS and Planning municipal shared services. The story of the Local Information Utility.

 A small group of municipalities in Southwest Nova Scotia have come together to build a collaborative approach to GIS and Planning shared services and are building a regional GIS from neighbouring rural municipalities. LGS Inc., using the latest Esri ArcServer 10.1 web technology and an innovative private cloud solution we have been able to foster municipal collaboration, an open data relationship, student projects, and have assisted staff and the public in accessing spatial information anywhere, anytime. We call the solution the Local Information Utility (LIU).

The LIU is an innovative multi-service approach to combining the latest GIS and server technology that will enable any local government to keep pace to changing GIS and IT technologies of today.

Like a water utility or electric utility, an information utility can provides real time, easy to access information services via the web. These information services are delivered from a central service location where many communities can collaborate and share in costs in managing and interacting with common spatial data, creating common services to serve the public good, all within a single IT scenario.

The Local Information Utility has always been about inspiring policymakers with the opportunities for data and analytics to transform public service for rural municipalities. The technology is present and affordable to implement a GIS system that is smart, flexible, scalable, and mobile. The LIU technology is reducing duplication of effort, paperwork, connecting departments, speeding up data retrieval, allowing for future trending, and revealing easy access GIS for front-line staff that provide information services to their citizens. The LIU is reducing data quality issues and allows an entire authority to manage their GIS, without being a GIS professional.

For our clients that have a GIS professional on staff, the LIU alleviates the pressures of delivering information in traditional formats like hard copy maps and excel reports. The GIS core can move forward with management and enhancing their GIS to deliver efficiency to the authority.

As the founder and CEO of Landmark Geographic Solutions Inc., Trevor Robar has transformed the company from a one person GIS data QC firm to a leading edge GIS enterprise and application design firm. Trevor has over 15 years of experience working with all levels of government, private industry, not for profit, and academia. A Visionary and goal-oriented senior executive with demonstrated experience in planning, developing, and implementing cutting edge spatial information solutions to address.

Where did Digby Neck Go? Officially off the map?

Take a look at the map in the background, where's Digby Neck?, Nova Scotia. Must be part of NB? http://thech.ca/12MvGdV via #geomapix



Dianne Swinemar to leave Feed Nova Scotia | The Chronicle Herald

ATV Trails in Nova Scotia

ATVANS TRAIL PROJECT CONTINUE

Landmark Geographic Solutions Inc. has been supporting a mapping project for the ATV Association of Nova Scotia , called the "ATVANS Trail Network 2013". A little background, we have been supporting this group since 2008 on collecting, managing, and creating a map for each of the 41 clubs. The goal is to organize GPS track data that is coming from the members into a GIS systems that can easily update the trail network  and keep things organised so that information can be accessed quickly for members.

We currently store information for each trail like it number, name, has a map been produce? and other managing attributes. These maps have been created for the association to understand what data has been collected and processed as a printed map. Club depicted in green mean that the maps have been processed and print for members. The Orange indicates that there is gps track information that has been received but not processed into a printable map.

The purpose of these maps is for the ATVANS annual meeting and it will give the membership a bird's eye view of the progress of the mapping program and the work that remains to finish the entire network.

Special thanks to Corey Robar, trail coordinator, for his direction on this and previous projects.

The Map Below is a section of the overview map of the entire province.

Click on Image to Enlarge

This Map depicts the management zone 2 - Southwest Nova Scotia - It is at a better visible scale and shows detailed information on trails, accessible resource roads, designated crown information etc..

Click on Image to Enlarge

This map is an actual club map that is used by members and visitors to navigate the trail system. The example is from the Digby ATV Club.

Click on Image to Enlarge

A Collection of Very Strange Maps

A Collection of Very Strange Maps

You've seen city maps, but what about city maps that show where each gang has its headquarters? Or a map of the globe without water?

Check the Collection Out Here

An Awesome Switch to a Web Based Email System

I am very excited that we have finally found an application that will manage our email accounts, file sharing, subscription lists, shared tasks and calendar, and private messaging. The great thing is that this application resides on our own mail server!

Thanks to Annapolis Valley Computers’ data centre hosting service we have all the flexibility of the sharing features similar to Google services with the power of managing client information. To top it off we have our own integrated mailing list management service!

AVC is using SmarterMail Enterprise Edition from

http://www.smartertools.com/ which has a variety of tools to administer and manage email.

SmarterMail is built and priced to be both beneficial and accessible to individuals, small businesses, and enterprise-level organizations alike, and is able to support anywhere from one to an unlimited number of domains and an unlimited number of email addresses.

As an added benefit, End users are able to access and use their accounts using either web mail (email account access using a web browser) or with a desktop application (e.g. Outlook or Outlook Express, or Qualcomm's Eudora).

The server requirements of SmarterMail are minimal, so that SmarterMail can coexist with other applications on the same server. SmarterMail can easily handle with minimal server requirements; 500 Domains, 25,000 Users, 100,000 messages a day.

SmarterMail was an editor’s pic on PCMag.com and they had this to say;

“SmarterMail is easy to master email server software that is powerful enough to handle a huge email workload. “

For more details contact AVC - http://avcit.ca/ or call +19022422705.

Geomapix Newsletter is Out - Success Story - Renewal of Mapping Program for Newfoundland & Labrador Tourism Department

This time last year we sat down 

with Target Marketing from St. John’s, Newfoundland & Labrador (NFLD), to look at improving the way that maps are created and updated for the tourism industry. Their client, Department of Tourism, Culture and Recreation, has been struggling with managing their map information that is being distributed around the world through their promotional material. NFLD tourism market has reached a billion dollars in revenues and having current and relevant information is important for enticing potential tourists to visit the beautiful vistas, festivals, and great people of Newfoundland and Labrador.

The current large provincial road map, in use since the 90’s, was very difficult to update and problems arose when trying to derive new map products for their tourist promotions. The original product was designed in CorelDraw and the new design and production needed to be created in Adobe illustrator. A big issue, and where we came into the fold, was the original GIS data that the map was created from was lost in transition. So what we had was map data displayed in an irrelevant graphic software package that cannot be updated because there is no referencing GIS system and new data.

Yvonne Fowler of Target said to us

“Tourism and other associated departments have been trying for 5 years to build a mapping system where we are able to provide map updates or integrate new map data to our Adobe art designers so they can make custom products for tourism and other promotions”.

Originally born on “The Rock”, as many mainlanders have dubbed it, it was very important that I solve this problem and have something that not only functions well but can be used in the future as an online mapping resource that has the potential to change the way staff can manage location information and distribution to potential tourists.

So with some clearly defined goals we set out and created a GIS system that was improved from the original map data, had the ability to quickly add new map data, and could export any variation of maps out as Adobe Illustrator files so that the design staff could build graphics rich tourism related promotions for the NFLD billion dollar tourism market.

In March, prints rolled off the press with the new production of the Newfoundland and Labrador Road Map.

Check out some of the maps at our blogspot;

http://geomapixgateway.blogspot.ca/2013/04/newfoundland-labrador-project-maps.html

Newfoundland & Labrador Project Maps

Newfoundland & Labrador Project Maps

Corporate Site

Online GIS Solutions