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Hong Kong's Geotechnical Engineering Develops Environmental DatabaseThe Geotechnical Engineering Office (GEO) of the Hong Kong SAR Government has begun a five-year plan for the development of its substantial databases of ground investigation information, geological mapping, terrain classification, and regional geophysics and geochemistry. GIS consultant Applied Business Inc. has been appointed to help implement the new system, which will supplement and eventually replace their existing CAD-based GIS system. GEO will be installing and implementing Esri's ArcInfo and ArcSDE for Oracle and ArcView GIS with its extensions ArcView 3D Analyst, ArcView Spatial Analyst, and ArcView Tracking Analyst. ArcInfo will be used for data capture, management, and analysis. In addition, they will be establishing an Intranet data access solution using the MapObjects Internet Map Server and a series of MapObjects-based applications, including ArcExplorer. Initial work will be to transfer existing coverages to a new database and to transfer application functionality. After evaluating a number of GIS platforms, GEO selected Esri, whose continued focus on data management clearly counted heavily in the evaluation process. Cited as an important distinguishing feature was Esri's fully developed data model that includes two-dimensional and three-dimensional spatial features, measured spatial features, as well as strong support for native CAD data. On the client side, ArcView GIS provided a strong desktop GIS solution. GEO was particularly interested in the three-dimensional visualization and analysis tools contained in ArcView 3D Analyst. During product evaluations, Esri used GEO's own borehole data to demonstrate Avenue scripting capabilities. For more information, contact Philip Kirk, Hong Kong Geological Survey, GEO (e-mail: philipkirk@iname.com). |
