The City of Kfar-Saba

A Model City GIS in Israel

By Baruch Heinoch M.Sc., President, G.G. Systems Ltd., City of Kfar-Saba, Israel

Israel is enjoying a major breakthrough in GIS technology with the implementation of several large projects in the federal government, local governments, and public utilities.

The City of Kfar-Saba—a midsize city in the Sharon region in central Israel, 20 miles north of Tel Aviv—began development of its GIS in 1989 as a joint venture with the Water Company of Kfar-Saba. City officials decided to develop a GIS when they were confronted with the confluence of several factors including a fire in the engineering division that destroyed many records, drawings, and most of the maps, while at approximately the same time some of the City's veteran employees who had 30 to 40 years of City experience and knowledge "in their heads" were due to retire. On top of that, Kfar-Saba had been experiencing rapid growth with an associated growth of data and records that had to be made available quickly and maintained accurately.

The City's pro-growth and public service policies were already being implemented as part of the development of a management information system (MIS). The City saw that this comprehensive MIS could be enhanced by GIS technology to help coordinate the flow of information necessary to review and control the public and private construction projects within its legal jurisdiction. City officials worked with the goal of integrating the flow of information within its own departments and exchanging geographic-based information electronically with the national utilities and Israeli federal authorities such as the Lands Authority of Israel and the Survey of Israel.

Kfar-Saba began its GIS development with a dedicated management structure using well-proven, conventional technology and was able to respond with many innovations to the challenges that were uncovered during the construction of the geographic database. The management team is currently responsible for decision making, planning, budgeting, design, construction, quality control, installation, and staff training.

This was done despite the fact that implementing any software in Israel is a challenge by itself, since their language, Hebrew, is written from right to left. This results in more time being needed to adapt any software to the Hebrew language.

An important step forward was taken by forming a GIS User Group within the municipality, a group comprising 25 representatives of various City departments and who meet once a month to discuss recent developments and plan for the future and to exchange ideas, problems, and solutions regarding the system. This forum is highly regarded by the management team as an important source of new ideas for further development of the system.

While digitizing the cadastral maps and capturing their relevant historical documents, problems with the conventional methods became apparent. Many and diverse source records had to be compiled, and their apparent contradictions and inaccuracies had to be resolved. Fortunately, Kfar-Saba happened to be the home base for Mabul Imaging Systems, which developed an emerging technology that employs image recognition and classification techniques to automatically (batch-mode) vectorize scanned maps and link them with scanned and interpreted legal documents.

Using the automatic vectorizing technology, the City was able to load the general plan, zoning maps, and all the archived permits, previous urban planning maps, development maps, and engineering as-built drawings into the planimetric and cadastral land bases.

In the process, the City has compiled diverse source maps and documents to create a multitheme geodatabase that includes a cadastral base, a photogrammetric base, all utility distribution networks, zoning, land use, topography, and natural terrain. All the property deeds and government leases, historic and current municipal regulations, tax assessment districts, and environmental controls (from municipal, regional, and national authorities) have either been loaded into the database itself or correspond with the map base.

GIS in the Education System

In 1998 it was decided to use the City's resources to contribute to the education system. This value was achieved by initiating and supporting the first "Teaching GIS in College Program" in Israel based on Esri's K-12 program, with all the teaching materials, exercises, etc., rendered in Hebrew. Although the program is in its first year, already the Israeli Ministry of Education has decided to support the program and implement it in other cities where GIS exists.

GIS as a Decision Support Tool

The more the City's GIS gained recognition by other city officials, the more useful it became as a managerial tool. An important decision that made it a high-level Decision Support System (DSS) was the integration of demographic data into the GIS. In Israel, the Ministry of Interior maintains the central database of all the citizens. Part of it is open to the public so that the municipality of Kfar-Saba can use its share of the database, which concerns its 75,000 citizens. Putting this information into action on the base of the geodata creates a powerful managerial tool.

The Education Division, the Welfare Department, the Youth and Sports Department, and many other municipal units began heavily using the demographic analysis based on the GIS. For example, prior to each school year the Education Division analyzes the distribution of potential students according to age groups to update the school zones.

Serving the Public

This GIS revolution has also been widely adopted by the Municipal Engineering Division, which is changing its procedures and even its way of thinking. Already in place is a public counter with a GIS terminal operated by a City staff person for the service of any architect, engineer, planner, or resident who needs information about the building rights, zoning, ownership, or infrastructure impacting a given land parcel. The system uses a network of workstations and PCs with ArcView GIS and ArcExplorer connected to a central geographic database. The City's staff is able to access and provide graphically formatted information about any one land parcel and create larger-area maps and digital files.

The first Israeli GIS on the Web was constructed in a very short time (less than one month) using Esri's ArcView Internet Map Server and MapCaf�. The idea was to perform a major breakthrough in the philosophy of serving the public. Information needed to obtain a building permit—a process that usually takes a week or 10 days—is now offered by the City of Kfar-Saba to the public on the Internet, 24 hours a day, free of charge.

The GIS (managing) Team is a combination of managers and professionals. The managers are the City's chief engineer, Mr. Merhav, and the Water Company's CEO, Ms. Aluf. The professionals (or geographic information officers) are the GIS consultant, Mr. Heinoch, president of G.G. Systems, and Mr. Av-revaya, the GIS manager.

For more information, visit www.kfar-saba.muni.il and choose "Direct Access to the GIS Server" (please note: the GIS section is in English, while the remainder of the site is in Hebrew) or contact Baruch Heinoch, M.Sc., president, G.G. Systems Ltd., 45 Tchernichovsky St., Kfar-Saba, Israel 44281 (tel.: 972-9-7414404, fax: 972-9-7445267, e-mail: BHeinoch@ggsystems.co.il).

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