AltaLIS Streamlines Alberta’s Mapping and Positions for Internet Distribution

AltaLIS Ltd., Calgary, has completed a long-term agreement with the Spatial Data Warehouse Ltd. organization to maintain, enhance and market Alberta’s base mapping, property boundaries and terrain spatial data information.

James D. Chorel, AltaLIS General Manager, said, AltaLIS has dramatically reduced the time required for delivery of spatial data ordered by customers – surveyors, utilities and communications companies. We’ve reduced order delivery cycles from an average of five days to one hour. With the completion of the long-term agreement, AltaLIS is embarking on an aggressive program to further improve access to data and to reach new customers.

Future AltaLIS innovations will include e-business capabilities to access and order data via a Geographic Information System (GIS) viewing browser over the Internet. This will enable customers to download information directly from the AltaLIS database, said Chorel. The agreement marks another significant step in Alberta’s initiative to transition the day-to-day management of its digital base mapping infrastructure to the private sector, while still retaining ownership of this spatial data as a government asset. Under this innovative arrangement, the costs of maintaining and distributing spatial data have been redirected from taxpayers to the users and those causing changes to the data, said Wolfgang Janke, General Manager of SDW. At the same time, the updating costs have been reduced by approximately 50 percent.

AltaLIS, a joint venture of Calgary’s QC Data International Inc. and Martin Newby Consulting Ltd., was created to pursue the SDW initiative. SDW is a non-profit organization consisting of the provincial government and local utility and communications companies who are the largest users of Alberta’s base mapping information. SDW sought a private sector partner through an extensive competitive procurement process. The AltaLIS team was selected in late 1997 as the operator responsible for updating, managing and marketing spatial data. AltaLIS has worked hand-in-hand with the government and private sector consumers to effectively transition ongoing maintenance of the data.

The AltaLIS team has worked tirelessly over the past two years to take on the day-to-day activities, while keeping an eye towards streamlining maintenance cycles and turnaround times for data requests and to identify new markets for the data, said Chorel. Cost savings and faster delivery are just two of the benefits of digital mapping’s move to the private sector. AltaLIS has re-engineered processes so that spatial data is of higher quality and so less manual updating is required for such things as cadastral, or property, mapping.

Alberta Land Titles was moving toward a requirement for digital submission of surveyor plans, said Chorel. We were able to incorporate these digital plans into the updating process, thus eliminating the step of creating digital files and allowing for direct integration into the mapping. For more information, on the latest GPS News see gps software.

Author Notes:

Garry Wilk contributes and publishes news editorial to http://www.handheld-gps-reviews.com.  A wealth of information about Global Positioning Systems for commercial or personal use.