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German Federal Waterways and Shipping Administration
By sharing databases governments can minimize costs created by redundancy and the bureaucracy of inaccessibility. Shared databases simply offer more data than an agency's own independent database. ArcGIS Web components make it possible for agencies to share their geodatabases online. The German Federal Waterways and Shipping Administration (WSV) sees the common sense in bringing together a nationwide database system. From a Web site passage point, called a portal, users can access various types of geodata and manipulate it using basic GIS functions. WSV's research unit, Germany's Federal Waterways Engineering and Research Institute, Bundesanstalt Fur Wasserbau, worked with ESRI Geoinformatik GmbH to create the Internet portal Water Ways GIS (WaGIS). It serves as the integrated GIS portal to a communal geodata warehouse and gives all WSV agencies access to data generated by applications via the Intranet and Internet. In addition, WaGIS offers the public limited database accessibility through the World Wide Web. 
The project's data providing agencies remain responsible for their data. Its GIS spatial data engine, ArcSDE, allows these agencies to enter the geodata warehouse. Users can access geographical information using metadata that turns the distributed servers into a single virtual WaGIS server for data selection and analysis. The database information is standardized and is stored in the future Europe-wide standardized reference system, ETRS 89. WaGIS consists of a number of distributed GIS servers based on ESRI's ArcSDE software that run the Informix Dynamic Server and incorporate MicroStation® applications. It is Web enabled through ESRI's Internet Map Server technology-ArcIMS. With this GIS enabling Internet architecture portal, WSV anticipates that more than 10,000 government workers will use the portal to better serve the nation's citizens. |
