Intergraph's GeoMedia Solutions Help Iowa DOT Improve Data Integration and Access, and Minimize Redundancy and Maintenance

Iowa DOT implements new Linear Referencing System for transportation asset management

HUNTSVILLE, AL., Feb. 3, 2003 - The Iowa Department of Transportation (DOT) has chosen Intergraph Mapping and Geospatial Solutions' GeoMedia(R) technology for the development and maintenance of the agency's Linear Referencing System (LRS). In an effort to improve how the agency manages and applies its linear referencing methods, Iowa DOT selected GeoMedia Professional and GeoMedia Transaction Manager to integrate multiple construction, maintenance, and operational databases and associated business data. The agency adopted Intergraph solutions because of the products' ability to work directly with Oracle Spatial as well as the ability to integrate a wide range of GIS vector and raster data formats.

With the new Linear Referencing System, Iowa DOT will experience improved data integration and access; improved accuracy of the features referenced to the network; the ability to linearly locate across all public roads statewide; minimized redundancy in the department's database systems; and minimized data maintenance due to changes in the transportation network.

"The use of GIS has grown significantly in the last two years at Iowa DOT," said William Schuman, GIS coordinator, Iowa DOT. "GeoMedia is invaluable in our work because we don't spend all our time translating and transforming data. The software almost always uses the formats and projections we receive when collecting data from multiple sources. This allows us to spend more time on analysis, which in turn enables us to make better decisions."

Iowa DOT receives data from counties, cities, and federal and state agencies to aid in better environmental impact analysis, planning, traffic safety, road inventory maintenance, and road centerline data collection. This data comes in disparate formats using various linear referencing and spatial descriptions such as route, milepost locations, address ranges, and jurisdictional changes, as well as GPS coordinates. Previously, the department employed manual and laborious methods to bring together this data that stored or applied different linear referencing methods.

Using Intergraph's geospatial solutions, Iowa DOT has developed a means to pull all data into the agency's GIS and integrate it with other spatial databases. The new foundation road database, known as the Linear Referencing System, streamlines the daily transportation workflows. The system integrates the agency's many road information databases, which include data sources such as other vendors' file formats, aerial and satellite imagery, and data from a variety of projections and coordinate systems. The maintenance application will provide a method for adding, editing, and retiring road centerlines using a "linear view" of the data versus the more traditional "spatial view." Information such as the route names, milepost locations, address ranges, and jurisdictional changes will be maintained on the road centerlines. The database will then be used to integrate pavement, crash, inventory, traffic, and structure data collected by the department. In addition, a navigable network is maintained to allow for route traversal applications such as truck routing and emergency vehicle response routing.

Iowa DOT realizes the additional benefits of having historical and future perspectives of the data, and is using GeoMedia Transaction Manager to provide off-the-shelf, robust functionality to help log and manage temporal transactions in their Linear Referencing System. The system not only records the time an event occurred in the real world - for example, when a road opened to traffic - but also provides the ability to analyze what-if scenarios for future planning, forecasting, and tracking a project from conception and beyond. Intergraph is teaming with GeoAnalytics(TM) and TransDecisions(TM) to implement the complete LRS solution.

Intergraph Mapping and Geospatial Solutions

Intergraph Mapping and Geospatial Solutions is a leading geospatial solutions provider for the following markets: local, state, and federal government; transportation; utilities; communications; location-based services; photogrammetry; remote sensing; cartography; and military and intelligence. For more information, visit www.intergraph.com.

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION:
Rita Roberts, Media Relations
256-730-1430 or rgrobert@ingr.com