Contra Costa County Selects Farallon Geographics to Develop an Economic Development Website using Publicly Available Web Mapping Software

Farallon Geographics developed a prototype GIS Site Locator website using Microsoft's Virtual Earth, a publicly available and free API, for the overall base mapping platform. This approach maximized the speed and ease-of-use of the website and simultaneously minimized the time and expense associated with developing the site. The site integrates the County’s GIS data and broker information from a geospatially enabled database built using Oracle’s Express Edition, a free version of Oracle's enterprise scale 10g database. Farallon’s approach dynamically queries geodata from the Oracle database. Point features are mapped to Virtual Earth using a GeoRSS feed; linear and polygonal features will be mapped using OGC's WMS specification.

The prototype demonstrates a fast, simple, and easy-to-use web site for real estate brokers and companies searching for commercial properties. It allows users to enter parameters such as price range and square footage required. It then quickly displays properties that meet the users’ parameters on the map. Selected properties can be clicked on to display a chart with additional information, including property photographs where available. The interface also includes links to retrieve driving directions to the site as well as current traffic conditions. Selected properties can be saved in a "favorites" list for future use or to be able to share via email. Farallon incorporated RSS feeds to automatically keep users updated as new properties meet their parameters by sending descriptions of these properties to the user’s email, cell phone or other choice platform.

When building the actual website, Farallon will create a library of web services to integrate the County’s GIS data with a publicly available mapping API (Google Maps or MS Virtual Earth). Combined with Oracle Express Edition, this will provide the required mapping, GIS-related analysis, and broker data submission needed by the County. A major benefit of this approach is the cost effectiveness, flexibility, interoperability, and opportunity for code re-use inherent in a standards-based, web services architecture. Moreover, a web services-based GIS web mapping application will better support the County’s ability to appropriately incorporate maps in other County business processes. Farallon’s proposed web site architecture, along with the Microsoft .NET web application development framework, will allow easy use of third-party services such as ESRI’s demographic, economic, and business reports web services without having to purchase, manage, and analyze specialized market data. The simple and clean graphical user interface of Google Maps or MS Virtual Earth provides easy-to-understand and context-appropriate tools.

Farallon Geographics (www.fargeo.com), based in San Francisco, is a leader in the planning, implementation, and integration of GIS systems and software to support mission critical business functions. As a formal business partner with major vendors in the GIS market,