Confronted with a major crisis in the form of the destructive Canterbury earthquakes of 2010/11, various information communities in Christchurch, New Zealand were suddenly compelled to re-engineer business-as-usual information sharing practices. The former ways of doing things would not scale to meet the new demands for timely and up-to-date information. They addressed the challenge by adopting standards-based interoperable services to share geospatial information. These achieved efficiencies critical to the disaster response and are on-going for the recovery processes. Sharing information is one step; Christchurch Earthquake recovery partners defined a further ambition to transact updates between one another, on their different platforms. To accelerate cross-platform interoperability, the recovery partners, with support from LINZ, hosted a so-called ‘Plugfest’ in May 2012. Within three days a working solution between four vendor platforms was implemented and demonstrated, based on OGC compliant, transactional web-services. This presentation outlines what was achieved and how. It also invites the audience to consider whether other communities could do likewise i.e. leverage similar benefits, without a catastrophe as catalyst? Establishing geospatial web services as the new ‘business as usual’.

1. CANTERBURY PLUGFEST:
Geospatial Interoperability
Works!
Maurits van der Vlugt
Mercury Project Solutions
Richard Murcott | Geospatial Standards Leader
New Zealand Geospatial Office

2. Overview
 Background
 Data Sharing Challenges
 Solution: a Plugfest!
 Should you consider hosting one yourself?

3. Kyle Dow, Senior Data Analyst, Corporate Data Team, CCC

4. 2010-11 Christchurch Earthquakes
 4 Sept. 2010
7.1 magnitude
 22 February 2011
6.3 magnitude
- 185 dead
- NZ‟s costliest disaster

5. Post Feb 2011 – Recovery Period
 Council Systems Intact!
 Data Sharing
 Council
 EM Agencies
 Civil Defence
 Utilities
 Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry
 Environment Canterbury (ECAN)
 Etc…
 Initially: Sneakernet…

6. Photos: Kyle Dow, Senior Data Analyst, Corporate Data Team, CCC

7. Next step: Interoperable Supply
Kyle Dow, Senior Data Analyst, Corporate Data Team, CCC

8. Wait: Death by Acronym!
WFS:
Web Feature
Service

9. Next step: Interoperable Supply
Kyle Dow, Senior Data Analyst, Corporate Data Team, CCC

10. WFS for Data Supply Works
Kyle Dow, Senior Data Analyst, Corporate Data Team, CCC

11. Next step: Receiving Data?
?
? ?
?
Kyle Dow, Senior Data Analyst, Corporate Data Team, CCC

12. Same Issues, but…
 Christchurch City holds
Authoritative Data, e.g…
 WasteWater
 Building Status
 Construction partners manually
submit data in variety of formats
 Time & Money wasted on data
loading & management
 WFS has no capability to receive
updates through interoperable web
services

13. Transactional Web Service: WFS-T
 WFS: Geometry & Attributes - “Read Only”
 WFS-T: As WFS + “Create, Update, Delete”
 CCC + Partners struggled to successfully
enable WFS-T
 OGC compliance of their Software?
 Schema harmonisation?
 “Too hard” basket?
Image: http://villagescribe.com.au

14. What they needed:
 Transactional Interoperability between
recovery partners:
 CERA, CCC, SCIRT
 ESRI, Integraph
 OGC Standards (NZGO SDI Cookbook)
 Practical, short-term solution (can‟t wait)
 Focus on issues with existing (OGC)
standards interfaces, notably WFS-T
 Immediate results that will accelerate
recovery & reconstruction efforts

15. Solution: WFS-T Plugfest
 Short Duration
 Collaborative
 Hands-on
 Independent Facilitation & WFS-T Architect
 “Just Make it Work”
Image: http://www.ispcs.org

16.  Two Use-Case
scenarios
 Set-up Data and
Services
 Implement end-to-
end Interoperability
Photo: Maurits van der Vlugt
 Live Demo
 All in 3 days!

17. Technology Agnostic
Organisation Technologies
CCC Intergraph GeoMedia Pro
Intergraph GeoMedia WebMap
SCIRT ESRI ArcGIS Server
ESRI ArcGIS Desktop
Safe Software – FME
WFS „Pump script‟
CERA Benoli Silverfish
ESRI GeoDatabase
WFS „Pump script‟
InsureCorp* Pitney Bowes Software MapInfo
Professional
* fictitious name to protect any commercial interests

19. Before and After

20. Lessons Learned
 Interoperability works!
 WFS: Mature
 COTS WFS-T Servers: Mature
 COTS WFS-T Clients: Maturing
 WFS/WFS-T Schema Sensitive
 Good Community Schema is important
 Submitting to WFS-T requires scripting
or Client plug-ins

21. Conclusions
 Plugfest model is highly
effective to achieve hands-on
practical interoperability
 Demonstrated viable solution
architecture with immediate
business benefits
 Achieved in 3-day Plugfest,
what would have taken weeks
(effort) or months (elapsed) Photo: Andy Coote
otherwise

22. THANK YOU
More Information:
http://www.geospatial.govt.nz/christchurch-plugfest-2012-
report
Maurits van der Vlugt
Maurits.vandervlugt@mercuryps.com.au
Twitter: @mvandervlugt
Richard Murcott
rmurcott@linz.govt.nz