Presentation by Brad Fisher from Critigen on Esri European User Conference 2011.

1. Thames Tunnel: The many
forms of Web GIS Reporting
Brad Fisher
GIS Technical Lead
Brad.Fisher@tidewaytunnels.co.uk

2. Thames Tunnel Background
39 million cubic metres of sewage
discharged to tidal River Thames in a
typical year. As little as 2mm of rain can
now trigger a discharge.
Environmental - tides mean the sewage
stays in the river for weeks, affecting
dissolved oxygen levels and habitats
Human – frequency of Combined Sewer
Overflow (CSO) discharges is a
potential hazard to all river users
Legal – the UK fails to comply with the
EU Urban Waste Water Treatment
Directive
.

3. In Simple Terms

4. Thames Tunnel challenges
Meet requirements of Minister’s Direction in most cost
efficient manner
Intercept the flow from the 34 most polluting CSO’s (of 57)
as identified by the Environment Agency
Construction of one of the longest and deepest tunnels ever
built beneath London
Deal with variable ground conditions – London Clay,
Lambeth Group, Thanet Sands and Chalk
Minimise impact on surface and subsurface infrastructure
Control odour and air release during tunnel filling

5. Preferred route and sites (phase one and
interim engagement)

6. Major Infrastructure Project
A very complex & large
engineering project for a GIS to support.

7. Primary role of GIS in Thames
Tunnel is to support ‘informed’
decision making

8. Access to Information
SS
TPI
Planning
Enviro
HS&E
Design
Prj Ctrls Geotech
Property
Doc Ctrl
HS&E
Modelling
HR
IT
Survey Comms

9. GIS Deliverables in Thames Tunnel
Analysis 6 GIS web apps
Mobile apps
Data Management
200+ contractors
Data translation Trust in data
Integrity
Integrity
Information
220+ data requests Deliverables
Visualisation
750 data
layers
33 000 maps
Information Quality
200 Gb Data

10. Many sources of data / information
Land use
Historic mapping
Survey Data
Piles of maps
Property info
Social As Built Drawings
networks
Photo’s

11. GIS Solutions Historic Mapping Viewer
GeoPlan Twitter map
Land Referencing
Survey Data
Original As Built Drawings

12. Reporting

13. What is a Report?
Wiki Definition: A report is a textual work (usually of
writing, speech, television, or film) made with the
specific intention of relaying information or recounting
certain events in a widely presentable form.
Reports are often wanted as some form of document
(hardcopy (paper map) or softcopy (pdf)).

14. What is a GIS Report?

15. Turning Data into Information
GIS is able to turn data into Information by default

16. Web GIS Reporting for Developer =
Pain

17. Reporting is not easy in a Web GIS
Reporting is not easy
– Few OOTB solutions
– Bespoke Solutions not ideal
– Its not necessarily hard (from dev perspective, moderate
effort) BUT its tedious (to say least)

18. Challenges for web reporting
Scale is everything
– Even the scale bar tedious
WYSIWG
Resolution (dpi) / file size
Page Size (support for large format printing (> A3)
Interaction with selected sets of data
Cached service issues
Legends

19. Where are we at?
– Historically a desktop solution
– RIA have had a profound impact on our web based GIS
applications functionally & user-expectations.
– ArcGIS ADF could leverage off map templates (mxt) & with
a bit you could come up with a decent solution.
– REST releases to date still does not readily cater for printing
to scale.
– Geoprocessing (arcpy.mapping) offers opportunity
– Third-party solutions/extensions

20. Moving forward
Core reporting capabilities are slowing becoming
mainstream (tomorrow will not be quick enough)
– 10.1 proposing to offer printing exposed as a
REST service
– I think we may will see more third party & sample
solutions that leverage off the 10.1 core
capabilities

21. Reporting in GIS
Web Apps
Is Still a Challenge
But its getting easier

22. Demo (live!!!)
GeoViewer
REST Endpoints (sites)
Planning Editor
Temporal Viewer

23. Printing a map

24. Combined text/map (dynamic)

25. Temporal Reporting

26. REST (Representational state
transfer) Reporting
Software architecture style based on http for
distributed system
Similar functionality to come in 10.1 (fantastic ESRI!)

27. Contact Us
Brad Fisher
GIS Technical Lead
www.thamestunnelconsultation.co.uk/tunnel-route.aspx
www.critigen.com
brad.fisher@tidewaytunnels.co.uk
brad.fisher@critigen.com
@gisfish
uk.linkedin.com/in/gisfish

28. Thames Tunnel GIS Architecture