STRATEGIES FOR DISTRIBUTING GIS DATA ACROSS AN ORGANIZATION

As institutions move increasing amounts of geological and related land information into GIS databases, the organization and distribution of this data to internal and external users becomes a major undertaking. This presentation will focus on the Minnesota DNR's strategy to distribute a wide range of large and small GIS datasets to far-flung locations and keep these data current.

Although real-time access to central GIS data stores can provide part of the solution, often users are located at sites with limited bandwidth. Unfortunately, they often require quick, ad-hoc access to large volumes of data to support their research and daily business. As a solution to this problem, the Minnesota DNR has developed a network of "data resource sites" at over 50 locations across the state.

These local data repositories are updated weekly using tools developed in Perl, Java, and AML. The repositories are self-describing, stand-alone systems which provide users with easy ad-hoc access to over 100 Gigabytes of GIS data and applications. The update process revolves around a central database in which the desired conditions for each site can be maintained. As the desired conditions are compared with a site's actual conditions, the system can create a work-plan which minimizes the amount of data that needs to be moved across the wide area network.

This approach has the added benefit of supporting any number of data types and formats, as well as allowing for unique collections of data to reside at each site.