Waverley Council
Providing automation to enable customisable and scalable data transformation
To cater for the multitude of formats, Waverley Council used Safe Software’s FME Desktop product to automate dataset processing tasks as well as data conversion.
1Spatial’s FME Certified Professional’s assisted Waverley Council by creating a number of automation scripts, to enable customisable and scalable data transformation. Implementation of these scripts provided a solid foundation that aimed to substantially reduce human effort whilst increasing data accuracy and access to up-to-date data in desired formats.
Challenge
Waverley Council was looking to utilise a corporate database to store GIS data. As an interim measure to easily identify information per parcel, the council decided to amalgamate a specified list of GIS files into a single cadastre file. The specifications of this involved attaching a single field per GIS file onto the cadastre, whose value was either a Yes / No (e.g. Amenity = Yes) or a value from the GIS file (e.g. Zone = SP2). Due to the complexity of the workflow, advanced FME knowledge was required.
Previously Waverley Council had to manually translate GIS files to CAD and email the results to a different team. An automated process was performed every night with a configurable aspect so that GIS layers could be added / removed from the process easily.
Waverley Council utilised 3D modelling software which used 3D models. The previous process of 3D model generation costed a significant amount of consulting time. An automated, repeatable process was desired to cut future costs and update the models in a timely manner for accuracy reporting processes.
Solution
Waverley Council utilised 1Spatial’s consultancy services to automate three tasks using FME Desktop 2013:
- GIS Amalgamation to Cadastre – Joining of GIS information (e.g. suburb, park, zone) via GIS layers onto the cadastre
- GIS to CAD – A dynamic translation to convert a selection of MapInfo files to DWG
- MapInfo to 3D Shape – A dynamic translation to convert a selection of 2D MapInfo files to 3D Shape using LiDAR
Usage
For each solution, an Excel spreadsheet was provided containing all configurable values such as which files to process, the desired attribute name to be attached to the cadastre, etc. End users had only to keep the spreadsheet up-to-date and the workspace would refresh the data automatically via a batch script overnight.
Service Provision
Overall, the following services were provided:
- FME expertise
- Best practices utilisation
- FME mentoring
Future
1Spatial is working with Waverley Council to perform R&D into the creation of an automated FME script to
extract Building Footprints. Such a solution would utilise existing technology, be repeatable and be a more cost effective option than the currently utilised alternative.