For our first participation assignment in GISProgramming we had to find an article that applied to GIS and write a short summary about it. I tried to find an article that was both applicable to
this class and the type of work I enjoy doing (intelligence analysis). The article “Fairfax
County builds searchable crime-data mapping app” by Stephanie Kanowitz
(Sep 15, 2014) filled both of these requirements.
Crime
mapping has been used for years but Fairfax County’s crime mapping
system began to have issues when the data from all of the years began to
pile up. The original Oracle based relational database struggled to
process the data, over 500,000 data points, in a timely manner and each
day another 100-200 more data points are added from the county’s 911
computer system. Any time a search was performed in the old system every
column of data in over 800 layers had to be searched which took a very
long time to process. To fix this issue the county implemented a new
system called Police Events.
In
the new mapping system, specific programming codes sort the new data
from the day into the appropriate databases every night. The coding also
created a more robust indexing scheme for map data layers that reduced
the total amount of layers needed and reduced data processing time. Now
users searching through the crime data can conduct a more generic search
but will receive quicker results. Users can search by specific terms,
specific layers, and specific date ranges too. The creator of this new
system made it developer friendly as well so new map data can easily be
added. The new system cost $46,000 on top of cost to use ESRI’s
JavaScript programming.
What
I took away from this article is that the real time saving features in a
GIS are all based on programming. With the right codes, gigantic
databases can be searched and mined easily.
Article - "Fairfax County builds searchable crime-data mapping app"
Police Events - New Crime Mapping System
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