Redlands, California—The Government of Hong Kong Lands Department (LandsD) recently awarded ESRI a US$4.9 million contract to replace its Computerized Land Information System (CLIS). CLIS contains up-to-date digital map data and land boundary records accessed by 450 users in LandsD. ESRI will replace the existing CLIS with an enterprise geographic information system (GIS), allowing users throughout the department to work with one central geodatabase instead of disparate silos of data. The new system will be more efficient and accurate through the sharing of data and will better support the business processes and workflows of LandsD as it administers land within the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR).

CLIS was originally designed in 1989 by ESRI and is used to assist in valuation of land and property, land control and lease enforcement, maintenance of the geodetic control network, land boundary survey, aerial survey, and map production among other important tasks. While the existing system has served the organization well over the last two decades, upgrading to current technology and standards was necessary to continue supporting the department's many important tasks.

The new system incorporates ESRI's ArcGIS Desktop software for creating and analyzing geospatial data. In addition, the advanced spatial data server functionality of ArcGIS Server acts as the database access engine to LandsD's four terabytes of spatial data, its associated attributes, and metadata stored in an Oracle database. Citrix will be used for the GIS delivery infrastructure in 10 districts in the HKSAR.

LandsD will also employ ESRI's Job Tracking for ArcGIS (JTX) software to assist with workflow management and job tracking in order to efficiently update and edit the territory-wide datasets. Production Line Tool Set (PLTS) for ArcGIS, a collection of turnkey software applications, will help LandsD with its high-volume database production, maintenance, quality control, and cartographic product generation.

Along with centralizing and updating the current CLIS, an exhaustive disaster recovery system is being developed. This has become necessary because of the sheer number of system users. Even a single day of downtime means the department loses the equivalent of 450 person-days.

The 28-month project also includes a detailed system analysis and design, data conversion and migration, system integration and consolidation to integrate CLIS with other cadastre, land records, and mapping systems used by LandsD.

"Hong Kong is a true visionary in applying the geographic approach in government," says Jack Dangermond, president, ESRI. "Its foresight in creating an integrated system to deliver information throughout the administrative region will provide a great benefit to its communities."

ESRI is joined by its distributors ESRI China (Hong Kong) Limited and NIIT-GIS Ltd. (ESRI India) in delivering this comprehensive project.

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