In order to make geobasis and geospecialist data available to a wide range of users, a modern GIS information system is required that provides web-based solutions. With the BaSYS Web solution from BARTHAUER, KASSELWASSER has addressed this issue and created an innovative, in-house sewer information system together with SynerGIS WebOffice and ArcGIS-Enterprise. Step by step, the systems were coordinated with each other and increasingly automated, so that they now perform their valuable service with minimal administrative effort.

KASSELWASSER, the municipal enterprise of the city of Kassel, manages 820 km of sewer network with approx. 23,000 manholes and street drains. With the use of spatial geodata in BaSYS 9, all the prerequisites were in place to replace the old proprietary information solution with a technologically modern web solution based on current standards such as HTML5 and REST. This was intended to make network data available to an even wider range of users with a low access threshold. The primary goal was to achieve the simplest possible usability while at the same time ensuring high performance of the application. By integrating the database-based channel data into the WebGIS portal SynerGIS WebOffice, the need for daily updated information and a homogeneous level of knowledge was to be met with the lowest administrative effort.

Important framework conditions and workflows for an efficient sewer information system were defined and analyzed together with KASSELWASSER and BARTHAUER. First, a start was made to integrate the data from BaSYS Web into the WebOffice user interface. In a first step, all sewer maps from the current data stock were to be fed via the control of the BaSYS Web sewer specialist information system. For this purpose, ArcGIS Desktop and the BaSYS Plan E module were used to provide the sewer map, which had previously been used primarily in CAD, as an ArcGIS Server service. Here, the first points of friction arose due to the CAD-optimized representation, which did not appear to be very user-friendly in the GIS. The goal was to continue working with only one configuration for CAD and GIS. After a thorough analysis, this goal was achieved by simply performing a color shift for the GIS publication.

In production operation, it became apparent that the live access of the ArcGIS Server to the channel geodata was accompanied by too great a loss in performance. Therefore, an automatic transfer of the data to an ESRI geodatabase was made via the ArcGIS Python API, which precedes the publication in ArcGIS Server. This transfer runs unattended once a night.

In the next step, a feature-rich GIS portal was built with SynerGIS WebOffice based on the aforementioned ArcGIS Server service and other map services, providing the entire GIS functionality from simple navigation to address search, redlining, etc. to automated plot output along canal courses. Subsequently, the entire HIS functionality of BaSYS Web Services could be seamlessly integrated into WebOffice via the “coupling of external applications” integrated into WebOffice. This allows users not only to retrieve detailed specialist information directly from the BaSYS dataset, but also to access a wide range of graphical reports, such as the interactive inspection graphic or flow path tracking with various termination criteria. Through intensive use of the javascript APIs of WebOffice and BaSYS Web, the ease of use could be optimized according to customer requirements.

All those involved are highly satisfied with the results of the project to date. The intensive and constructive cooperation led to a successful go-live of the application in 2017, which is rated as very performant by all participants. An interim change of the database platform from Oracle to an MSSQL server was also successfully mastered. KASSELWASSER is the sole operator of the system. BARTHAUER acts as system service provider and Geoventis as service provider for WebOffice configurations. Further optimizations are planned, such as the integration of sewer videos into the web as well as the connection to the WebOffice user administration, and will be tackled in a next step.