My aim is to load a good clean database of South African cities linked to suburbs (I’ll write another post about that later) something a lot of people seem to want but no one seems to be doing very well, and those that have very clean data don’t open it up. I also wanted a relational table with SQL Server Geography datatypes, simplegeo or openstreetmap aren’t close to a perfect dataset. Ideally I wanted to load the geographic polygons that define the cities and the suburbs, I also want to load the bounding boxes, centroids and radius that encapsulate the suburbs.

I know there is some open street map data out there but Shaun Trennery, who I trust implicitly and is the tech brain behind safindit.com pointed me at YQL. Yahoo’s data seemed the cleanest and I decided to use their data to load the suburbs. (By the way, YQL is amazing: you can perform crazy queries like find all sushi restaurants in San Francisco “select * from local.search where query=”sushi” and location=”san francisco, ca” and Rating.AverageRating=”4.5”” awesome hey?) I have a JSON file of WOEIDs (Where on Earth ID) that define South Africa, this can be retrieved with a simple YQL query or download it here: LocationsZA.json. I wrote some code to parse these and load them into a SQL Server table that I’d designed (again – that post to follow).

I was having a problem loading Yahoo WOEID polygons as Microsoft.SqlServer.Types.SqlGeography objects in SqlServer2008. This fails on insert for certain polygons with “24200: The specified input does not represent a valid geography instance” exception which, typical of Microsoft, will take you here, and well, that doesn’t tell you anything you don’t’ already know (a side note, System.Data.SqlClient does not support the Geography type so you have to make a reference to Microsoft.SqlServer.Types).

I wanted to investigate if these polygons were in fact polygons. I also want to visualise the other elements of the WOEID (centroid, bounding box, radius etc) so I wrote the following ugly web form (let me reiterate I hate web forms and NML only build ASP.NET MVC but this was a quick prototype to see what the polygons looked like on google maps mostly taken from this post).

Figure 1 as you can see only slightly adapted from the codeproject. (click to enlarge)

The following image illustrates Yahoo’s idea of the Constantia WOEID Polygon.

As you can see it’s pretty obvious why the polygons won’t load, they aren’t true polygons. So that’s my warning don’t use yahoo polygons for suburbs rather uses bounding boxes where you can be sure that your geospatial queries will return trustworthy results. I’ve also noticed that in some instances Yahoo doesn’t even store the polygon.

So I had another chat to Shaun Trennery and we are keen to open this data up, and possibly build a geographic wiki app that allows anyone to modify the polygons, the administrators will have the final say. This will allow us to add suburbs yahoo isn’t aware of like those being defined by the Name Your Hood guys (if you know how much I initially disliked the Name Your Hood project you’ll find this ironic) and also define parent suburbs, for example Constantia is the parent suburb Bel Ombre, Nova Constantia, Constania Hills, Klein Constantia , Rust en Vrede and Alphen for example.

I’d be interested to get feedback from the GIS gurus on the best sources of Country/Region/City/Suburb/ information. Please also let me know if you are keen to collaborate on this mini project.

With that said, recently I had the opportunity to port what we had there to a Silverlight version and therefore happily jumped onto the task.

I’m proud to introduce the Silverlight COP!

ESRI Silverlight Viewer

I cannot take too much credit. It must be known that the ArcGIs Silverlight API is very easy to dive into due to ESRI’s excellent online samples (http://help.arcgis.com/en/webapi/silverlight/samples/start.htm). I also had some initial help when I found a post online where a guy by the name of diligentpig had already started such a port (for the love of me I can’t find that original post, so if he’s out there and stumbles upon this post, I’m apologizing). None the less, his version was in chinese and VS2008, which I upgraded to english, VS2010 and Silverlight 4.

Functionality that my version includes:

• Your standard navigation commands of Zoom In, Zoom Out, Full Extent and Re-center Map.
• Layers widget with the ability to set the ArcGIS Dynamic Layers you want to suscribe to in a configuration file. My demo is pointing to the following sample ESRI dynamic services: Census USA Info (http://sampleserver1.arcgisonline.com/ArcGIS/rest/services/Demographics/ESRI_Census_USA/MapServer) and Cool stuff in California (http://serverapps.esri.com/ArcGIS/rest/services/California/MapServer)
• Overview Map, Bookmark widget
• The Standard ESRI Navigation Control in the bottom left
• GEO RSS Feed widget and the ability to set which Geo RSS Feeds you want to display via the configuration file
• Ability to Switch between a street map, topography map or imagery map and also the ability to set their services in the configuration code. My demo is point to the following sampe ESRI services: Streets – http://server.arcgisonline.com/ArcGIS/rest/services/ESRI_StreetMap_World_2D/MapServer Topography - http://services.arcgisonline.com/ArcGIS/rest/services/ESRI_ShadedRelief_World_2D/MapServer Imagery – http://services.arcgisonline.com/ArcGIS/rest/services/ESRI_Imagery_World_2D/MapServer

If you are interested in seeing the source code, please don’t hesitate to contact us at NML.

Lastly, for a bit of fun, click the links below and have a look at the original flash version of the ‘pulsating red ring’ and my silverlight version. Which do you prefer?

Silverlight Red Glow

Flash Version

or

Silverlight Version

The cool thing about this is it was all done in Expression Blend 4 using story boards and animations. Click the code snippet below to see how it was done.

Red Glow Expression Blend XAML Code

New Media Labs were privileged enough to be offered the opportunity to make their mark on the success of the 2010 FIFA World Cup when we were hired by Aurecon to architect and develop an Information Portal to be used by a Transport Operations Centre (TOC).

The purpose of the TOC was to provide the public with information about any public transport mechanism at any time leading up to and during the running of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Secondary to this, the TOC was to monitor all public transportation issues that may have arisen and feed notifications of these issues to the relevant authorities.

Central to the management of this information was the Information Hub component of the TOC. We envision this as being served by a Microsoft SharePoint 2010 (MOSS) installation, allowing for a rapid deployment given the timeframe of the project.

Aurecon was briefed to develop the simplest possible solution that utilised off-the-shelf products as far as possible so as to minimise the risk and lengthy time frames implied by custom development. New Media Labs were happy to provide their knowledge and expertise in web technologies, SharePoint 2010 and Rapid Application Development.

The Information HUB provided the following key functional components to the TOC:
• Information Wiki
• Call Logging
• Information Request
• Status Updates of Facilities
• Complaint Reporting
• Incident Reporting

In addition to the above, the HUB also provided:
• Functionality and responsibility split between various roles and groups, e.g. Call takers and Supervisors
• Workflow
• Spatial Awareness via interactive ArcGis Maps
• Connectivity in the form of RSS and GeoRSS Feeds

Information Wiki
The wiki was used to provide information to the Call Takers, other role players within the TOC and the general public in a structured, logical and consistent manner. The information presented by the wiki component of the Information Hub was a mixture of “traditional” wiki-style static information and “dynamic” information, presented by web-parts provided by MOSS.

By utilizing Wiki Pages provided by Sharepoint 2010, we were able to quickly and effectively build a wiki for the TOC which was also easily updatable by members of the TOC during the tournament.

Fig 1: Information Wiki

Call Logging
The starting point for interactions with the Information Hub by Call Takers was a wizard-based dialog. This dialog was the starting point to kick off the various required workflows and also acts as guidance for the Call Takers, whilst logging the calls answered.

Fig 2: Call Logging – Landing Page as seen by a call taker

Fig 3: Call Logging – Answering a call as seen by a Call taker.

Information Request
One of the primary functions of the TOC was to handle incoming calls from the public and answer any questions that they may have. Call takers could utilize the Wiki to locate the information required to answer any questions. At the end of the call, the system would allow for the call taker to capture the details of the question, if they were able to answer it, and if they need to respond to the caller once an answer has been found. If an answer was not given, then this would initiate a system workflow, which ultimately would generate tasks to supervisors indicating that the information was not available and the wiki needed updating which they could then do.

Fig 4: Information Request – Capturing question details and if it was answered.

Status Updates of Facilities
A status update is linked to some physical entity and reflects a property of that entity that may change over time. Two examples include a measurement of how full a parking lot is, or how congested a segment of road is.

We utilised the SharePoint 2010 ArcGIS map web part to graphically represent the various FIFA 2010 World Cup Transport related facilities for Port Elizabeth, and stored the facilities status values in an underlying SharePoint list.

Fig 5: Status Update via SharePoint 2010 ArcGIS map web part.

Complaint Reporting
Monitoring complaints from the public by the TOC allowed for rapid notification to the relevant Stakeholder or Representative of the issue at hand. Workflow was incorporated to provide feedback to the reporting individual and inform them that the issue has been reported to the relevant authority.

Fig 6: Complaint Reporting – Capturing of the complaint details by a call taker.

Incident Reporting
Incidents are events that have taken place that may or may not require some sort of action by a role player who is either internal or external to TOC. Whilst some notifications may have emergency aspects to them the TOC’s role (and the Information Hub) was one of information sharing, and thus, the design of the system was to allow the relevant parties to be alerted to an incident, to monitor the progress of the incident and to track when the incident was resolved.

Fig 7: Incident Reporting – Capturing of an incident by a call taker.

Roles and Workflow
Within the TOC were several different roles and group, each having their own responsibilities and actions within the TOC. We leveraged off of SharePoint’s role based functionality and utilized the built in workflow engine to quickly implement the require business processes.

Below is an example of such a process.

Input State	Action Required	Role	Next State
Open	Action to relevant party	Supervisor	Actioned
Actioned	Must be resolved or re-assigned to a party who can resolve	-Technical Manager -Representative -Stakeholder -External	Closed
Escalated	Immediate resolution action required	Supervisor	Closed
Closed	None		-
No Action closed	None		-

Fig 8: Tasks generated by workflows within SharePoint, assigned to the Supervisors group.

Spatial Awareness and GEORSS
Within the TOC were several wallboards mounted across the centre. A wallboard is defined as being any large-format display screen that is placed in a location such that it is visible and easy to read for two or more role players.

One of the primary wallboards was the Common Operational Picture (COP). This wallboard was primarily used by the Supervisors, but was visible so that any person within the TOC is able to quickly and easily get an overview of the current operational situation. A COP is a map representation of the area in question with various icons and indicators.

We utilized the Sample Flex Viewer supplied by ESRI and implemented various widgets within it provided functionality such as displaying various ArcGIS layers such as bus routes and facilities, Incidents captured within Information Hub via GEORSS feeds, real time vehicle locations and vehicle tracking, and Status Updates from the Information Hub.

Fig 9 : Incidents on the COP via a GEORSS Feed.

Fig 10 : ArcGIS Layers depicting a Bus Route on the COP

Summary
By utilizing the power of SharePoint Server 2010, workflow, roles and leveraging tools from ESRI ArcGIS server, New Media Labs and Aurecon were able to quickly implement a system which aided in the effective management of transport for the 2010 FIFA World Cup in Port Elizabeth.
We look forward to working closely with Aurecon again on any more future opportunities and projects.

Aurecon is developing a whole suite of new Incident Management/Emergency Response Software for clients in areas such as Emergency Services, Disaster Management and Policing.

The Problem

New Media Labs came on board specifically to design, develop and implement a system that:

• can capture all the necessary information needed by an emergency response unit in order to respond to an incident more quickly and efficiently.
• has an easy to understand and operatable Graphical User Interface.  The more “Minority Report” it looked the better, and as the client once put it, “if we had to put Homer Simpson in front of it, he’d know how to operate it.“
• is GIS enabled, so that operators can pinpoint locations easily and relay co-ordinates to responding units.
• is easily deployed across various control stations across the country, and ultimately the world.

It just so happened that one of Aurecon’s existing clients operates a large CCTV control centre in the City of Cape Town and was in the market for such an application.

The Solution

Designed for a call centre/control station environment, our system presents the user with a graphically rich, simple and easy to use User Interface.  Aurecon was adamant that not only should the system work well, but it should also look great, as this would be a large selling point over competing systems.

We implemented a container based UI where functionality is broken up and grouped into several independent, movable, expandable containers/panels.  These panels allow the user to view and work on multiple aspects at once, as well as the ability to drill into one specific section and focus all their attention on that one task.

One of the key aspects to the system is a map - the map gives the user the ability to quickly navigate to a street, intersection, and popular landmark or CCTV camera location.  Designed specifically for a CCTV control station, the system contains a list of hundreds of operational CCTV cameras in and around the City of Cape Town region.  If an operator identifies something on one of their camera monitors, they then pinpoint the location on the map and capture necessary information about the incident so units can be dispatched accordingly.  Ultimately, the information captured in the system is also reported on.  Existing incidents are indicated by a coloured dot on the map depending on the priority of the incident.  CCTV cameras are marked by camera icons.

How did we do it?

In a nut shell, Start Lite, as the system is called, has a 3 tier architecture comprising of:

• a SQL Server 2008 backend
• WCF SOA middle tier
• Silverlight UI

Working closely with a newly established Aurecon Development Team, we were on site full time for the duration of the project.  We introduced their team to the SCRUM methodology and went from initially running all morning stand ups and sprints to SCRUM being fully integrated into the Aurecon staff and their project management processes.  With SCRUM, New Media Labs were able to keep up with the demanding deadlines of the project and finish Start Light on time and successfully.

Database and Web services

At New Media Labs, we believe that applying tried and tested patterns and practices is key when building software.  Not only does this accelerate design and development, but it reduces potential risk by ensuring that you’re applying industry standards that other software developers out there are doing as well.

On this particular project we decided to use 2 Microsoft Patterns and Practices: Repository Factory and Web Service Software Factory Modeling Edition.

The Repository Factory is a guidance package that automates creation of entity classes that map to database tables and repository classes to read and write those entity classes.  With it we were able to quickly build our data access and business logic layers.  The Repository Factory creates Business Entity classes from your database schema, generates CRUD (Create, Read, Update and Delete) stored procedures, and ultimately links the two together into ode that is easy to understand and maintain.

With the Web Services Software Factory Modeling Edition, we were able to sit with the project owner and business analysts and graphically model the web services in full view with the use of a projector.  These sessions added incredible value as the whole team (not only developers) was involved and we could brainstorm and discuss more freely.  Once Modeled, the service contracts, message contracts and data contracts are all generated into code that is easily understandable.

With the Repository Factory and Web Service Software Factory, New Media Labs were able to maintain a high project velocity whilst simultaneously getting the Aurecon Development Team up to speed with the architecture, patterns and practices.  Using the tools is trivial and the resulting code clear and understandable.

User Interface

Why Silverlight?

• Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform and cross-device web technology, perfect for Aurecon’s need for a system that is quickly, easily and cheaply deployed.
• Deployed on an IIS 7 web server - all the client needs to do is download the Silverlight plugin and start using the system.  It’s that simple!
• With Silverlight, we were able to rapidly develop a visually rich user interface and experience.

Yes, ok but why not Adobe Flash?

• Aurecon are already heavily Microsoft with various systems and backend processes already built on Microsoft platforms.  With Silverlight leveraging the .NET framework, we were able to create a system that can wield a rich user experience as well as support and easily integrate with other Microsoft back ends.

As for the Mapping functionality, we used the ESRI ARC GIS API for Silverlight component on top of Aurecon’s very own ESRI Arc GIS Server.  To avoid taking credit where it’s not due, Aurecon own and manage their own GIS data, New Media Labs just got the map to do all the funky things with the data we wanted it to do on screen.

Worth Mentioning

- Login with ASP.NET Authentication Services

• ASP.NET already comes with a huge array of out-the-box Membership, Role and Profile functionality, so why recreate the wheel?  Start Lite leverages this Membership and Role Functionality.  One can simply expose the ASP.NET Authentication system as a WCF web service with a few configuration settings.

- Blacklight

Multiple Panels Open

One Panel Open

• For draggable collapsable panelscontainers we utilized the open source Codeplex Blacklight Control suite and customized some of their controls to suit our needs better.

- ViewBox Control

• We decided to use the ViewBox Control which comes with the Silverlight Toolkit to handle the resizing of our various panel and container contents.  Manually resizing each UI element within a panel’s content when the panel is either maximized or minimized would have been cumbersome to do, and this handy control saved us a lot of time and effort.  It works wonders!

- Announcement and Notifications Engine

Announcement Functionality

• It wouldn’t be New Media Labs style without a social media element to it - we custom built an announcements and notifications engine.  Announcements let a user post important messages for others to see, whilst notifications get fired when important things happen within the system such as the creation of an incident.

- AutoCompleteBox Control

• In Start Lite, we tried to guide the user as much as possible when entering information. The AutoCompleteBox control is another cool control that comes with the Silverlight Toolkit (http://silverlight.codeplex.com/).  For Example, when searching for an address, the AutoCompleteBox keeps presenting the user with options based on what they’ve typed in thus far.

- Embedding PDF in Silverlight

• In Start Lite we implemented some magic to embed a PDF document within the Silverlight.  What’s actually happening though is with java script, we’ve actually placed a div tag on top of our Silverlight object and that div tag contains the PDF viewer control.

What is next?

As they often say, there is no rest for the wicked, and at New Media Labs, building “wicked” software means once we’re finished with one, we’re onto another!

Utilizing elements and components from Start Lite, we helped Aurecon develop a Back Office Incident Logging System, to be utilized by patrol officers and units, who while on patrol and by their own intervention identify or become involved in emergencies and incidents and ultimately resolve the issue then and there.  Upon their return to the station after duty, they can “back” capture such incidents for reference and reporting.

As with all systems, there is always a phase 2 and with Start Lite we’d like to focus more on modularity and being able to plug in or unplug functionality based purely on a particular clients requirement.  Silverlight is always evolving and with the release of Silverlight 3 there are some awesome new technology advancements we’ll be taking into account, specifically:

- MVVM

• In the case of Slverlight, you run the risk of ending up with code behind mixed with XAML in varying degrees and ultimately a solution which is difficult to maintain, refactor and test.  As with any large application, it is always a good idea to structure ones User Interface into its own subset of layers.  MVVM (Model-View-View Model) is a Silverlight specific pattern much like MVC or MVP which separates data (the Model) from the UI (the View), and presents the data in a bindable way for the UI (the View Model).

- RIA

• Microsoft .NET RIA Services simplifies the traditional n-tier application pattern by bringing together the ASP.NET and Silverlight platforms.  RIA Services provides a pattern to write application logic that runs on the mid-tier and controls access to data for queries, changes and custom operations.  In a nutshell, with RIA Services, we wouldn’t need to build a WCF layer.

- PRISM

• Ever heard of a Composite Application Block, well that is what PRISM is, a Composite Application Guidance Block specifically for Silverlight and WPF which allows one to modularize the UI and build it in such a way so that one can easily load or unload modules at choice.  Ideal for large, ever changing and ever growing applications.

See it at www.africantourismportal.com

Tourism is, by its very nature, the act of deliberately taking oneself to somewhere foreign and experiencing the new, the different and the unknown.  That said, most tourists are not interested in stumbling blindly – they want to impose some sort of structure on their journey before they begin.  At the least, they book hotels and accommodation.  Many choose a few particular locations they want to visit.  Some even organise complete itineraries, planning their trips down to the hour.

For all of these people, there is a common problem: what is there to do where I’m going?  Frequently, the primary source of information is a tour book or travel guide – a glossy summary of the most popular attractions.  This information is flat, static, and offers little context.  An improvement is to use a tour operator – an agency who can help to guide you to local attractions and areas of interest, and customise suggestions to your interests and accommodation choices.

Wouldn’t it be even better, then, if you could explore the area yourself?  Whilst map-based products that show hotels or tourist locations have existed for a while, they have until now focused too much on either selling accommodation or on highlighting the tourist attractions.

Our Solution

This is where SmartGuide and New Media Labs have collaborated to bring these two worlds together – building a rich, interactive map that shows visitors where they can stay, and pairs it with a wealth of information about the area they are visiting.  As an interactive map product, tourists gain immediate understanding of the spatial relationships between locations.  They can explore at their leisure, consuming images, descriptions, audio and video about points.

The product we have built acts as a hub for a multitude of players in the tourism space.  Information, locations and content feed into it from local tourism agencies and location promoters.  Tourism and accommodation operators feed their own unique images/video/points into it, improving the quality of the content and highlighting features they consider the most valuable.  Tourists use the map to explore, learn and decide where they wish to visit.  They locate accommodation, restaurants and activities in advance, and feed their choices and preferences back to their tour guides or their queries directly to responsible parties.

TIP playing a promotional video

One of the dominant problems in providing a system like this is in developing and maintaining a high quality repository of information.  This is a task that is poorly suited to tour operators themselves, and individual local tourism bureaus cannot provide either the necessary funding or a wide enough body of information.  Here, a dedicated provider like SmartGuide has the necessary contacts and experience to compile a body of knowledge that can support both the regional agencies and the tour operators.

When dealing with as much content as this, it becomes necessary to manage the volume of information being presented at any one time.  Especially when people are viewing a map, overloading them with points can rapidly becoming intimidating.  SmartGuide and New Media Labs tackled this from a number of directions.  We manage the display of points, making them visible and hiding them at appropriate zoom levels.  This allows us to begin by presenting high-level information and a minimal selection of locations when the zoom is pulled far out, and still have detailed, local content if a visitor chooses to zoom into an area.  We further extended this by allowing visitors to bring categorised content up earlier.  This helps people locate their particular interests quickly – beaches, golf courses, family attractions, restaurants – all of these can be highlighted and explored at will.  Lastly, all points on the map have a context-specific icon, which makes it easy to distinguish the general nature of a location at a glance, and without having to click or interact with it.

Exploring Beaches and Golf Courses

This information is fed to tourists through a fully interactive Adobe Flash application, which leverages the exceptional quality of Google Maps for Flash to provide a geospatial display of tourist attractions.  The user interface is built to support simple reskinning by operators, allowing them to imbed the application into their own pages with a fully matching “look and feel”.

TIP reskinned for Southern Destinations

Uploading a path from a KML file

Obviously, managing all of this content requires tools that are up to the job.  Here, New Media Labs built a complete content management solution that allows SmartGuide and their licensed Operators to update and maintain the ever increasing number of locations.  The content manager is designed to make the job of sorting and filtering through the tens of thousands of locations easy.  It fully supports filtering and sorting, and allows the user to customise the information on display.  This allows SmartGuide and their Operators to “build their own interface” for the job at hand.  The content manager uses a combination of direct field editing and custom content-specific editors to always present the most useful interface for the moment.  The content manager allows them to not only monitor points, but also to customise the display of recommendations, guides, routes and layers.

It supports importing content from KML documents and route files, and adding additional regional/location information to points through a reverse geocoding service.  It even allows SmartGuide to generate customised HTML pages for their clients on-the-fly, allowing them to run their business without needing to call on New Media Labs for technical support.

Checking up on Sky Diving

The content manager isn’t limited to in-office use, either.  It is fully supported across the internet - and this often leads to SmartGuide consultants taking their laptops with them on the road, and updating content directly from the local offices of tourism agencies.

Underlying Technology

New Media Labs has a firm belief in using “the right tool for the job”.  As such, a variety of systems were used together to build the tourism portal.

The front-end application was developed using Adobe Flex technology.  Here, our challenge was to deliver a richly interactive application that would behave consistently across the multitude of browsers currently available.  It would need to provide a user experience that set it apart from the majority of Google Maps-based products currently available.  It would need to consume back-end service feeds and orchestrate them to produce a compelling, responsive interactive map.  Lastly, it would need to be customisable and skinnable enough that operators looking to integrate it fully into their websites had the flexibility to do so.

Our decision to use Adobe Flex was informed by all of these aspects.  With Flash penetration at over 95%, we felt comfortable that it had the portability we needed.  ActionScript CSS gave us a good tool to separate the presentation logic from the underlying behaviour, and native support of web services ensured that we could access our back-end content seamlessly.

Even better – it took us only 4 weeks to build the front-end application!  Our initial prototyping efforts using Microsoft Silverlight meant that we could focus on ensuring the user experience was top notch, instead of simultaneously developing the application logic in conjunction with the user interface.

Developing TIP in Flex Builder

The back end servers run web services hosted inside of IIS 7, running on Windows Server 2008 with SQL Server 2008 databases.  Whilst we investigated building the services with some of the more popular open-source technologies (PHP, Ruby on Rails), we knew that the long-term strategy for the system would require extensive back-end integration with the systems of existing content providers.  Here, we felt that services built using .NET would give us the best combination of performance, flexibility and rapid development on this project.  Especially, we viewed the introduction of the geographic data types within SQL Server 2008 as being important for the ongoing maintenance and development of the system.

The Content Manager was implemented using Microsoft Silverlight (SL3).  Here, we wanted a powerful and responsive interface that would allow the user to perform complex data manipulation quickly.  Microsoft Silverlight was a natural choice – the multitude of user controls provided helped to massively reduce the amount of work necessary to build a content manager.  By allowing the client to work with the data directly in their browser we allowed them to be much more productive than they could have been with a traditional page based CMS system.

Browsing and updating point information

Obviously, the CMS needed a way to update the primary data store – we evaluated using a traditional web-service based approach, but we wanted something that gave us a good mix between easy extensibility and strong validation and typing.  In the end, we built a generic dynamic update system that relies heavily on shared WCF contracts and reflection.  It allows us to provide continual, as-you-edit updates and synchronisation between the CMS user interface and the backing data store.

In a nutshell, the past few months can be summed up as 2 kick ass applications down and more to come!

Aurecon saw the need to develop a whole suite of new Incident Management Software for existing clients in areas such as Emergency Services, Disaster Management and Policing. Once they decided that immersive, graphical user interfaces were a must and Silverlight was to be at the forefront of delivering such an experience to their clients, it was only a matter of time before New Media Labs’ and Aurecon’s paths would cross.

You’re probably wondering what Incident Management has to do with New Media, well for example, imagine the possibilities of an Incident Management system leveraging off of something as simple as geoRSS.  Suddenly your system can subscribe to hundreds of different feed streams giving an Emergency Services Operation Center a wealth of valuable, visual information on a Map type interface. This opens up the possibilities of police officers, firemen, paramedics or even members of the public to be able to publish incident related information from their mobile phones and ultimately a whole range of operating centers can then subscribe to this real time information aiding them to overcome even the most disastrous of emergencies. This is where Incident Management and Social Media meet and ultimately, it is where New Media Labs can build a long term partnership with an awesome company, and use our knowledge and expertise in web technologies to help build awesome software.

Start Lite is the first system we helped develop. Without going into too much detail now, and rather saving more techno talk for the official showcase still to come, a high level definition for Start Lite is a lite, easy to use system that can quickly and effectively capture and initiate the start of an incident. It allows the user to pin point an incident on a fully interactive GIS enabled Map, specify the various details about the incident and manage any people or units that have been dispatched to the incident. Designed, developed and rolled out at a CCTV control centre in Cape Town, Start Lite is primarily (as the name says) a “lite” version of Aurecon’s next planned product called Start, which will cater more fully for other industries and clients in the Incident Management and Emergency Services fields.

Next we developed Back Office. Often police officers will be out on patrol and come across incidents that weren’t necessarily initiated by dispatch or a control centre, and therefore there is no digital record of such an occurrence and the resolution of it. Back Office caters for this. It allows the user to capture such incidents once they have finished their patrol and can get back to the station.

Both Systems are web based and were built with Silverlight 2 on top of WCF web services and a SQL 2008 Database. Not only are the systems easily deployed to multiple users, they run in a web browser and also look great!  Some of the components we used on both projects were:

• Draggable collapsible panels/containers. We utilized the open source Codeplex Blacklight Control suite and customized some of their controls to suit our needs better. http://www.codeplex.com/blacklight
• ESRI Silverlight Map Control, GEO Spatial capabilities of SQL Server and the ESRI Server web services. http://www.esri.com/silverlight
• Repositoy Factory. http://www.codeplex.com/RepositoryFactory
• Web Service Software Factory Modeling Edition. http://www.codeplex.com/servicefactory

Kobus Meyer and the rest of the guys at Aurecon have been extremely kind and accommodating in taking us in and making us feel like members of their team. Chris and I both have enjoyed every minute working with them and have also enjoyed enduring the everyday challenges faced when developing cutting edge Incident Management software. I look forward to the future of this ever growing partnership between Aurecon and New Media Labs.

Check out this awesome video by ESRI on leveraging ArcGIS, geoRSS to create situational awareness.

The video content was originally going to be provided by youtube. But due to the complex authorisation workflow process brandhouse required, we decided to build our own video encoding and streaming service. The videos were then encoded using the Silverlight2.0 Encoder (apparently the first production purchase of this software in South Africa).

This was a very fun and exciting project. The application has come out of the testing phase so watch this space…