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Organizational Impact - Kelly Rawson Counts - Blockbuster Inc.

BULIT- Blockbusters Ultimate Location Intelligence Tool - is a premier spatial application supported by the WorldWide GIS department. BULITs attractive, easy-to-use interface, and rich connection to the companys store and customer information has made it an indispensable tool throughout the organization. BULIT supports the Development, Marketing, Operations, Finance, Diversity, Human Resources, Strategic Planning, Alternate Brands, and Product departments. BULIT has also been implemented in many of Blockbusters international divisions including Canada, UK, Mexico, Australia, and Taiwan.

BULIT FUNCTIONALITY

• Display current and historical Blockbuster customers - brick-and-mortar and online consumers.
• Display current and historical Retail Trade Zones for any Blockbuster location.
• Display current and historical market penetration at the Blockgroup level - brick-and-mortar and online.
• Analyze the impact of adding, closing or relocating a Blockbuster to the store portfolio within a market. See Models section for further details.
• Assign and track portfolio optimization strategies for all open stores.
• Identify competitive geographic areas for direct mail focus and analyze the results of the direct mail campaign.
• Direct integration with Google Earth and Windows Live Local
• Access to store photograph and architectural drawing archives
• Ability to add, correct, or remove business point locations AND disseminate these updates to all BULIT users.
• Batch capabilities for all reports and customer distribution pattern maps. See Reports section for further details.

BULIT MODELS

• Customer-Based Retail Trade Zone Model - define a retail trade zone for an existing Blockbuster based on active customer locations
• Estimated Trade Zone Model - define an estimated trade zone for a new Blockbuster or competitor location
• Revenue Forecast Model - estimate a total net revenue figure for a proposed Blockbuster
• Revenue Transfer Model - estimate revenue transfer to surrounding stores if an existing Blockbuster is closed
• Revenue Impact Model - estimate revenue impact on existing stores with the addition of a new Blockbuster location
• Relocation Model - estimate the total net revenue of a relocated Blockbuster store
• Analog Model - analyze the performance of Blockbuster stores with similar demographic, geographic, and site characteristics to make inferences about a specific existing or proposed store.
• Impact Buildback Model - for a store impacted by a new or relocated Blockbuster, estimate the time required to ramp back to its pre-impact revenue level

BULIT REPORTS

• Demographic reports for any standard or custom geography
• Detailed financial reports for any Blockbuster location
• Competitor information within any standard or user-defined geography
• Lease Expiration Reports based on a user-defined time frame
• Site Evaluation Report for Proposed Blockbuster store - includes;
  • results of Revenue Estimate, Trade Zone, Impact and Impact Buildback models
  • demographics for estimated Trade Zone
  • demographics and financials for impacted stores
  • map of proposed site, estimated Retail Trade Zone and surrounding competitor and generator locations
  • CDP and Impact maps for surrounding stores

PRE-DEFINED MAP TEMPLATES IN BULIT

• Customer Distribution Pattern maps - current and historical
• Thematic maps - demographic variables, market penetration - current and historical trends
• Territory assignments - Development, Lease Administration, Facilities, Asset Management, etc.

Changing the World - Jonathan Chapman - State of Louisiana Bureau of Primary and Rural Health

I work with the Louisiana Bureau of Primary Care and Rural Health which is organized within the state’s Department of Health and Hospitals. We are responsible for monitoring and developing access to health care services throughout the state.

In March 2003 I received word that my application for a MapInfo eGovernment Grant had been successful. This software bundle that included Professional, MapMarker Plus, and Street Pro enabled us to better evaluate transportation issues, plot providers and recipients, engage in strategic planning projects, and develop better visual information.

On August 29, 2005 Hurricane Katrina changed Louisiana in a multitude of ways. As the state’s population dramatically and quickly shifted away from New Orleans questions regarding health care services and resources were being asked with little hope of answers. Then less than a month later Hurricane Rita hit the southwestern part of the state. Because of the Bureau's short but useful experience in surveying and visually representing health care data we were asked to assess the status of the department’s employees, health care facilities and providers.

Our HR department provided data gathered through a website that we were able to convert into a graphic illustrating where employees had moved from, moved to, and how far. The resulting graphics became an object of attention and basis of numerous reallocation discussions. We were then tasked with comparing health care facilities with the altered populations. We contacted each hospital and health clinic and were able to illustrate which facilities were functional, partially functional or simply not there any more.

Once initial reactions subsided and we had the basic information disseminated throughout the department we then began to plan for displaced employees to care for displaced residents. The graphics we created through MapInfo spurred important conversations and enabled people to plan throughout all the emotions surrounding these events. Word quickly spread throughout DHH, and we were soon assigned to map out New Orleans flood zones by neighborhood overlaid with existing health care services. Recently we were brought in on the FEMA housing process to evaluate relationships between potential sites and health services.

The capabilities developed directly because of the MapInfo products has advanced and accelerated the communication and health care planning processes throughout Louisiana. Without the ability to quickly locate populations and facilities with MapInfo’s products I know the Bureau would not be in its current position of encouraging communities with specific planning tools and processes.

Unique & Unusual - Tom Curley - Suquamish Tribe

Tribal Canoe Journey

Each summer the native tribes in the Pacific Northwest (USA) paddle their canoes to a village that is hosting a traditional potlatch. It's a way to carry on traditions that would otherwise be lost to the modern world. We use MapInfo to make the journey safer, from the first planning phase to final day of canoe pulling.

Up and down the northwest coast, canoes were used much as we use automobiles today. They were traditionally carved from a very large red-cedar tree that was felled, split, hollowed then steamed and spread. The traditional knowledge of how to do that was nearly lost when, in 1989, a challenge was raised in the tribal communities that there would be a canoe trip to Seattle. It was hugely emotional for everyone involved, and began the summer journeys.

Canoes are important to the coastal people of the Pacific Northwest, not only for their functional value, but because it was a key to the culture. These days, it's a way for young people to reconnect with their traditions, and a reason to ask their elders why certain protocols are done in certain ways in the canoe. It's a way and a reason to get healthy, to learn the spoken language, and meet other young people from other villages during the potlatches. Canoes have become a way to pass on traditional ways that make sense to young people, so they actually seek out that traditional wisdom and integrate it into their lives.

We at Suquamish have been involved with the canoe journeys since 1989, and we paddled a cedar dugout canoe 600 miles north into Canada in 1993 to the week-long potlatch at Bella Bella, British Columbia. We stopped at native villages along the way, following traditional protocol - it took us a month to get there. Since then, we've had at least one canoe on every summer pull, and now have seven tribal and family canoes.

We use MapInfo with digital nautical charts to plan canoe routes and stops, and provide geographic coordination for all the tribes. We have made daily guidemaps with Mapinfo that indicate that day's proposed route with distance, any possible hazards, lunch stops, emergency access points and an aerial photo of the destination so pullers have a sense of where they're going. We bundle these together for the entire trip, print them on a color laser printer so the ink won't run, and put them in a large ziplock bag for each canoe.

Several years ago we had a particularly challenging pull out the Strait of Juan de Fuca to the Pacific Ocean, then south along a rough and dangerous shoreline to the potlatch hosted by the Quinault people. All went well until the last day of the two-week pull, when a fogbank rolled over the canoes and created a very dangerous situation. In the sailboat we were using as a support boat, we pulled out the laptop and tried to run our usual PC navigation program. For some reason, it would not initialize. We put four canoes and their canoes under tow, and really needed to know where we (and the rocks) were. So we started MapInfo Pro, connected the GPS and ran the Blue Marble GeoTracker utility. That showed us where we were, right on the nautical chart. This allowed us to navigate safely along a truly perilous shoreline to the relative protection of Point Grenville, where we put the canoes ashore. We have a PowerPoint of that entire trip, which is really what we're submitting for the award.

Technical Achievement - Walther Friederici - Deutsche Bahn Netz AG

Deutsche Bahn AG are introducing a new internal digital mobile communication network that replaces the old analog train communication systems. GSM-R is a new standard for wireless rail telecommunications which is endorsed by the International Union of Railways (UIC) and based on the tried and tested Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) standard. This offers railway specific functionality designed to improve the reliability of railway operations. GSM-R is a communication system for traffic control and other communication within the Rail Network. This serves engine drivers, maintenance crews and other personnel working on railway network, both on the track or at stations.

Deutsche Bahn is the first company in the world to go live with a fully operating GSM-R network. We have been looking for a software solution that helps us to manage and configure our GSM-R network in a much more efficient way, however even today there is still no standard solution available on the market!

In collaboration with MapInfo and based on our needs to manage and configure our new digital network, we implemented GSM-R GIS - a solution for managing GSM-R services geographically.

GSM-R GIS uses MapInfo’s Java technology (MapXtreme Java) and is a set of 100% Pure Java classes (Java 2 compliant), which allowed us to deploy the application on our Unix servers using Microsoft PC clients as a front-end. GSM-R GIS is an enterprise-level client-server application based on a MVC2 architecture. The key element of this software is the server-side servlet that manages the requests and responses for authentificating, mapping, searching and database access. By using a servlet architecture, GSM-R GIS focuses on satisfying requests, while the web server/servlet container handles other server-side issues such as load balancing, security, and fault tolerance. Additionally, the servlet model uses HTTP, the standard for communicating across the Internet. The client-side element of GSM-R GIS runs as a Java-Swing-Application, which is easily deployed to the client with a single click over the network by using a similar technology to Java Web Start.

GSM-R GIS by MapInfo enables a group of 100 network planners at Deutsche Bahn to define and set up some of the most important GSM-R services and also fixed-line telephone devices for train dispatchers. Because train controllers are only responsible for a specific rail track section within a defined geographical area covered by a limited number of network cells, network planners have a requirement for location intelligence in order to configure the network in a meaningful way.

One of the main benefits of MapInfo’s solution is the ability to set up GSM-R services through a single and easy to use geographical application interface delivering huge savings in time, resources and costs. But the most important benefit of all is given by the applications central map view which helps us to discover the geographical relationship between train locations, dispatcher responsibilities and network coverage. This offers us a visual control over which network cells can be configured for specific call types and location dependent GSM-R services.

This visual work control results in a much better quality assurance! We can now minimize the risk that calls are getting routed to wrong subscribers, e.g. calls which are relevant only for railway employees in the Frankfurt area shouldn’t be routed to employees who are located within a network cell somewhere in Munich. This is especially very important for emergency group calls.

In addition to network configurations GSM-R GIS enables us to configure all direct access keys on the LCD touch panel for each dispatcher terminal at any location. By simply clicking and selecting telephone numbers from a central telephone directory GSM-R GIS generates configuration files which can then be distributed to every single dispatcher terminal.

Depending on the complexity of a GSM-R network the total number of cell groups to be managed can easily grow up to several thousand. Using just alphanumerical lists and tables without any geographical linkage is not a sufficient way to fulfill requirements with regards to quality, security and effectiveness.

Compared to our former way of just using Excel lists, MapInfo helps us now not only to save up to 80% of our time, but also to increase the level of quality in our networking planning process.

People’s Choice - Dan Martin - HomeGain, Inc.

HomeGain First to Develop Nationwide Map of Neighborhood Boundaries

With over 4 million unique visitors per month, HomeGain is the 2nd largest real estate site in the world. We let consumers browse real estate listings, recently sold homes, and resumes of 80,000 REALTORS across the country.

One major problem we encountered is that our products are based on Zip Codes, yet home buyers rarely know the Zip Codes of their target destinations. We needed a way to let buyers choose familiar neighborhood names when conducting a home search. For example, a home buyer relocating to Atlanta might hear from friends that he should look for a home in the Buckhead neighborhood, but he typically has no idea what Zip Codes lie within Buckhead.

We knew we had two choices: either we needed to identify and map neighborhoods for the entire country, or we needed to find a data vendor who could license us this information. We scoured our contacts in the real estate industry and talked to several mapping companies. All of them offered the same response: "We get asked about neighborhoods all the time, but nobody seems to have this data on a nationwide scale. If you build it, let us know."

Since we couldn't purchase the data, we set out on a mission to create it ourselves. The tricky aspect of neighborhoods is that their boundaries are subjective. Also, colloquial names and boundaries of neighborhoods do not tie into any pre-existing Federal taxonomy of place names. There is very little correlation between Census Tracts, Zip Codes, and colloquial neighborhoods. There is also no list one can use to perform quality assurance on the data.

We set up an office in Berkeley, CA and hired 15 students to assist us with the neighborhoods project. We compared several map vendors and ended up choosing MapInfo largely due to Kathy Dombrowski, our local MapInfo re-seller. In addition to her product expertise, Kathy is extremely responsive and offered us excellent training on MapInfo Professional. She saved us several man-days of time by showing us creative ways to apply MapInfo Professional to the project.

During the summer of 2005 we used MapInfo 8.0 to identify and map over 200 cities and 11,000 individual neighborhood boundaries. We made extensive use of all product features including "Raster Image," "Snap", and "Autotrace". We also dealt with importing and exporting several file formats (.SHP and .KMZ).

We patented and copyrighted this Neighborhoods GIS layer, and we are actively licensing it to several parties. The neighborhood boundaries first went live on www.trulia.com. You can see our neighborhood data at the top of this page: http://www.trulia.com/NY/New_York/ We also have several contracts with mapping companies, newspapers, other real estate firms, and search engines. Fairly soon millions of users on search engines and cell phones will be able to search for restaurants, hotels, apartment listings, etc. using the neighborhood polygons developed by HomeGain on MapInfo 8.0.

Daniel Lucarelli

Pennsylvania One Call System, Inc. (the “Call Before you Dig” folks for the state of PA) used Mapinfo MapXtreme 2004 development tools and data to create their “Member Mapping” application a Web-enabled GIS system for underground facility owners in Pennsylvania. Almost 700 users interact with the application using a Web browser on top of a Pennsylvania land base. Users have drawn over 800 thousand polygons to date that indicate where underground facilities are located. These “notification areas” are spatially compared to an excavation notification request in the Call Center to determine whether an underground facility owner should receive the excavation notification or not.

The application is saving members approximately $1 million per month in compliance costs (and growing) when compared to notifications before the application was implemented. Pennsylvania One Call System, Inc. has reduced its communications costs approximately 17% (and growing) as a result from almost 7.5 million messages sent per year to 6.3 million messages in 2005.

Member Mapping is 100% Web-enabled and written entirely with Microsoft’s .NET framework. Internet Explorer is the only required piece of software on the client side. There are no ActiveX controls, no browser helper objects, and no additional client software needed. The application provides a fast and rich user experience due to remoting technology once the client authenticates and the initial Web page is loaded, only the map is refreshed. The application data warehouse is Microsoft SQL Server and user map objects are stored in native Mapinfo TAB files accessible by the Web server. With a cable modem, DSL or T-1 broadband connection, application performance is indistinguishable from internal users connected via local area network.

The screen shot depicts a typical user session. The user has just completed drawing a “notification area” on the map. When the user creates the object using the polygon, line or point tools, the application asks for and applies an object buffer. When the user saves the session, data is stored in server TAB files and SQL Server for use. Drawing and map manipulation tools typical in MapInfo (zoom, drag map, draw, measure, etc.) are available in the Web browser. The user can even manipulate map layers from their Internet Explorer session. Customized tools built for the application include “Pick Street Segments contained in a Polygon” tool, an intelligent map searching tool, and an information tool that allows a user to query status, state and history of map objects.

If you own and operate underground facilities in the state of Pennsylvania, and are a member of Pennsylvania One Call System, Inc., Member Mapping is available for your use at no cost. The application was designed to improve the safety and efficiency of underground excavation notifications. Members who use the application have the additional benefit of significantly reducing compliance costs as a result.

Member Mapping is only one of a family of products developed by Pennsylvania One Call System, Inc. for members and excavators in Pennsylvania. Member Mapping, Web Ticket Entry, Saf-Call and other products, developed using Mapinfo products, data and development tools, are designed to keep excavators and underground facilities in Pennsylvania safe.

If you are planning on disturbing earth in Pennsylvania with powered equipment, Please! Call before you Dig!

Brian Cummings

The Department of Social Services is Massachusetts' state child welfare agency. At any given time, our social work staff is working with about twenty thousand families across the Commonwealth. A much smaller subset of this number is comprised of children living in foster care settings.

DSS is always playing "catch-up" when it comes to having enough available homes to meet the level of whatever might be the prevailing need in any part of the state, at any particular time. Whenever placement is necessary, we strive to have children placed with kin or as close to their communities as possible. The individualized nature of this dynamic makes demand particularly difficult to predict. Consequently, we often have children waiting for us to find places for them to live.

In 2004, we expanded our use of MapInfo Professional and MapMarker to map our general and foster care caseload data as a way of informing our recruitment planning efforts. A small pilot involving six area offices mushroomed to include the remaining twenty-three within a few short weeks. A picture truly paints a thousand words!

As a result, a more localized, strategic approach to recruitment was developed based on the knowledge of where are children were coming from and ultimately, where they were being placed. Recruitment efforts were targeted to reach those areas that were significantly underserved or where there appeared to be a critical disconnect between need and resources.

The initial results have been promising. We are realizing a significant increase in calls from families expressing an interest in becoming foster parents - the first step in what ultimately can result in a new home becoming available to take placements.

Our long term goal is to increase our Location Intelligence in other areas of service delivery as well. This has been our first successful attempt to use it across the enterprise - not just on a small, isolated pilot project or solely for centralized planning.

Rafal Szambelan

Map Info in the documentation for conservation projects for wall painting and building fa¸ades.

Fragility of material achievements of civilization can be seen even from as far as satellite orbits. Digital images sent from spacelabs present the impressive size of Earth’s geoidal shape but only the existence of rich in detail, thin crust covering the surface of our planet determines the chance of survival and construction of forms constituting a testimony of existing culture. The same is true, on a smaller scale with historic architecture. The thin, surface layers of surviving original walls, render supports, plasters, decorations, stuccos and polychromy on historic constructions are carriers of specific values witch create a tremendous quasi gravity attraction power for cultural pilgrims. The existence or loss of these historic layers may decide about the classification of the entire historic facility, whether it will be recognized as a masterpiece of architecture or a pathetic ruin.

For well over ten years, when the first GIS digital applications began to appear we use them to organize data for the objective of creating a specific cadastral registry map of boundaries and areas particularly interesting to art conservationists on architectural surfaces such as building facades or wall paintings. Information about the state of preservation of these surfaces is being collected.

The MapInfo system is for us conservationists a useful tool for documenting valuable historical architecture surface fragments. It is used for gathering stock taking inventory of iconography images, registering chronological alterations, material identification, influence effect of external ambient factors and damage analysis. Identification all these aspects provides a basis for formulating conservation intervention concept. Today, as never before, a conservation project requires numerous specifications of surface treatments, workload and material utilization assessments. Here also, MapInfo provides invaluable service enabling access to clearly organized data with spatial reference information. Innovative analyses carried out using geographical operators and SQL queries allows for a more objective assessment of preservation status. Never before, did maintaining conservation documentation provide an option of such diligent evaluation of the relation between carried out chemical analyses and measurements and macroscopically observed and recorded in MapInfo preservation status of historical surface. This enables to undertake properly substantiated conservation decisions.

Operations undertaken during conducting conservation works are recorded on an ongoing basis. This data is then digitalized and integrated in the local coordinate system in MapInfo. Information of this type allows control over carried out works and eventual formulations of recommendations for the owner of the facility / building.

The perspectives in using GIS to manage information in conservation projects on architectural surfaces are tremendous. The current version of MapInfo used by our team allows for proper association of the visualization layer (a photographic image of the surface of an object) with contextual information stored in text and database formats. Additionally, all the said elements are numerable and remain in defined spatial relations in appropriately selected coordinate system. This allows for easy access to information in its entire complexity, organized in a manner similar to the organization of human perception structures. Such way MapInfo carries out basic ‘augmented reality’ postulates in conservation documentation.

Jeremy Brown

Overview

CityWide is a solution provider to local government and private sector in Australia mainly differentiating itself on the ability to effectively maintain and manage client’s assets. Due to today’s high rates of litigation the ability to accurately locate, capture attribute information, maintain assets, schedule & complete works and to record this information in a fully searchable and analysable way is critical in defence against public liability claims and to ensure appropriate service levels are met.

Hence the development of CityWide’s asset management system GAMMA (Geographic Asset Management & Maintenance Application) a solution built on Visual Studio 2003 platform using MapXtreme 2004. The base technology is using SQL Server 2000 to store the assets (including location information) and attribute information with MapXtreme 2004 directly accessing these tables to graphically display data on the users desktop. The system is able to be run in an offline and online mode so it can be used out in the field (using Panasonic Toughbook tablet PCs and MSDE local information store) and on the desktop directly connected to the network/SQL Server.

Currently the system accounts for the following client assets;

• Street Furniture (eg lights, park benches, drinking fountains, fire hydrants etc)
• Street Signs (eg Parking, Regulatory and Guide signs)
• Drainage Pits
• Road Segments (incorporating footpaths, pavement, kerb & channel)
• Defects (eg potholes, pavement problems, etc)
• Trees

With development currently being undertaken on further layers, namely open spaces (eg lawns, flower beds and sporting arenas) to greater fit our clients needs.

Analysis is done through MapInfo Professional which has been customised to perform standard graphical reporting functionality, for example map the condition of drainage pits, map inspections via date range, etc.

The system is fully auditable with users logging in with username and password which is assigned to all user actions in the database, enabling the system to be monitored and unauthorised access prevented.

Accuracy of the geographical data is great with the ability to attach to an external GPS device, in addition to measurement tools against base layers and the ability to show ortho photos of the required areas.

Open jobs are geographically displayed on the map by Asset Type, and disappear once closed, different colours differentiate the priority of the jobs and enable increased efficiencies in scheduling of works.

Conclusion

This spatial data technology has enabled greater data accuracy throughout the company, increased efficiencies in scheduling work, and enabled CityWide to greater arm its clients in legal proceedings, with the entire history of an asset, including who worked on it when, when it was last inspected etc available at the push of a button.

CityWide relies on being at the forefront of technology to ensure that it can differentiate itself from its competitors and ensure new business is won, and old business is retained, something that MapInfo products are critical in providing.