“By making this information available on the website, we have lowered our delivery costs and increased its availability to everyone,” said Mayor Doug McCallum on behalf of Council. “COSMOS is a good example of how we can use technology to increase our level of service to our residents and business community.” COSMOS will provide access to a vast amount of the spatial information that is maintained and managed at the City such as Land Development, Utilities, Parks and Land Use. COSMOS will allow users to:
- Quickly locate specific address or points of interest (parks, libraries, schools, etc.)
- View High Resolution Aerial Photography
- Browse and query infrastructure data such as water, drainage, sanitary, and transportation
- Browse Zoning and OCP boundaries
- Create your own maps, and print or add them to an email
- Retrieve As-built drawing numbers
The implementation of COSMOS reflects a best practices review of various Canadian and US cities, research of customer needs and expectations, technology needs, preparation of GIS data, and detailed acceptance testing. The basic goals COSMOS was designed to address include:
- Greater flexibility and scalability to respond to changing business needs;
- One access point for real time spatial information for both the public and staff;
- Greater self-serve data and information for external clients.
Future enhancements planned for COSMOS includes an eBusiness extension that will provide a self-serve option to download digital copies of GIS data, further strengthening our commitment to being ‘Open for Business’.
COSMOS can be accessed through the City’s website, www.city.surrey.bc.ca, or directly at cosmos.surrey.ca.
Quelle: DirectionsMagazine, 24.03.2005
