Case Study:

Orange County, California

Methodology

Software and Hardware

OCTA initiated its GIS program in 1991 with the acquisition of its first ArcInfo license, first running on a PC and then on a single UNIX Sun Sparc Workstation. Since then, OCTA has expanded the GIS role in transit applications from ad hoc mapping support to analytical tasks that produce information for multiple users in different departments. Information requests emanate not only from the transit planning area within the Planning and Development Division, but also from the Operations Division, External Affairs, and other departments.

OCTA continues to use ESRI products - ArcInfo and ArcView - as its primary GIS software. The GIS unit uses ArcInfo primarily for data management and editing, along with spatial analysis and hardcopy map production. The GIS unit requires powerful hardware to support the processing, storage, and plotting requirements of GIS software. Staff performs computing tasks with Windows NT workstations connected to a Unix server. The GIS unit has a Hewlett Packard DesignJet color plotter for making large maps and several printers for smaller plots and transparencies. The staff uses digitizers to convert hardcopy maps into digital layers.

Various other OCTA staff members use ArcView for querying, viewing, mapping, and small-scale spatial analyses. These staff members run ArcView modules - customized user-friendly versions of Arc View that automate common tasks - that have been distributed throughout the Authority, taking advantage of ArcView implementation in the desktop computer environment. These modules give the users easily used capabilities for querying, viewing, and map plotting. The modules include tools for analyses of bus stops, design of transit routes, and market research analyses. OCTA uses other extensions and modules of ArcInfo and ArcView for specialized analyses, such as network modeling tasks with Network Analyst.

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