Explore Australia Implements Cartographic System from Geomatic Technologies
31 October 2005
Melbourne, Australia – Melbourne-based Explore Australia Publishing is Australia’s leading travel and map publisher and is a division of the independent book and magazine publisher, Hardie Grant Publishing. It has a 25-year history of producing quality Australian maps, guides and atlases. The company's flagship publication, Explore Australia, is an enduring best-seller, along with other popular annual titles - The Australian Road Atlas and The Australian Touring Atlas.
Over the years, the Explore Australia range has expanded to include road maps for every state and territory, state-based 'Explore' books, and guides to fishing, bush tucker, historic travel, camping and caravanning, and four-wheel driving. Explore Australia also supplies maps and travel content for websites, magazines, conferences and travel companies.
A need to modernise
Explore Australia had the dual business requirements to reduce production costs and increase its product range. It had been using AutoCAD as its primary map production tool for the past 14 years. However, its traditional CAD based cartographic methods were identified as no longer cost or time effective. This led Explore Australia to seek a new solution to its map production process.
Bruce McGurty, the Chief Cartographer at Explore Australia Publishing explains; “Having looked at and considered other GIS/CAD packages on the market, we made the business decision to use the latest Autodesk GIS product available, AutoCAD MapTM, for the development and implementation of the new Map Production System.”
This choice was based on the technical virtues of Autodesk Map TM, which enabled Explore Australia to do away with the older file-based data management system and keep the company producing high quality map based products through a demanding publishing program.
The best solution for data structures
There were several reasons why Explore Australia chose to use a spatial database rather than the proven file system. According to McGurty, there was the issue of maintenance and storage. “Although the AutoCAD environment successfully provided both the data maintenance and data storage framework for Explore Australia’s cartographic needs for over 13 years, sole reliance on the CAD environment for all data management had created inefficiencies in maintaining and generating new products. Map feature verification and the maintenance of a large number of individual files were labour intensive and inefficient. Duplication of data meant sometimes performing the same edit 3 to 4 times”.
The company’s plan was to put into place new file servers to store the massive amounts of geospatial data obtained from various providers and sources including GPS. The new system was designed to enable effective data storage, allowing for full-build and incremental updates and catering for the storage and maintenance of existing datasets.
The right tool for an identified business requirement
Geomatic Technologies was engaged as system implementer and identified Explore Australia’s key business requirements, carried out the MPS system design, database design and development, and customised the software accordingly.
One of Explore Australia’s key business requirements was to extract the geospatial data from an OracleTM environment. The unique functionality of Autodesk MapTM provided a greater level of cartographic automation and utilisation of large geospatial datasets by its ability to read geographic features directly from Oracle™. The standard functionality in Autodesk Map™ and Oracle™, enhanced and expanded with targeted custom development by Geomatic Technologies, allowed the creation of a system with automated map generation and provided outstanding cartographic flexibility for Explore Australia.
Smooth transition cuts staff training, production time and improves data management
Leveraging existing staff knowledge and experience with previous Autodesk products minimised the time required for staff retraining. Additionally, certain data and other map feature research, which had taken months and sometimes years to collect and maintain for past publications, was easily incorporated into the new system.
Improved measures of production lead to wider range of high quality publications
According to Explore Australia, the production time required to update, reformat and proof a high quality cartographic product has been reduced from days and weeks, to just a few hours.
The new Map Production System has allowed imported data to be formatted easily, with added attribution depth. It has enabled the faster generation of varied and series mapping, automated indexing while enhancing flexibility and control on all the publication edits and file management.
With an improved rate of production, Explore Australia now turns around its annual publications much faster, leaving more time to produce products of authoritative and accurate mapping. The new system has already proven to facilitate easier working with co-publishers and other cartographic houses.