Facilities Planning, Environmental, and Safety organizations are currently developing applications to satisfy their needs. LaRC management identified potential funding problems for continued development of GIS technology. Recent initiatives indicate costs for new customers are significantly less than previously anticipated. Similarly, we find that information surveys and data translation can be consolidated with dramatic reductions in cost. Following the development of a Business Plan for implementing GIS at LaRC, and official support from IOG management, GIS was moved from Facilities Systems Engineering to Facilities Program Development Office and is now in the process of bringing the system online as a center wide resource.
System requirements range broadly based on the application.
Low level users may be satisfied with predefined queries in Mosaic or similar WWW browser environment. Higher level users or developers require X terminals or X capable workstations, these can range from Unix platforms to Macs or PCs running X terminal software. Those envolved in day to day activities involving GIS will be able to run GIS in a distributed environment using network file sharing protocols and by accessing a pool of floating licenses. Dedicated licenses may be required for some users such as Environmental or Safety, due to their emergency response nature. All of these options require the user's workstation to be connected to LaRCnet.