Even high flyers need IT

Louise Durack

For an organisation which has maritime and aviation search and rescue at its heart, it is critical that AMSA maintains digital imagery as an integral part of its operations, said Ross Henderson, GIS analyst, information services.

“Our operations are many and varied,” he said. “Those which require digital imagery to provide an integral record, include: vessel seaworthiness inspections; maritime pollution incidents and the management and maintenance of AMSA’s aids to navigation network eg. lighthouses, GPS, radars and vessel tracking systems.

He said this can be for purposes including legal proceedings; training exercises; publicity; research; vehicle inspection reports and heritage conservation.

“It is therefore crucial that images associated with these operations be stored in a secure manner, are unable to be altered once stored and can be searched for and retrieved with a minimum of effort.”

Historically, said Henderson, digital images such as photographs, maps and plans, were stored in a fragmented, ad hoc manner. “Employees stored their images on CDs, various other storage media, network drives and AMSA’s corporate record management system.

“Image data was ‘siloed’ in that it was not available to the whole organisation, but only to the employees and business units that stored them.

“Furthermore, the records management system did not have the capability to efficiently search and receive digital images. Access to and verification of this imagery was therefore very problematic and the image data was also consuming a significant portion of our network storage capacity.”

Efficient data systems
Following a tender process, the contract was awarded to solution provider Piction to provide a digital image management system which would assist in efficiently handling a wide range of digital images.

Named DIMS and using a web browser interface with an Oracle 10g database for storage, the AMSA solution uses a package called Digital Media eXchange, a product developed by Digital Image Systems. Digital Media eXchange is completely web-based and has been configured to suit AMSA’s specific requirements.

DIMS has been made available via the AMSA intranet and requires no application software to be installed on user PCs, said Henderson. “Specific metadata templates were developed for the various business units in AMSA, as they each had different metadata requirements.

“All digital images, including thumbnails, web quality and original images, are stored inside an Oracle 10g database. The image metadata is stored within the same Oracle database, thus ensuring integrity and security is maintained between the image and associated metadata.”

Project phases
The initial stages of the project involved defining the metadata and reporting requirements for each of the AMSA business units, said Henderson.

The project itself, was then split into two phases.

“Phase 1A required the implementation of DIMS for three specific business units. This was completed in July 2007 and was designed as a trial to ensure that the system met with our requirements and to identify possible enhancements prior to full installation.

“Phase 1B required implementation of DIMS across the whole organisation, taking into account the issues identified in Phase 1A. Phase 1B was brought into production in November 2007 and the project is due for completion by the end of the calendar year.”

Luckily, very minimal user training was required as part of the project, said Henderson. “This was due to the application being a web browser which most users are very familiar with. A brief, easy-to-follow guide was also prepared to assist users with basic functions.”

However training of system administrators was required. “Each business unit has an administrator who is responsible for the management of the image collection and users associated with the business unit. Plus there is an overall system administrator who is responsible for the system configuration and performance.”

The challenges
“During the user acceptance testing phase, it was important to ensure that users comprehensively tested the system. A list of tasks covering functions that would be commonly used was prepared and distributed to the users who would be testing the system. Any problems were documented and handed over to the consultant for action. This meant we could keep track of any bugs and fixes applied to these bugs.”

He said that a major potential problem to be avoided is that due to a lack of communication, “users may not be fully aware of the system and therefore not use it properly, or at all. This is particularly relevant for AMSA users where users are spread across the country”.

Reaping the benefits
Overall, Henderson reports that benefits of the new system are many. “All AMSA staff now have access to DIMS and can import, search for and export images from their own business units. Search functionality allows users to carry out very specific image searches, based on comprehensive metadata.”

And web-based technology ensures that DIMS is available to all AMSA users, even in remote locations, as long as they can access the organisation’s website.

“It was also important to have a proven change management process,” said Henderson, “and to use this tool when scheduling ‘go live’ events during the project. This ensured a smooth transition from development to production, and a back-out/roll-back plan in case of a problem.”

Piction is an ISV specialising in digital image management systems for a variety of customers in Australia and around the world.

Need for fast imagery
“Keeping careful track of their imagery is crucially important for an organisation such as this, which has complex metadata that needs to be carefully logged,” said chief executive officer Erick Kendrick.

“In any given safety and emergency response exercise, there may be a need for supporting information in relation to the decision making that occurs. For instance, if a ship is stuck in coastal waters, AMSA may need to quickly pull up images of the vessel’s location in the harbour, relating to access routes etc. When there are lives at risk, this information can be paramount.”

Previously much of this information and imagery was being kept on a whole range of drives and consequently being lost or mislaid. “AMSA really needed a complete central repository where all of its multimedia data could be housed,” said Kendrick.

“AMSA had a requirement to be able to manage very complex types of media such as still images and spatial data, eg GIS information.

The solution
Piction provided a web-based solution with IT architecture that complies with AMSA’s existing IT infrastructure and consists of a centralised repository/database for the image collection.

“Images stored in the DIMS collection are unable to be altered and allow all AMSA users to efficiently store, search and retrieve image data critical to their operations,” said Kendrick. “The system also allows AMSA users to attach metadata to images (eg. geographical location of image, date, description, photographer, image etc.) containing important information about the plans, images, maps etc. It also has the capability to integrate with other corporate systems such as record management systems and asset management systems.”

Taking just a couple of months to implement, Kendrick said that AMSA was keen to customise the Piction solution to its own specific requirements. “We were able to tailor the solution to exactly how AMSA wanted it in relation to how staff upload their information to suit their work practices and the high volume of metadata they deal with,” said Kendrick.

Specific considerations that had to be made when installing the technology included adhering to the customer’s security requirements, he said. “There were some issues of data sensitivity within their standard operating environment which had to be thought about, but nothing that caused any problems.”

Other highlights
Once installation was complete, the solution began providing a range of additional benefits, said Kendrick. These include: image and metadata security ensured due to the security of the Oracle database; the freeing up of a significant amount of disc space on AMSA’s network servers; all image/metadata database backed up and mirrored at AMSA’s disaster recovery facility.

Frequent consultation with users during the implementation phase was vital to ensure that the metadata templates were suitable. Additionally, he said, the Piction solution has been identified for further use, with added enhancements for the integration with other corporate systems such as records management, ship management and search and rescue systems.