| Community information includes information related to infrastructure, natural resources and natural hazards. Typically, utility companies and government agencies develop and maintain this information. Several agencies are involved in the development and maintenance of community information. Therefore, there is redundancy in effort, and maintaining the integrity becomes difficult. There are no standard procedures for agencies to maintain and share community data. Furthermore, the distributed nature of the data and the heterogeneity of the operating systems plus the database systems make sharing of the data difficult. In addition, users of these systems, such as administrators, data-entry personnel, customers and general public, need to interact with experts. Knowledge gathering of problems related to community information systems involves extensive effort (cost and resources) and time. Therefore, information available with experts must be shared and documented. However, recent developments in the communications and Internet technologies along with related software advancements simplify the task of resolving these issues. This thesis presents an integrated community information system that addresses the above issues. A prototype Web based implementation is provided. |
