It was great to see Smart Maps officially launched by Ravensdown at the National Field Days at Mystery Creek on the 11th of June (www.ravensdown.co.nz). The implementation of the Smart Maps system allows farmers (Ravensdown shareholders only) to view an online aerial map of their farm and draw on paddocks, blocks and management zones and integrate this with their fertiliser application and other on-farm events. Farmers access Smart Maps through their personalised online service site called MyRavensdown. The mapping and spatial processing is driven by ArcGIS Server and the client side mapping application uses the Esri JavaScript API inside a Microsoft ASP .NET MVC application. Smart Maps is world leading with respect to the type of online tools Fertiliser companies are providing to their clients.
In addition, GBS developed some advanced topological editing tools to manage the capture and editing of farm boundaries – usually functionality that is only available in the GIS desktop environment. The system has been live (via a “soft” launch) for a couple of months and feedback has been very positive with more than 1,000 farmers beginning the process of mapping their farms using MyRavensdown.
The Smart Maps project team consisted of Ravensdown, GBS, Intergen (www.intergen.co.nz) and Rezare (www.rezare.co.nz). GBS is very proud to have been a part of this project and we are now looking forward to the on-going development of Smart Maps as the current release represents just the beginning of what is possible.