Abstract:
The purpose of this thesis is to highlight the importance of introducing digital mapping and providing Geographic Information System eGIS) for municipalities, in this case the municipality of Kab-Elias. One of the major components in completing any GIS work is the availability and readiness of data. In fact, and according to GIS experts [12] the data conversion process constitutes at least 85% of the resources allocated to have any GIS project functional. Based on this and since most of the municipalities in Lebanon, if not all, lack the GIS awareness and hence the readily available data in GIS format. Our initiative in this concern came to emphasize the importance of building a digital data model at the municipality level. This is of great importance since this would be the building block for any future applications related to municipal responsibilities to be developed. Some of these applications might be related to:
• Taxation
• Adhoc "viewing, querying, printing, searching"
• Granting license permits
• Public
• Facilities management
• Web applications
• Traffic and street management
• Utilities maintenance system
• Infrastructure maintenance system
• Asset management system
• Planning
As such the GIS system will prove to be successfully incorporated in municipalities. The potential uses of GIS are as varied as the problems the GIS can help solve. As a matter of fact GIS offers one of the best decision support tools available to provide informed decisions to manage the problems of today's municipality requirements. GISMO will put infrastructure or municipal objects on a digital format and link those objects of the municipality’s database(s) providing one digital file. Then, it will allow that municipality to query and manage its data as needed.
