NABIS Rebuilt... NABIS 2009

Author: Juliane Sellars
Date: 16 November 2009

Tags: data, NABIS, fisheries, web-mapping, Ministry of Fisheries

On the 9^th of October, after 2 years of hard work from a small but very dedicated team, the Ministry of Fisheries launched a new NABIS website.

The site has always been about increasing the accessibility of fisheries spatial data and as a consequence increasing the ability of interested parties to visualise and participate in decision making processes. The Ministry's staff also find the old adage "a picture paints a thousand words" rings true on a number of occasions.

If you know the old site (NABIS 2004) the new site (NABIS 2009) shouldn't look much different. The brief was to replace the java site with a .net site, while rebuilding the infrastructure to allow other Ministry applications easy access to the data. There are currently two other Ministry applications using the wealth of spatial data held within the spatial data warehouse. The database also uses Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards and we hope to have WMS and/or WFS available to the wider public in the future. We have also updated our administration tool and added a content management system which allows for a very speedy turn around of data and content from the desktop to live publication on the web. Hopefully you will notice it is quicker, we have a new search function and an improved print function.

Because of the size of the project we haven't completely replaced NABIS 2004 but will do so according to the needs of our users. If you have any feedback regarding the tools and data then please let us know. NABIS 2004 will be kept running (in parallel with NABIS 2009) for the next 6 to 12 months; just in case users need any of the tools that haven't yet been implemented on NABIS 2009.

We have all learnt a great deal from the project and would be happy to share our experience with others heading down the same path. If you would like more information please contact the NABIS team at nabis@fish.govt.nz

Juliane Sellars
Ministry of Fisheries

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