By Kevin Royal

What does it take to put together a full Man-agement Information System for a prop-erty management business on a budget?

No matter what type or size of business you have(independent crop consultant, farm management com-pany, or a larger farm with multiple landlords), aGeographic Management Information System (GMIS)can allow you to pull together all of the differentpieces of data you generate and publish them as map-based information for all individuals with an interestin that property. And putting together such a systemdoesn’t need to be very expensive at all.

One of the file management options inTNTmips®, the image processing and geospatialanalysis software from MicroImages, Inc. of Lincoln,Nebraska, can be used to bring together all of thesepieces of data into a GMIS where the separate piecesof data can become information. This map-basedfiling cabinet is a way to publish and distribute yourhard won information to anyone who is involved withany property in your trade area, including yourself.

It is easy to see that no one software packagedoes it all. You generate useful data from accountingpackages, spreadsheets, databases, Geographical In-formation Systems (GIS), and calendar schedules.Don’t forget Internet web sites, digital cameras, andall of those megabytes of digital data from yield mapsand variable rate application equipment.

How often is useful data stored on hand writtenpieces of paper? Legal documents like leasing agree-ments and property titles with signatures, load sheetsfrom custom applicators, and hand written notes fromlandlords and tenants are important. Even old dia-ries from past owners and operators (grandma’s in-teresting histories in her own handwriting about thefarm) are good to have around when tied to the rightfield map.

Pulling together all of those different pieces ofinformation generated from managing a property andattaching it to a map-based filing cabinet is really themost sensible way to go. Most people are spatialtypes, with a “geographic memory.” Starting with anoverview of your trade area and drilling down througha point and click, consistent, map-like interface hasreal advantages over training your clients, partners,and coworkers to use all of the different softwareused to generate that data.

You also need to be sure that any digital datayou distribute can actually be viewed on your targetaudience’s computers without spending a lot of moneyand training on extra viewing software. This soft-ware must have minimal cost, friendly distributionpolicies, easy to use and well-known interfaces and,all this must be available from within that geographicfiling cabinet.

When all of these different types of data arecompared, the GIS data is going to be the largest (inmegabytes) set of data to manage. It also has uniqueproperties that you will want to preserve. Things likespatial location, accurate acreage measurements, soiland yield data, and improvements to properties (tiles,terraces) are important to maintain. It makes senseto make the GIS component the determining factor inthe overall form of the GMIS. TNTmips has the toolsto build up all of the GIS layers you would ever need.Image processing, yield maps, soil maps, GPS posi-tions over moving maps, and even 3D digital movieflybys can all be created using the tools in thisgeospatial software package.

You do not need to train everyone that needsyour GMIS to use all of the tools built into TNTmips.TNTmips can create geospatial data that can be pub-lished in a TNTatlas®. TNTatlas becomes the cen-terpiece or glue that holds together your GMIS. Thesimplified database, image analysis, and measure-ment tools included in TNTatlas allow beginners to

Building a Map-BasedManagement InformationSystem on a Budget

MicroImages, Inc. (402)477-9554 • FAX (402)477-9559 • 206 S. 13th Street, Lincoln, Nebraska 68508-2010 USA • info@microimages.com

MicroImages, Inc. (402)477-9554 • FAX (402)477-9559 • 206 S. 13th Street, Lincoln, Nebraska 68508-2010 USA • info@microimages.com

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do quite a few advanced spatial tasks. They can alsomanipulate and navigate huge geospatial data sets veryquickly.

The HyperIndex navigation tools in TNTatlasallow you to point and click to drill down from anoverview of your trade area to the smallest field youwant to visit. They also allow you to “link” to exter-nal files by clicking on your property locations. Sincethe largest component of your GMIS is taken care ofwithin TNTatlas, organizing the other data typeswithin your system is now a matter of linking to theseother files. Total cost for viewing and distributingyour geospatial data to others is $0.

The next type of data you would want to orga-nize and attach to your maps are actual photographsof anything associated with each field. Fences, drain-age systems, grass conditions, livestock, terraces, andother improvements can easily be associated withthe right place on the map. Film-based photographywas slow and difficult to organize, but cheap digitalcameras can instantly grab a snapshot in time.Microsoft Explorer can easily display these imageson your PC.

Spreadsheets and databases are another impor-tant source of data. You are probably generating sev-eral reports and estimates, making “What If…” pro-jections, and tracking other information in account-ing programs like Quicken or Quickbooks, and data-base programs like Microsoft ACCESS. You mayalso be generating planting, irrigation schedules, andgrazing rotation calendars with a program likeMicrosoft Outlook. What you really want to attachto the properties in your GMIS are the reports andschedules generated from this analysis. MicrosoftOffice 2000 has a very useful ability to make any ofthese reports into HTML documents that can beviewed in standard (and free to download) Internetbrowser programs like Explorer and Netscape. Youcan work with your crop management, grazing, andfinancial models from spreadsheets and then save yourfinal analysis reports into an HTML file. Link thatHTML file to the section of the map that the analysisbelongs with to help improve your geographicmemory. Total cost for the viewer to display anddistribute your digital photographs and reports storedin HTML format is $0.

Now for those hand written bits of wisdom thatneed to go with a property. As we covered in thefirst section, legal documents like leases and deeds,

Geographic information meets web data when you link to Internet sites from within yourfarm maps. Any updates to this page will automatically be available from your map link.As long as you are connected to an ISP from anywhere in the world, the latestinformation can open from your local map-based file cabinet.

fertilizer and chemical loadsheets, as well as other notes canbe useful when they are madeeasily available in your GMIS.The first step is to get these itemsscanned and into a useful digitalformat. Scanners can be pur-chased for under $100. You don’tneed photographic quality, justsomething good enough to readand maybe print out from yourPC when necessary.

Once you get these docu-ments scanned, make them intoAdobe Acrobat Reader files.Converting any of your scanneddocuments into this format makesthem very portable and compact.They are also ready to view inthe free Adobe Acrobat Readersoftware that you can supply.

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Your customers can also download it from the Adobeweb site.

You can also make any other digital document,such as a word processing file, into an Acrobat file.Some of the new tools in the latest version of AdobeAcrobat 4.0 can also allow you to capture entire sec-tions of Internet web sites into a compact Acrobatfile for inclusion in your GMIS. For example, mostseed companies post seed traits for all of their vari-eties as web pages. If you want to link this seed traitinformation to the fields they were planted in, useAdobe Acrobat to capture the right section of the website to your local hard drive for inclusion. Chemicallabels, agronomic recommendations, really an entirewealth of information are available for download andpersonal reference in the GMIS you create.

Two other important features of Adobe Acro-bat 4.0 are worth using in your GMIS. The first is itsability to password protect files when you create them.For example, you may want to create a GMIS CD fordistribution to several clients or landlords. Youwouldn’t want all of them to be able to read eachother’s profitability studies or lease agreement de-tails, would you? Simply password protect thosesensitive Acrobat files when you create them.

The other important feature is the ability to en-ter keywords, creation dates, and other important de-tails within any Adobe Acrobat file, even scanneddocuments. These included keywords become a

searchable tag with the associated Ac-robat file. With these tags in place,even your scanned documents willshow up on any searches you do onthe GMIS data with personal searchengines, such as AltaVista™ Discov-ery. Total cost for viewing and dis-tributing scanned and other digital

Any hand written documentation can beadded to your GMIS. Adobe Acrobatdistilled this 40Mb scanned file to a 1.4 MbAcrobat Reader file. With passwordprotection from Adobe Acrobat, this file canbe distributed on your GMIS CD with a veryhigh level of security, no matter who isviewing the geospatial data within TNTatlas.

documents with password security built in is $0.As a consultant or property manager that needs

to send updated reports to a client throughout the grow-ing season, you may want to build up an Internet-based reporting system. You may be a small opera-tion whose business is on a tight information budgetand is not yet ready for a full and dedicated Internetweb site. How can you build an Internet presencewithout a lot of expense? How can this be done whilestill allowing your customers access to these updatesfrom the interactive geographic filing cabinet of yourGMIS?

Sure, you can build a large web site serving upGIS and other background data, but the largest com-ponent is still the GIS data, and your clients are prob-ably limited to dial up Internet connections at a slowerrate. Why not deliver that GIS data on a CD to yourclients and make Internet connections to only thosechanging documents and reports on your company’slow cost personal home page supplied by your InternetService Provider (ISP)? Most ISPs will allow youto store around 20 megabytes of data as personal homepages for a small business as a part of a normal dialup account for somewhere under $20 per month, andadditional space is available for a slightly highermonthly fee.

It is easy to add these time sensitive reportswith a little pre-planning when designing the CD-based GMIS for distribution. Link from a desktop

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This article has been accepted for publication:Royal, Kevin (1999). Building a Map-Based Management Information System on a Budget.Modern Agriculture.

About the author:Kevin Royal is responsible for technical sales and product support for several dealers ofTNT products worldwide. He is also the Technical Support Team Leader at MicroImagesand farms near Palmyra, Nebraska.He may be reached at 402-477-9554 (phone) or kroyal@microimages.com (email).

map supplied on the CD at the beginning of the sea-son to updating HTML pages on a your company’sweb pages by saving shortcuts to these “to be added”documents on that initial CD. After a specified cal-endar date or when you email your client about newinformation, additional reports, schedules, or analy-sis are appended to the client’s local map throughthat link to your company’s new web pages.

When your client (even while traveling) insertshis CD and clicks on the map on his GMIS to accessthe new report, his favorite web browser launches,the modem dials up his local ISP, and the latest re-port is displayed from your web site on his PC.

At the end of the season, simply use the website capture tools in Adobe Acrobat to capture eachclient’s section of your own web pages to an Acro-bat file and add them to next year’s CD before you

mail it to your client or landowner. Delete those oldfiles from your web site to make room for next year’stimely reports and calendar.

So once your GMIS is put into place, the totalcost of your CD based information distribution sys-tem can be zero, using the free TNTatlas as the keyorganizational tool. Your pre-installed Internetbrowser and the free-to-download Adobe AcrobatReader 4.0 become “helper” applications forTNTatlas, easily managing all of the pieces of infor-mation that are tied to your spatial data throughTNTatlas, with password protection for sensitivedocuments when necessary.

With some small changes to the Internet accountand web space from the ISP your business probablyalready has, you can establish an Internet presencefor timely delivery of any reports. These reports areintegrated into the GMIS through the Internet as eas-ily as any other document on your and your client’scomputer desktop. Your business can deliver an ad-

vanced geospatial management in-formation system that can competewith any large organization. It is re-ally just an extension of the tools youmay already be using.

Adobe Acrobat can capture entire sectionsof web sites for inclusion on your GMISCD. It can be invaluable to have the latestinformation stored with the right map andjust a mouse click away. You can use thisweb site capture ability to clear your website of last season’s reports, capturingthem to Acrobat Reader files for distributionwith the next CD.