Needs Assessment

Geog 469

GIS Workshop

Outline

• What is the rationale behind needs assessment?

• What are the benefits of GIS projects?

• What is a hierarchical view of needs assessment?

• How do we create an information product description?

What is the rationale behind needs assessment?

• What is needs assessment? – Process of identifying what is expected from the project– Can be thought of as a blueprint (i.e. planning)

• Why needs assessment?– Cost of not planning?– Expectation management– Helps you identify potential problems

• Why do we have to know about organization needs?– Is need-to-know question in alignment with goals of

organization?

Why expectation management is critical… imagine “swing” development…

Importance of communication!This image is retrieved from Tom Nolan’s lecture note

What are benefits of GIS projects?

• Save money currently or avoid future costs• Save time, thus increase efficiency• Increase accuracy• Increase productivity, same time more product• Increase communication and collaboration• Generate revenue• Support decision making• Automate workflow• Build an information base• Manage resources• Improve access to government…

From “measuring up the business case for GIS”

Scope of GIS projects

• Will determine– The level of benefits

• Large-scope GIS projects is more likely to reduce cost since it will make the use of shared database (e.g. centralized database) and benefit from automation

– The roles of GIS in an organization• Large-scope GIS is more likely to change the way the

organization does business

– Strategies for needs assessment• The larger the scope of GIS projects, the more it is

necessary to find out the organization and business work flow

Given the scope of your project, how would you assess these three items?

Understanding business workflow

– Models of complex business processes– Thought of as the way an organization does business

…for example, land-use development approvals, building loan approvals, permitting, conservation land planning, service delivery, and distributed facilities management

– Information products come out of that workflow– GIS functionalities can be utilized within the context of

business workflow, and also have a potential to change/redesign business workflow

How do the need-to-know questions of your project fit into the larger business workflow?

Application, Information product, data, business workflow, and GIS

Image source: Tomlinson (2011, p. 33)

To find out business workflow, ask “what do you do?”

To find out information product, ask “what do you need for a business function?”

What is a hierarchical view of needs assessment?

GoalFunction

Facility

EntityEntity

AttributeAttribute

Adapted from Huxhold 1991, Introduction to Urban GIS

How many of each element?

Hierarchical view of needs assessment

• Goal: one of the major strategic directions for the organization…e.g. Maintain the urban infrastructuree.g. Reduce crimee.g. Create jobs for the citizens

• Function: a major activity within the organization which supports a goal of the organization…e.g. Repair city streetse.g. Enforce the building codese.g. Assess the value of property

For geog469 GIS projects, think of “need-to-know” question in context of function

Hierarchical view of needs assessment

• Facility: the physical, legal, or other asset upon which a function of the organization is performed (i.e. database: a collection of related entities)…e.g. Street, Building, Parcel

• Entity: Components of the facilities that are managed by the various responsibilities of the organization (i.e. feature class in ESRI terminology)…e.g. pavement, curbs, cutters

• Attributes: descriptive data that define the characteristics of the entity…e.g. location, condition, size, date, type

Information products respond to “need-to-know” questions

How do we identify information products?• What are outcomes needed from a GIS?• What are answers to need-to-know questions?• Core of information product is an information

structure; how are chunks of information arranged?– List of something, e.g., text list requirement; perhaps a

ranked list– Narrative of something, e.g., text requirement– Maps of feature classes, e.g., map requirement– Diagram that shows the potential database design, e.g.

schematic design requirement

For each information product

InformationproductInput data Processing needs

Data processing method

Step 1: ___________________

Step 2: ___________________

Step 3: ___________________

Step 4: ___________________

Step 5: ___________________

What GIS functionalities (operations) are needed for each step?

Composing an information product description (IPD)• IPD building blocks (Tomlinson 2011, p.38) • Identify title that best describes information product• Name the department and person who needs

information product• Write synopsis of information product needed• Identify information structure (core of IPD) which could

be one or more of the following:– Map, tabular, text, image, 3D, schematic requirements

• Other elements as follows…

IPD building blocks - continued

• Which data set is needed for meeting requirements of information structure?– If you can, identify standard name for each data set– Is the data set available?– If data are not readily available, where are data? How

can we obtain the data?

• Which GIS functionalities (i.e., operations) are invoked at each step to make the product? – Attribute query, data input, spatial query, display, edit,

label, symbolize, create list

IPD building blocks - continued Frequency of use

• Identify the most frequently used GIS functionalities– If IPD leads you to the conclusion that satellite image processing

is the most frequently used functionality and the organization does not have image processing (e.g. ERDAS IMAGINE) software, you should consider obtaining the software.

• Number of times a product is created in one year multiplied by number of times a functionality is used = number of times a functionality is used to create the product in one year

• Create top-ten functionalities list required from the GIS overall; the list will be useful in scoping your system requirements particularly s/w and h/w requirements

IPD building blocks - continued Logical linkages

• Determine the relationships required between the data elements (does an information product require the linkage between data elements?)

• Three types of logical linkages– Relationships between attributes and spatial objects (e.g. land

parcel boundary and assessed value) for attribute/spatial query– Relationships between features (e.g. house and sewer);

referential keys should be established– Relationships between maps (e.g. hazard zone and population)

for spatial overlay where coordinate systems of two maps should be considered

• Helpful in scoping the system requirement particularly data requirements

IPD building blocks - continued Error tolerance

• How much error would clients tolerate? • No error is good, but costly

– The second best is sometimes optimal as suggested by economists

• Data quality as fitness-for-use– Meeting the expectation given by a particular application, not

necessarily meeting the generic use

• Helpful in seeking the balance between benefit and cost; you should find “bargaining position”

• Consider possible occurrence, results of error, impact on benefits, and concerns for error tolerance (see Tomlinson (2011) p. 48 figure 6.13 for examples)

Needs assessment in brief…

• Background context of project

• Goal of the project

• Answers to need to know questions

• Identify information products

• Products have information structure

• Information structure is composed of information categories (feature classes) and relationships among information categories