c-plan® - Geo-Information Systems

City of Nuremberg
Office for Geoinformation and Land Organization

Nuremberg, the Franconian city (c. pop. 500,000) located on the River Pegnitz, is known for its many buildings and institutions, cultural events, international trade fairs (toys) and conferences which, year in year out, attract millions of visitors from all over the world. The City's Office for Geoinformation has a comprehensive geographic information system (GIS) which is used as tool by the municipal authorities themselves, but whose data are also made available to private users for a fee.

c-plan GmbH was tasked with migrating the basic geodata from an existing proprietary system to TOPOBASE™, an open GIS boasting a future-proof data format. After system roll-out, the Office's employees were trained in the new system and are now able to update the basic data on their own.

The GIS, which has been built up in years of work and at considerable expense, is used today by the municipal authorities in a variety of ways. Via a City-wide intranet, all City employees have access to the GIS, enabling them to query or download geodata. Staff members log on to the geodata server using their personal access IDs. These IDs also contain information about user rights in the system with a view to controlling which data can be accessed and downloaded.

With the launch of c-plan's TOPOBASE™ geodata server, the Office for Geoinformation has opted for a future-capable GIS which stores and manages basic geodata: some 80 % of all officially used data are geo-related. TOPOBASE™ has been developed in accordance with the OpenGIS standard and contains application modules for sewage, water, electricity, gas, district heating, surveying and real estate management.

Since early 2003, Nuremberg has been implementing a further forward-looking Internet project along with Curiavant Internet GmbH within the scope of the Media@Komm competition. The Office's new geodata portal can be accessed to query guideline values for land and the geodata of the City of Nuremberg using a personal chip card and digital signature. For those in charge at the Office, this project is an important step toward “openness and transparency” in dealings with other administrative offices, public utilities, service providers and, not least, with citizens