Proposal

Narrative

In 2014, in order to respond to the growing demand for GIS professionals, the School of Urban and Regional Planning jointly with the Department of Geosciences developed a 15-credit graduate GIS certificate program. As part of the GIS curriculum, the School of Urban and Regional Planning offered new courses to expand its programs toward comprehensive training in ArcGIS for Desktop and Web GIS. Students enrolled in the program acquire advanced skills in spatial data analysis and use of state-of-the-art tools and techniques available in the field of GIS today, including ArcGIS for Server and ArcGIS Portal, Operations Dashboard, GeoEvent and Collector App for ArcGIS, Business Analyst, ArcGIS Pro, GeoPlanner and CityEngine. The students have the opportunity to explore several GIS applications in environmental and land use planning, hazards, housing, and urban design. In order to carry out these activities, the School of Urban and Regional Planning relies on a 12-year old ArcGIS Server which needs to be replaced. The Operating System of the server can no longer be updated which prevents the installation of the newest version of ArcGIS – ArcGIS 10.5. Currently, the server supports ArcGIS 10.4.1 and GeoEvent extension for 10.4.1. Continued use of this old server will prevent us from any future updates of the software. Therefore, we seek support from the technology fee student contributions to upgrade the ArcGIS server. The upgrade will allow us to update the software and improve the student learning experiences. All of the approximately 200 students enrolled in the School or Urban and Regional Planning will benefit from the new server as part of GIS-based courses. In addition, the approximately 50 students from the Geosciences, Public Administration, Environmental Science, Architecture, and Civil and Environmental Engineering programs which enroll in these courses will also benefit. In total, approximately 250 students will benefit benefit from the deployment of this new server.

Facilities

No renovations are required. An existing server rack and networking will be used to house the server.

Hardware Requirements

Dell PowerEdge R430 Server Cost: $5,103.28

Software Requirements

A copy of Windows 2016 Server Standard is required. Cost: $160 (though FAU’s Internal Application Store)

Personnel Costs

No personnel costs. All personal cost for setup will be handled by existing staff in the School of Urban and Regional Planning.

Other Costs

No additional costs are associated with this project.

Timeline

If funds are awarded the server can be purchased and configured during the Summer 2018 Semester with a Fall 2018 Deployment.

Sustainability

All required updates and maintenance will be performed on the server. Updates for ArcGIS for Server will be applied as instructed by software maker Esri.

Resource Matching

The cost of the Esri Software and licensing for the server is handled through a inter-college licensing agreement. The total cost is $20,000 of which the School of Urban and Regional Planning covers $6,700.

Implementing Organization

The School of Urban and Regional Planning will implement the project. Minimal assistance will be required from OIT’s systems and security teams to get the server on the network.