Hosting Legacy Airport Layout Plans and Airport Imageries in Cloud

Airports GIS is a web portal which hosts a few application modules. It allows authorized Airports GIS users to submit changes to airport data. One of these modules in Airports GIS is electronic Airport Layout Plan (eALP). This application helps airports create their digital Airport Layout Plans. The layout view capability in this module is provided by ESRI´s ArcGIS server. The initial phase of testing a few eALPs across the nation as a pilot program initiative is over and valuable lessons are learned from this activity. We expect this application will go to production sometimes next year. It will take several years before most or all airports in USA have their digital Airport Layout Plans. During this transition period we are storing legacy Airport Layout Plans in Cloud. These Layout Plans are basically in pdf form. Plans to catalogue these Layout Plans and provide access to users are being implemented. Airports GIS also hosts another Survey module. As part of this module requirement, we collect airport imagery for almost every submitted airport project to Airports GIS. We have already archived some of these ortho images in Cloud. This gives the ability to users to take advantage of ESRI´s ArcGIS viewer to analyze and manage these imageries. These ortho images are large in size. In future, we will receive a lot more ortho images because the number of airports who submit this data is growing and the size of each ortho image is also growing. Hence, it needs special care to organize and access these imageries. Once completed, this will have significant impact on airport planning and budgeting.