Manitoba Land Related Information System: the Information Utility

This paper discusses a data warehouse facility known as the “Information Utility” (“IU”) which was constructed to meet the land related information needs of government agencies, utility companies and the public in Manitoba. The IU forms the hub of the Manitoba Land Related Information System (“MLRIS”); a multi-participant system with a mandate to provide access to common spatial information. The concept of the IU was formed in the late 1980s with the understanding that many agencies all required access to the large and complex datasets that describe the land and infrastructure base. In exploring the architecture of the IU this paper describes the main system components including the repository, the data catalogue, the data exchange manager, query and browse applications, and the system administration modules