4. CASE STUDIES OF CARTA ITS DEPLOYMENTS
This section exemplifies CARTA's systems engineering approach by providing details about the data warehouse deployment.
| Deploying a data warehouse as the first ITS application can simplify future ITS deployments. |
4.1 DATA WAREHOUSING
The CARTA data warehouse was not on the initial list of systems identified on CARTA's 2003 application for ITS deployment support. Despite this, CARTA elected to deploy the data warehouse as its first ITS deployment. There were several reasons for this choice:
- The data warehouse would be integrated with most of the ITS deployments. Deploying the data warehouse first helped ensure that this system would be operating stably before additional integrations were attempted.
- The data warehouse provided a central source for sharing data between CARTA ITS applications. Integrating the ITS applications through the data warehouse reduced the total number of interfaces that were required. It also insulated each ITS application from being impacted by changes in other ITS applications.
- The data warehouse reduced the number of analysis and reporting tools that were required in each ITS application. Analyses could be conducted and reports could be generated through the Data Warehouse. This also reduced the number of reporting tools that CARTA staff members were required to learn. Rather than learn a different reporting tool for each ITS application, CARTA could use the single data warehouse reporting tool to generated custom reports.
- The data warehouse could provide immediate benefits in terms of simplifying existing CARTA reporting processes. A number of reports that CARTA had been producing manually were produced automatically by the data warehouse.
Figure 8. Screenshot Showing TVM Reports Produced by the Data Warehouse
For planning purposes, the deployment of the data warehouse was described in the project-specific deployment plan for ITS infrastructure projects.
The initial deployment of the data warehouse was completed in 2004 including, involving the implementation of a database application to house the data warehouse, a data integration tool to facilitate extracting data from and providing data to other CARTA applications and generating reports, and a server to host the database and data integration application. This combination of hardware and software became a functioning data warehouse as CARTA data was integrated into it, with the order of integration driven primarily by two factors:
- The availability of a reliable data source that could be easily integrated with the data warehouse. The data supporting many of CARTA's existing processes could not be easily integrated with the data warehouse - Incline Railway tickets sales were tracked via paper logs, and the timekeeping and payroll system relied on a proprietary database from which data could not be easily extracted.
- The opportunity to simplify onerous reporting processes. A number of standard reports used by CARTA management were generated through manual or partially manual processes. The data warehouse allowed CARTA to design reports that exactly met its needs and that could be produced and distributed (via email) automatically.
The following list describes the data that was integrated into the data warehouse and the primary benefits associated with each data integration.
- The timekeeping and payroll software. CARTA upgraded the timekeeping and payroll software soon after installing the data warehouse application, making it a natural candidate for integration with the data warehouse.
- The fuel and fluid usage and mileage data. In 2005, CARTA deployed an electronic method for recording fuel usage, integrating the data collected into the data warehouse. The presence of the data warehouse allowed CARTA to use the data warehouse reporting tools for fuel usage reports, which simplified deployment of this system. The use of the data warehouse for reporting also allowed CARTA to take advantage of sophisticated reporting capabilities (e.g., automatically producing monthly reports) built into the data warehouse at no additional cost.
- The maintenance management software. Data from the maintenance management system was an important addition to CARTA's data warehouse because of the importance of the maintenance process in CARTA's overall costs. There were a number of reports involving maintenance management data that CARTA was producing manually, either because the maintenance management system did not produce an appropriate report or the report required data not included in the maintenance management system.
- The Ticket Vending Machine system. This system was deployed in 2005 with data warehouse integration being part of the requirements. As with the system for recording fuel and fluid usage data, using the data warehouse as the reporting tool for the TVM system eliminated the requirement for a sophisticated TVM reporting tool.
- Fixed route and paratransit operation systems. By the time these systems were deployed, it was standard practice at CARTA to include requirements to integrate new systems with the Data Warehouse during the deployment.
- Fareboxes and the revenue management system. In 2008, CARTA deployed new fareboxes and a new revenue management system that managed farebox data. This data was also integrated into the CARTA data warehouse.
In summary, CARTA's basic approach for integrating data into the data warehouse was to do so as part of the deployment of new applications. In general, the cost of this integration was at least partially offset by the lower costs from using the data warehouse as the reporting tool for these new applications.
More details on the CARTA data warehouse are contained in the document, Chattanooga SmartBus Project Final Phase II Evaluation Report (June 10, 2008).