Defence addresses housing issues

Since 1988 the Defence Housing Authority (DHA) has been providing and maintaining houses for members of the Australian Defence Force. But over the past few years the Authority has broadened the scope of its activities to provide Defence personnel with a much greater range of services.

Under a Services Agreement with the Department of Defence DHA took over responsibility in July last year for a range of services including allocating housing for married and single members, administering rent allowance and arranging house-hunting trips.

The next step in the process began on July 1 this year when DHA took on the additional responsibility of all relocations and itinerary management functions, making the Authority a one-stop shop for all Defence housing and relocations services.

One of the extra services DHA is developing to make the moving process smoother is a web-based property management and selection system that will enable Defence members being posted to select a home from the comfort of their lounge rooms.

In late July 2000, DHA sought quotations for the supply of the system, to be known as HomeFind. Intergraph Australia was subsequently awarded the contract and delivered the system on time in January 2001.

Intergraph proposed a system based on proven, commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) web, spatial and database software, development of a tailored web application and hosting of the capability at an established, secure facility. Hosting of HomeFind was subsequently located internally at DHA's Head Office in Canberra.

DHA's Managing Director Keith Lyon said HomeFind would allow Defence Force members and their families to view details of available DHA properties in their new posting locality using a web interface.

"HomeFind is a unique and tremendous initiative that will make the process of finding a suitable home a whole lot easier," he said.

"It will deliver the ability for Defence members to view details of suitable houses, select and view up to 10 photographs of prospective houses, view floor plans with dimensions and access relevant data on properties including fixture and feature lists and textual descriptions," Mr Lyon said.

"Maps of the new locality are provided which indicate house locations relative to military bases, schools, gyms, shopping centres, hospitals and other services that may factor into the member's decision when selecting a house.

"As well, a separate public access website will allow members of the public to browse houses for sale."

A Defence Force member who is being transferred can log-in to the password-protected system to look at what DHA accommodation is available in the posting location within a predetermined distance of their workplace.

The system will know the member's rank and family composition and select only houses that match their requirements and entitlements.

Members will receive an initial page with a brief description and a thumbnail photograph of available houses. They can then select any house to get full details and a road map of the area. Distances from houses to the military base can be measured if required.

Rob McHenry from Intergraph, said the basis of the proposed web server system was Microsoft Windows 2000 and Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) running Active Server Pages (ASP).

"The web map querying and map display component is provided by Intergraph's GeoMedia Web Map technology," Mr McHenry said.

"The database component is Oracle 8i with the Spatial option. GeoMedia Web Map serves information via IIS and ASP directly out of the Oracle Database. GeoMedia, the desktop product for GIS data entry and management on top of the Oracle database, supports GeoMedia Web Map.

"Security has been well catered for with IIS providing external network security via Secure Socket Layer (SSL) and secure encryption of all transmissions is performed.

"Access to the DHA users' and Defence Force members' web screens will be controlled by an initial log-in screen that uses database authentication of screen users. Only members given specific access will be able to pass the log-in screen.

"A separate virtual web is configured for the public access web. Enquiry-only access will be available from these screens."

Maps will be displayed to HomeFind users using the StreetWorks dataset. This data will provide users with up-to-date street-level reference information based on the spatially accurate and nationally comprehensive Public Sector Mapping Agencies (PSMA) road centreline database.

"StreetWorks delivers fast, compact and effective vector street reference maps and comes complete with 14 layers of information," Mr McHenry said.

"Not all of these layers have been utilised for HomeFind to reduce map generation time over the web."

Intergraph has also been contracted to generate digital house plans suitable for web transmission. These plans are an integral part of HomeFind and show the general layout of available DHA housing as well as house dimensions where available.