Automating Complex Business Rules To Help Biologists Expand a Statewide Land Management Program
The Texas Parks & Wildlife Managed Lands Deer Program (MLDP) is intended to foster and support sound management and stewardship of native wildlife and wildlife habitats on private lands in Texas. Deer harvesting is an important practice in habitat management and conservation. Landowners enrolled in the deer harvest program are able to take advantage of extended season lengths and liberalized harvest opportunities. The Land Management Assistance (LMA) application is the method by which landowners can participate in the program. The system is designed for the purpose of providing landowners a “self-serve” automated deer tag issuance option, including an option to work with a Texas Parks & Wildlife Department (TPWD) biologist to receive customized habitat and deer harvest recommendations. The system also allows biologists to track and promote land management practices on landowner property to monitor and improve wildlife habitats.
The collaborative design process to create the site identified the roles, functions, and workflows needed to support a variety of user perspectives and circumstances. The public facing side of the system allows non-technical users — the private landowners, to enter their property information, delineate property boundaries on a map, view their property recommendations, and submit harvest reports as part of the requirements of the program. It allows state biologists to share, approve, monitor and report on deer management and habitat management activities of the Managed Lands Deer Program (MLDP). In short, it supports multiple users and roles, traversing multiple steps in a complex workflow, with the exchange of information and approvals at each stage, resulting in approved transactions and plans with reporting and documentation for both the landowners and the biologists.
This project demonstrates AppGeo’s ability to build large state-level systems with complex administrative functions, and incorporate dozens of work processes and business rules. This system handles more than 10,000 LMA projects per year covering tens of thousands of acres and the issuance and tracking of more than 300,000 deer tags.
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Harvest, Habitat, and Conservation: Automating Habitat, Game, and Inventory Programs:
AppGeo designed the system in depth and in close collaboration with TPWD staff, and now provides ongoing maintenance and enhancements. With this system, TPWD’s core staff of biologists are able to manage a statewide program. A hallmark of the system is that it serves non-technical, non-GIS staff and the general public in a manner that allows the free flow and exchange of important information through specific workflows.
