The world at your fingertips
As local governments have grown to appreciate the value of location-based data in supporting decisions about land use, zoning and even public safety, many have begun to make the information available to as many people as possible. A number of them are doing that by putting the information online.
For years, cities and counties have provided their data and maps to anyone determined enough to visit the appropriate office and ask. However, by putting that same information on the Internet or intranets, local governments are saving residents trips to government offices and saving time for staff members. (Cities and counties that only have GIS on intranets still require residents to visit government offices, but all departments can use the information to answer residents’ questions. That eliminates the hassle of sending residents to multiple departments.)
Even small communities are hip to the trend. Hosting an online GIS in-house may be financially out of reach for some, but many companies offer affordable hosting services that help solve that problem. The following cities and counties illustrate several ways local governments can use intranets and the Internet to provide access to geographic information.
Weatherford, Texas population 19,000
Weatherford, Texas, is a small, agricultural community in a growing area just west of Fort Worth. Maintenance of the expanding, city-owned water, wastewater and electric utilities requires frequent production and distribution of GIS-based maps and associated data. According to Troy Garvin, manager of the city’s technical services division (TSD), Weatherford’s map distribution process was painfully slow and costly. “Everyone had to come to us for GIS maps and related information, and we had to stop data input to respond to the requests,” he says.
In 1998, the TSD decided to find an affordable alternative that would reduce the demand for paper maps in all city offices. Ideally, the system would allow utility crews and other city employees to print maps from their own desktops.
The city worked with Dallas-based Applied Technological Services to customize a Web-based system with an intuitive user interface. The system allowed non-technical personnel to access maps on the city’s intranet directly from their desktops.
In the first phase of the project, TSD staff and consultants integrated GeoMedia WebMap software from Huntsville, Ala.-based Intergraph with the department’s existing GIS. The new system allowed utility maintenance crews and other Utility Department employees to make queries from their personal computers, pull up maps, print them and take them into the field.
During the project’s second phase, the team members updated the system with the latest versions of the Web-based software and added several enhancements, including the ability to overlay maps on color aerial photography. They also made the system front end even more intuitive by incorporating an overview map of the city, which allowed users to select an area of the city and drill down to detailed layers. Although initially intended to accommodate only Utility Department field crews, the system has since been expanded to give nearly all city offices access to GIS and related infrastructure information, without the need for additional software or hardware.
Now, city employees can access utility maps two ways. With the overview map of the city, users can outline an area of interest, drill down to more detailed map layers, and check off the utilities — water, wastewater, electrical or a combination — they want to see when they zoom in. Once inside the map, they can select a specific data layer, expand that section and activate details as needed.
An alternate opening screen allows users to first select a utility and choose one or more built-in queries that view characteristics and inventory. Users might want to see 12-inch mains made of a certain material, such as waterlines made of PVC or all the brick manholes in a section of the city. In response, the system displays and highlights the subject with the graphical elements around it. Various layers, including the photography behind the graphics, can be turned on or off.
Direct intranet access to utility maps and related information has helped the department be more efficient and aware of map accuracy, says Sharon Hayes, assistant director of utilities. “Before we had Web-based capability, if the guys in the field saw something that wasn’t correct on a paper map, they usually forgot about it by the time they got back in the building,” she notes. “Now, when field crews find map discrepancies, such as valves shown in the wrong place or not on the map at all, they mark the differences on the hard-copy printouts and bring them back to the GIS people. Within a couple of days, those changes are in our utilities database.”
All departments can contribute updated information to the TSD. “The Planning and Development departments send us updates on address changes,” Garvin says. “If the address for a structure is not in our database, anyone who comes across that structure can give us the information and help us build up our GIS data. Instead of three people gathering information, every city employee with access to a PC can send us updated information.”
Data sent from various departments has helped the TSD add new layers to the city’s GIS, including information on zoning and appraisal, parks and recreation, and engineering. Expanding system capabilities to other offices also has resulted in improved customer support to the public. “Developers and others may want to know if city utilities are available for their property or for property they’re planning to purchase or develop,” Garvin says. “Now they can walk into most departments and have a map printed out for them, rather than have to wait for Technical Services to produce it. Almost every office in the city government has access to this information now. It’s an efficient and convenient solution for the city as well as for our citizens.”
The Utility Department intends to integrate the system even more tightly into its work-order management process. “This present phase of our efforts represents a return on the city’s investment in GIS and data distribution,” Garvin says. “The first phase of system development paid for itself in a couple of months. The time savings alone paid for the second phase. Now, as we upgrade and enhance the system, it is paying for itself. We’ve already cut walk-in demand for paper maps by 90 percent.”
Marietta, Ga. population 58,748
Last year, Marietta, Ga., an Atlanta suburb, decided to use the Internet to make municipal maps more easily available to the public. The city wanted to be able to display information such as voting precincts, parks and school districts.
In the past, residents looking for city maps had to go to City Hall. It was inconvenient for residents, and it required staff in the Planning Department to spend time copying and handing out maps. The city wanted to make the maps more accessible and to reduce labor costs. “We have data galore,” says Bruce Bishop, the city’s GIS manager. “We just needed a quick and easy way to make it into maps and get it posted so that people could benefit from it.”
Bishop’s initial approach was to buy Internet software and build an online mapping application in-house, but that proved too time-consuming. The GIS department handles mapping for the entire city, including the Public Works, Planning and Zoning, Utility, Tax and Emergency Services departments. “Our technical people are in high-demand, and they would have had to spend all their time building maps and managing databases,” Bishop says.
So, the city contracted with Boston-based Syncline to host its online GIS. “We wanted an easy way for our staffers, even ones without a lot of technical training, to publish maps to the Web,” Bishop says. “We came to the conclusion that the best way to achieve that was to have someone else manage the application and take responsibility for it being easy to use.”
The city’s GIS Department updates the GIS database using software from Redlands, Calif.-based ESRI and copies the updated layer sets to the Internet server. The online mapping service lets Marietta continually update data, instantly creating fresh maps. It also lets administrators combine different data sets to create a single map showing property lines and zoning, for example. Residents and other users can pan and zoom on maps, as well as query features of interest.
By the end of the summer Marietta had five maps — depicting locations of parks, zoning, political districts, the central business district and points of interest — online. Residents can click on areas of interest to get detailed information. For example, the map of the city’s parks has embedded information about which parks have tennis courts, pools and swing sets. By January, the city plans to have 10 maps, with information about school districts and school bus routes, utility boundaries, tax and parcel information and storm drainage, available online.
Bishop has found that using a hosted service saves his staff time. He estimates that it can take a staffer only 10 minutes to use the service to create an Internet-ready map. “That allows my staff to spend more time collecting, aggregating and improving GIS data,” he says.
Hamilton County, Ohio population 845,303
The Hamilton County, Ohio, Auditor’s Office online GIS was started four years ago when Auditor Dusty Rhodes grew anxious to make parcel information available to the public. The office sought the help of Portage, Mich.-based Manatron, which had been assisting with its appraisal, real estate and personal property information since 1991.
The company’s GovernMax division created and hosted a Web site for the office, which includes GIS mapping data that the office developed with the help of Dayton, Ohio-based Woolpert. The Auditor’s Office updates its online property records weekly by saving them to a CD, e-mailing them or sending them via file transfer protocol (FTP) to the Web server.
Since its launch, the Web site has received an average 4,700 user sessions each day. Residents use the site to check records and to see how their assessments are calculated, and businesses that depend on property information can access the records even when the Auditor’s Office is closed.
Tying the spatial aspects of GIS into the Web site allows residents to make the best use of property information — whether they are verifying an appraisal or setting an asking price for a real estate transaction. The Web site allows users to enter an address via an online form, click for information about valuations and taxes, and click again to see the maps and images. Residents also can use the site to calculate the precise effects of proposed tax levies.
Because people can access data at their convenience, foot traffic in the Auditor’s Office is down 30 to 40 percent, and phone calls are down by 40 to 50 percent. When people call on the auditor’s staff, most have already done their background research, so staff can focus on answering residents’ well-informed questions.
Rhodes decided to contract with a company to host the online property information and GIS because he thought it was more efficient and secure than hosting it in house. “An outside source provides services the county could probably not afford — back-up servers and power, constant monitoring to make sure the site is operating, and constant vigilance against hackers,” he says.
New York population 8,008,278
In the mid-1990s, the New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) set out to create an accurate physical base map of the city onto which it could layer paths of the many different water and sewer lines located throughout the city’s five boroughs. After approximately three years and 7,500 aerial photographs, the DEP completed the first base map of the entire city.
“Once we created an accurate physical base map, it became clear to us that the map should be used as the standard for all geographic endeavors throughout the city,” says Alan Leidner, director of citywide GIS at the New York City Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT). DoITT took over the project from DEP, naming it NYCMap (pronounced “nice map”).
During the last few years, New York has been developing NYCMap as a citywide repository of geographic information. The city contracts with Hunter College, part of the City University of New York, to integrate and check the quality of its GIS data. As a result of the city’s collaboration with the college, a complete digital map of New York is now stored and managed in a data warehouse from Redwood Shores, Calif.-based Oracle, which allows the city to extend geographic information technology to all agencies and city officials.
New York City’s Office of Emergency Management currently uses NYCMap to help with the city’s rat problem. The office oversees the numerous extermination programs managed by different agencies throughout the city. NYCMap allows officials to map complaints against exterminations, identifying patterns and thereby simplifying the process of determining which areas need more resources and effort.
To transform the base map into a useful tool for all city offices and New York residents, DoITT has begun to incorporate other geographic information, such as street addresses, valuation and building size, into the base map. The department has used MapXtreme software from Troy, NY-based MapInfo to create an online application, called “EveryOne Map,” that currently is available to city departments. (It will be available on the city’s Web site early in 2002.)
The application will allow residents to access information on NYCMap, find buildings and services, and search for information about street addresses. Home buyers will be able to research assessed values of properties, ownership information and community resources. Accessible information also will include data on open space, parks, building footprints, curb lines, bodies of water, parcels and census tracts.
“EveryOne Map is really a partnership between the citizens and the government of New York City,” Leidner says. “We rely on other agencies, as well as New Yorkers themselves, to provide us with the information that makes it easier for us to do our job, in turn providing better and more convenient government for the city as a whole.”
New York City’s Department of Health plans to use the Web service to stay a step ahead of public health issues. By the 2002 mosquito season, the agency will be able to track the spread of West Nile Virus using EveryOne Map.
Like New York, many cities and counties have found that making GIS more accessible improves service levels and data quality. Marietta and Hamilton County are able to answer residents’ routine questions with their mapping services. Weatherford has been able to build its GIS with the help of the many city employees who can access it. Whether the applications are hosted in-house or handled by a private company, online GIS is proving to be one of the most valuable online government services cities and counties can provide.