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The
Case for Collaborative GIS Inter-local
cooperation is good for the community. CoCiGIS Partnering
Communities benefit from collaborative GIS by sharing costs, mitigating
duplication of effort, and most importantly opening a channel of
communication that will give way to larger inter-jurisdictional
collaboration efforts. Sharing information yields better
information. Better information yields better decisions.
Better decisions create better communities.
CoCiGIS
Projects
The
committee has spearheaded many projects to date, including:
Connectivity.
The City of Auburn and DeKalb County Governments are connected via a
metro-Ethernet network operated by the City of Auburn and Auburn
Essential Services. This gigabit network provides the
communications base for the data sharing partnership.
Both the
County and City have Database Administrators that jointly manage the GIS
database. View the Inter-Local Connectivity Agreement
[Acrobat Reader Required). This base agreement is updated time to
time with addendums as the partnership evolves.
Landbase
Mapping Project. The first project jointly pursued by the County and City, the
Landbase Mapping Project began in February 1999, with aerial photography
in April of the same year. A
general Memorandum of understanding set the tone for the data sharing
partnership, while a specific Inter-Local Agreement was executed for the
Landbase project. The County
and City share common features and split common feature and accuracy level
costs 50/50. Higher accuracy
and additional features were paid entirely by the party desiring such
additional features and accuracy. Participating
communities have saved over $120,000 through collaborating and sharing in
the capital investment, and anticipate saving an indefinite amount of
money through shared maintenance of the database.
This project also included some basic planimetric data such as street,
raild and waterway centerlines.
Cadastral Mapping Project. Likely
the most widely used dataset among both the County and Cities, the
development of the cadastral dataset was conducted over a multi-year
period with the final data delivery being on
. The process of updating and maintaining the
cadastral dataset is on-going and will continue in perpetuity. The
County and participating Cities have developed and signed an Inter-Local
Agreement whereby the County will maintain the data as part of its
normal course of business and the participating cities will have access
to said data. Participating communities estimate that over
$153,000 was saved by partnering in this project. More importantly,
the County and City will continue to save day-to-day maintenance costs
and greatly improve the integrity of the cadastral database.
In-House Projects. The CoCiGIS partners
frequently create datasets in house for various projects and for general
use. Examples include county-wide layers for point addresses,
public park locations, school locations, and voting precincts as well as
community-specific layers for zoning, and public safety uses. The
development of these data sets can be project specific such as for
construction and development of Auburn’s Rieke Park or it can serve
multiple purposes such as the use of the Public Land Survey System (PLSS)
dataset to aid in the recovery of section corner data while also
providing a means to distribute that information to local surveyors.
In-house development can also include some partnership with other
agencies/firms as a way to leverage the value of local data. The
Committee noted that the exchange of data between the Committee and an
engineering consultant resulted in the Committee obtaining, free of
charge, the Airport’s Imaginary Surfaces which are now used in
conjunction with local contour data to regulate structure height around
the DeKalb County Airport with regards to the safety of aerial
navigation. The group noted that this type of data/knowledge
exchange is the essence of GIS and partnerships.
GIS Day. The Committee
participated in the first ever GIS Day in 1999, educating over 100
children and adults. The Committee has participated in several GIS
Day events since that time and continues to participate as time and
resources allow. Participation may mean traveling to a local
school to discuss GIS with students, hosting an open house for employees
and the public or working with local media to raise local community
awareness of GIS Day and the value of our local GIS to the community.
DFIRM. DeKalb County was the
first county in the State of Indiana to receive a GIS-based, GIS-enabled
DFIRM. Whereas earlier digital DFIRM products were copies of paper
maps that may have been based on GIS data, the GIS-enabled DIFRM
Database allows FIRM data such as flood hazard area boundaries and base
flood elevations to be integrated seamlessly into GIS maps with other
local GIS data layers such as parcels and zoning. The DFIRM was the
result of a joint project between the County-City GIS Committee, the
Maumee River Basin Commission (MRBC), the Indiana Department of Natural
Resources (IDNR) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
The availability of accurate local GIS data and the Committee’s
willingness to share the data meant that the project was completed
without any additional cost to the local communities.
Education. The Committee has a strong
education effort through the Intranet and Internet web sites, regular
presentations, and publishing meeting minutes. Additionally GIS
education and expertise is provided to the various departments within
each CoCiGIS partner organization by their own GIS staff.
Overview
of County-City GIS Partnership
DeKalb
County GIS Background
Four
County departments began discussing GIS in 1996 as a means to address duplication
of efforts, a lack of connectivity among PC resources/info, and a lack of
data sharing due to limited knowledge of these existing resources.
The County established
communications with cities and but no none of the cities or towns
responded to these initial contact attempts.
City
of Auburn GIS Background
The
City’s path leading up to the County-City GIS projects is founded in
IT.
Prior
to January 2000, the City was experiencing the same IT and information
issues as many communities were; duplication of effort, decentralized
management of systems; incompatible platforms; etc.
Pre-1997
Computer Committee and IT Report. Each
department was set to fend for themselves, but was guided by a
three-person Computer committee that oversaw the purchasing of all
computer equipment. The City had an IT needs assessment report developed by a
professional network consultant in 1995, but no formal action was taken.
1997
Building, Planning and Development’s report. In 1997, the
Department of Building, Planning and Development put together a needs
assessment report addressing the department’s permit tracking
requirements. However, the
report also briefly addressed connectivity of the entire City, and the use
of GIS. This report initiated discussions among City officials, and
later that year the Mayor obtained Spectrum Engineering Corporation to
facilitate a comprehensive planning and implementation project that
addressed the City’s IT needs.
1998
Information Technology Master Plan. Spectrum
organized the City into a Policy Committee and Technical Committee; the
Policy committee was comprised of community leaders from each of the major
sectors (health, business, education, industry, local government, etc) and
was charged with identifying goals and objectives for the community from
an Information Technology perspective. Some of these goals included
reducing waste; improving customer service; improving communications;
improving data integrity/accuracy/usability for decision support.
The Technical Committee was comprised of representatives from each
of the departments and from Council and BOW, and was charged with defining
solutions to fulfill the goals and objectives of the Policy committee.
The resulting product of over 1 year of education and planning was
the Information Technology Master Plan published on September 15, 1998.
The plan addressed networking/computing/training, utility/civil
accounting, telephony enhancements, and GIS.
The plan received funding through a municipal bond valued at $2.65
million. The project
continues to be implemented today.
GIS, then, was an outgrowth/extension of management information systems
for the City. There was a
strong feeling of “TEAM” the City had experienced and there were many
benefits of that environment, as it was the City that took COMPLETE
ownership of the project and had a complete understanding of what
solutions would work and why.
County-City
GIS Committee
In
August of 1998, both and County and City sat down and formerly started
talking about GIS together. Both
sides agreed that a strong effective framework for communication and
decision-making had to be established.
The group formed the County-City GIS Committee, and spent the first
few meetings educating members on GIS benefits, costs, concepts, issues,
etc. Representatives from
both sides include policy makers and dept reps. The current members of the
Committee include:
The
Committee acts as a decision support group to the Cities’ and County’s
decision-making bodies (Council, Commissioners, BOW) and has many goals,
including sharing in data creation/maintenance costs; sharing
knowledge/data; GIS education; mitigating duplication of efforts; facilitating joint-decision making, etc. |
