April 23, 1999
Athens County Commissioners
15 South Court Street, 2nd Floor
Athens, Ohio 45701
RE: Monthly GIS Progress Report
Commissioners:
You are receiving this months GIS progress report early so as to give you
as much notice as is possible about an upcoming GIS presentation that you
should attend if possible. Dave Lovett attended an excellent Geauga
County GIS presentation at the State Auditor's conference. Dave was able
to schedule the presentation to be given here for the benefit of our GIS
Steering Committee and the Auditor's staff. Geauga County uses the same
software (ESRI) that we have committed to for our GIS and will give the
presentation. The presentation will begin at 2:00 p.m. on May 13th in the
Probate Court room on the second floor of the Courthouse. Please plan to
attend!
ALSO:
Doug Bentley and I attended an excellent seminar in Charleston on ESRI
software, including Map Objects, Arcview, SDE, Arc Info, and Map Objects
Internet Map Server, and Compaq computer workstations and servers. I
highly recommend the morning session of the seminar (and the free lunch!).
The seminar is called Digital City and is offered again in Columbus on
April 29th. A copy of the brochure is attached.
Doug and I discussed future GIS development funding from the E-911 budget.
Subject to adequate revenues, he is willing to keep the same budget line
item for GIS for the years 2000 and 2001. We appreciate this excellent
support foe our GIS development! We discussed the need for area emergency
service agencies to buy into the system and assist with funding the next
logical E-911 upgrades of real time GPS tracking of service vehicles and
efficient routing of service vehicles from their facility to the E-911
caller. Doug has obtained a copy of ArcView software and has ordered a Jaz
drive. John Branner will provide him with a copy of our orthophotos on Jaz
cartridges for his use.
I received the software from our ESRI grant. I provided the copy of
ArcView and on-line training to our County Planning Office. Bob Eichenberg
is anxious to get started with the software and has hired an intern to work
specifically on GIS.
I have been studying a concept recently pioneered by ESRI that at first
look, seems like it may fit with our Athens County GIS very well.
Spatial Database Engine (SDE) provides an open interface software suite
that allows instant interface between the users and all of the spatial data
in an organization regardless of the original format of the data. This
could enable a direct interaction between for example, AutoCAD and ArcInfo
files without a cumbersome conversion process.
SDE works with major database management system products (like Oracle),
enabling geographic data to be integrated not only with other spatial data,
but with the rest of an organization's database. The spatial data files
become objects embedded into an appended column of the database management
system and may be queried as a part of a standard query into the database.
This concept speeds standard queries by many times over, compared to
traditional file search and query procedures.
With SDE, data may be delivered to any user, from any server, anywhere on a
network, and is integrated with ESRI's Internet Map Server software and is
a core component for distributing maps and spatial data over the Internet.
I plan to further research this ESRI concept and determine if we should
consider it for Athens County's GIS.
Jeff Hanson of Farragut Systems came to Athens for one day. His main
mission was to assess the procedure needed to connect the Auditor's parcel
maintenance workstation with the CAMA computer database. Farragut Systems
has several years GIS experience, so while Jeff was here, I asked him to
assess our GIS development procedure. We met with ILGARD staff, the County
Auditor and staff, the City of Athens network consultant, County Health
Department staff, and City of Athens staff. We will receiv e a report from
him early next month.
Steve Holmes, GIS applications specialist, City of Loveland, Colorado
updated me on the GIS they are using. They use ArcView as their core GIS
with AutoCAD as their digital input software with an ESRI ArcCad interface.
Windows NT is their operating and network software. They are maintaining
parcel, zoning, city limits, and planimetric maps in their land records
division, and also set and maintain standards for software and data.
Other departments are encouraged to develop and maintain their own GIS
applications with whatever additional data they need, but they are required
to adhere to City standards.
We received data from the County Auditor's CAMA data files for use in
attaching to our digital parcel maps. Dave Owen from the Auditor's staff
provided a tape of the data listing ownership, address, and legal
description, sorted by the parcel identification number. I delivered the
data to ILGARD and they will attempt to link our existing parcel data with
it.
ILGARD continues with their work converting our parcels to digital format.
Dover Township has been completed, additional text layers are being to
Trimble Township, work is progressing on Ames Township and scans are
complete for Rome Township.
Based upon discussions with the Auditor's staff, I asked ILGARD to develop
a prototype section map from our digital map for Dover Township for
comparison to the existing paper section map. This will provide us with
early feedback on our parcel conve rsion procedure.
As a result of Jeff Hanson's (Farragut Systems) suggestion, I also asked
ILGARD to develop a third pilot project using our digital data and attached
attribute CAMA data from the Auditor's appraisal data files. We will
distribute this pilot project to several people, currently working on GIS
application, for further feedback on our parcel conversion project.
I met with Bill Theisen, County Commissioner, to discuss the next steps for
our E-911 system, once the current contract for developing automated house
numbering and dispatcher on-screen map display is completed.
The next logical step will be to develop a real time Global Positioning
System (GPS) tracking system for emergency vehicles. A preliminary
estimate for this is $100,000. Such things as radio coverage and available
frequency, and the number of vehic les to be tracked will vary the cost.
Then the next step would be to develop a computer routing system to provide
a map of the most efficient route for an emergency vehicle to take for a
given incident, given one-way streets, hilly terrain, inadequate bridges,
speed limits, pavement type s etc. A preliminary estimate to accomplish
this project is $150,000. The cost will vary depending upon the number of
variables (i.e. such as listed above) that we choose to include in the
analysis to determine the most efficient route.
I recommended that consideration for E-911 options such as these be funded
before any excess funds are declared. Lives are at stake and we must
refine our E-911 system as best we can. I believe that the CTAC Committee
agrees with this concept. I will obtain more detailed cost estimates for
these projects later this Summer.
I spoke with JaVon Kittle-Cooper, our County Treasurer and Chairperson of
the County Data Board to obtain an update on the County's network
development status. She invited me to attend the next meeting of the Data
Board when they will discuss networking. She advised me to contact Lenny
Eliason, County Commissioner to discuss his ideas on networking.
I met with Lenny Eliason to discuss developing a County computer network.
We discussed various options available and I agreed to contact Ohio
University to determine options available for the County to connect to
their network.
I am scheduled to meet late this month with Tom Reid, Rick Manderick, Dave
Wallace, Jeff Hirzel, and Ken Bailey from Ohio University, regarding
options available for the County to connect to the O.U. network. I will
report on the results of this mee ting in next months GIS progress report.
EmergiTech and Digital Information Systems are progressing with our E-911
project. This project is on schedule and is now 53 % complete.
Watercourse, water body, and building structure location mapping is
complete. Attribution of building structure (address database
development), and street centerlines (development of street centerline
database) is in progress.
Perhaps at our next GIS Steering Committee meeting we can discuss creating
an ArcView users group. Presently, John Branner, Ron Lucus, Ted Jacobson,
Doug Bentley, and Bob Eichenberg have and are using ArcView. Jeff Ditty
may also be interested as may J.B. Hoy and Howard Fokes. The list will
grow over time. John Branner organized our AutoCAD users Group. Perhaps
another of these enterprising persons will step forward to lead an ArcView
users group.
Our next GIS Steering Committee meeting will be May 20, 1999 at 10:00 a.m.
in the O.U. Facilities Management conference room.
Thank you for allowing me to coordinate this important aspect of Athens
County's future, and for your usual cooperation.
Archie Stanley
GIS Coordinator