Athens County
Cooperative Land Administration
and Information Mapping system
March 31, 2006
Athens County Commissioners
15 South Court Street
Athens, Ohio 45701
Re: GIS Progress Report
Commissioners:
Our GIS Technical Users Committee met: Professor Jeff Ueland from
the O.U. Department of Geography discussed how GIS was used in his
research on Florida Mangroves. Jeff used several programs to research
how the Mangrove areas have changed over time and then forecasted how
the Mangrove areas could continue changing. ESRI Spatial Analysis was
used extensively to analyze raster based data obtained about the
Mangrove areas. Spatial Analysis was shown to be a very effective
tool to compare and analyze data layers, in order to present trends
visually for decision makers to consider as decisions are made
regarding growth or diminishment of areas such as Mangroves.
Our next GIG Technical Users meeting will present the local office of
the Wayne National Forest experience of migration of their GIS format
to Spatial Database Engine (SDE) software. This meeting will be held
at the Office of the Wayne National Forest on U.S. 33.
I made a presentation to the Local Emergency Planning Committee (LEPC)
regarding how GIS may be used in Homeland Security. GIS and Homeland
Security will partner on a project to develop a County-wide Fire
District Map, a pilot project with a local school district to map and
inventory their buildings, utilities, furniture, parking lots, roads,
entrances and exits, etc. and then demonstrate the pilot project to
the other County school districts and work toward getting this
information collected and mapped into a GIS.
Our GIS Steering Committee met: Darren supplied Sanborn Colorado a
copy of our 2002 Orthophotography Tiff files so that they can make
updates based upon our recent re-flights of the US 33 and East State
Street corridors and two OU tracts. Once that updating process is
completed, we will receive revised Tiffs and Mr. Sid compressed
files. ESRI has developed a free template for a tax card and CAMA
viewing application that includes mapping. An ArcGIS class will be
offered to Steering Committee funding partners the second week of
June, 2006. We discussed the OGRIP initiative to provide statewide
1' pixel orthophotography in 2008 (see below). They offer 6' pixel
orthophotography and 2' contours as an optional upgrade. We decided
to see if only upgrading parts of the county (municipalities and the
Hocking River/tributaries) and if so, how much the cost would be.
Darren agreed to add the current 5' contour data to our website.
John reported that the Engineer One-Mile Section Corner Location
Project continues with 2 1/2 townships completed. Bob has a GIS Intern
scheduled for a Planning Office project of adding attribute data to
the floodplain maps. He announced a public meeting March 28, 2006, at
7:00 P.M. at the Athens Community Center to discuss the forthcoming
Comprehensive Plan for Athens County. Part of the grant for this
project includes mapping funding and Bob will work with Darren to get
the maps made. Bret Allphin agreed to make a GPS presentation at the
June Technical User's Committee meeting. Howard is working on a
campus-wide handicapped accessibility map and using GPS to locate new
lines being placed on campus. Ken and Jane will meet with Howard to
see a copy machine that seems to be the type needed by the Auditor's
Office for printing multi-copy requests for maps. We discussed the
fact that some of the text is small and difficult to read on the one-
mile section maps. John suggested that perhaps we should consider
going to a Quarter Section map as the county standard plat map format.
He noted that in times past each section was subdivided far less than
today, and that in order to get all of the text needed on the one-mile
Section Map today requires small text in order to be able to fit it a
ll in, and a Quarter Section map would allow for larger, more readable
text. The City of Athens has contracted with ILGARD for hosting the
technical aspects of their GIS similar to our County contract with
ILGARD.
ESRI has developed a new template for use in placing tax cards on a
website. Darren will look into the possibility of making this service
available in the future for the County Auditor. One thing that would
need to happen is for CLT to periodically run a script on our CAMA
data placing a copy into a "delimited" format. Since a new script
would be necessary to format the CLT data into the delimited format,
and Darren will look into other counties in our same situation to see
about sharing the cost to have such a script developed.
I provided Athens County GIS information for an article to be
published in the City Law Director's Journal.
A project through the Ohio Geographically Referenced Program (OGRIP)
and the Office of Information Technology (OIT) - Ohio Statewide
Imagery program will provide all counties with new one foot pixel
color orthophotography in 2008. Thank you OGRIP!
Our next GIS Technical User's Committee meeting will be held April 20,
2006 at 10:00 A.M. in Office of the Wayne National Forest on U.S. 33
North between Athens and Nelsonville. Our next GIS Steering Committee
meeting will be held May 18, 2006 at 10:00 A.M. in the ILGARD
conference room.
Sincerely,
Archie Stanley - GIS Coordinator
555 East State Street - Athens, Ohio 45701
Phone (740) 593-5514 - Fax (740) 592-4616
E-mail:
astanley@AthensCountyGovernment.com