Athens County
Cooperative Land Administration
and Information Mapping system
May 31, 2000
Athens County Commissioners
15 South Court Street, 2nd Floor
Athens, Ohio 45701
RE: Monthly GIS Progress Report
Commissioners:
Last month I listed GIS Success Factors quoted in the URISA Journal.
My application of the first Factor "Evaluation of User Needs" to our
GIS is included as two extra pages to this report.
Our ILGARD parcel data line work conversion is progressing, with six
townships remaining. We expect the line work to be completed by this
Fall, with attribute assignment to be completed in the first quarter
of 2001, and text additions by Summer 2001. Our web site will soon be
operating from a new more efficient server. We are currently
experiencing about 200 hits per month. We anticipate a visit from
ESRI this Fall to install ArcIMS web software giving our site a great
new look and upgrade our map display operation which will give our
site better effectiveness.
I have an architect making preliminary sketches and offering
alternative ideas for a GIS addition to the County Engineer Facility.
A new opportunity has presented itself as a possible location for a
new County Engineer Facility as well as a GIS Office, and other
options as well. The Columbia Gas of Ohio Facility will be vacated
this Fall and we are very interested in acquiring the site and then
offering our present properties for sale. So hopefully by the end of
the year, we will know where our GIS Office will be.
I agreed to participate with our local Office of Soil & Water
Conservation in a 50/50 funding venture to have much better soils data
created for Athens County by the ODNR and their Federal counterpart,
over the next two years. I also agreed to have ODNR create a new land
use map and data list from a new ODNR aerial photo flight.
By obligating to these things now, we will get the data sooner.
This will help our local planning and CAUV process, and will be used
by several other agencies in addition to Soil & Water Conservation,
Planning, and Auditor. ODNR has on it's web site
(www.dnr.state.oh.us)
a more current (1994) vs. 1986 land use/cover layer, in addition to
layers for underground mines (1995), soils (1985), watersheds (1995),
and wetlands (1986). These are all free downloads.
ILGARD hosted a presentation of the Lucas County GIS. The Lucus
County Auditor started their GIS in 1992 as a real estate application,
working with a consultant who did their initial data creation. They
now do almost all their real estate GIS work in-house. Other
departments and the City of Toledo are now coming on-board with
application development. They have three main applications, a CD
based public access real estate viewer application, an Internet based
real estate application, and a client-server based real estate public
service counter. A copy of a report on the Lucus County GIS Program
is attached.
Greg Roush, GIS Coordinator for Ross County came to see our recently
implemented E-911 mapping application. He was very impressed with the
project, and hopes to set Ross County on a similar E-911 mapping
application project.
Kris Irwin, Jackson County GIS Coordinator, developed an Avenue script
at my request, for applying latitude-longitude coordinates by degrees,
minutes and seconds, and decimal degrees to any spatial file. I have
delivered it to Doug Bentley for use as an E-911 tool for locating
aircraft landing zones by latitude-longitude. Any one who wishes to
receive it may contact me. Our thanks to Kris Irwin for developing
this fine tool for our use.
Doug Bentley is already making plans for maintenance to the E-911
data. He is researching ways to efficiently update the road
centerlines for the road changes recently being made to the State
Route 50/32 projects between Athens and Coolville.
John Branner and I met with Ross and Jackson county representatives to
discuss opportunities available as GIS/transportation applications. We
discussed potential applications for bridge inventory/inspection,
pavement management, and guardrail maintenance. John is already doing
much of what was discussed. Following the meeting, John gave them a
tour of the County Engineer GIS workstation and ongoing applications.
Chuck Hammer made a presentation to the Athens County Township Trustees at
our annual meeting about GIS projects underway in the Athens County Health
Department. The Trustees enjoyed receiving the information and thought of
several applications that they could use.
Bob Eichenberg is hosting a GIS presentation on June 8th at the
Alexander Middle School at Shade for the Athens County Regional
Planning Commission.
I presented GIS concepts to the P.M. Kiwanis group late in the month
and will report on it next time.
We are planning our high profile GIS show for September 20th at the
O.U. Inn Ballroom. We will hold planning sessions immediately
following the next two GIS Steering Committee meetings. The plan is
to invite the commissioners, city council members, chamber of commerce
officials, utility company representatives, elected officials, O.U.
administrators, and members of the news media. Gary North, Sherwood
Wilson, J.B. Hoy, Bob Eichenberg, Howard Fokes, Ron Lucas, and Dave
Lovett are planning the event. Please mark your calendars for this
show.
Our GIS Steering Committee meeting was held at the Emergency
Communications E-911 Office. Doug Bentley hosted the meeting and
provided a tour of the new map product. Everyone was impressed with
the clarity, quickness, and efficiency of the system. Afterward, a
planning session was held for our September 20th GIS show. It was
decided that we would limit the presentations to our local GIS and not
invite other counties to make presentations, run a poster session from
3:00 to 5:00 p.m., break until 6:00 p.m., and run presentations from
6:00 to 9:00 p.m. I will moderate the program, and confirm
presenters. Ron Lucas will develop a list of persons to invite, J.B.
will make a graphic focused invitation and schedule, Gary will work
with the O .U. Inn to arrange for the room, refreshments, and program.
The next planning session will be held at Facilities Management on
June 15th at 10:00 a.m.
Our next GIS Steering Committee meeting is scheduled for July 20, 2000
at 10:00 a.m. in the 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
555 East State Street
Athens, Ohio 45701
Phone (740) 593-5514
Fax (740) 592-4616
astanley@frognet.net
-----------------------
The following factors for successful GIS implementation were
documented in the URISA Journal, Volume 12, Number 1, Winter, 2000,
and reported here last month.
"Overall, researchers have concluded that successful implementation of
a GIS in local government is dependent on a number of well-documented
factors. They include:
* Evaluation of user needs;
* Long-term upper management commitment to the project;
* Sufficient allocation of resources;
* Adequate staffing;
* Timely and sufficient training;
* Someone, called a 'GIS champion,' who will shepherd the project
from acquision to use; and
* Organizational communication or diffusion to smooth the
transition to full utilization"
These factors, noted by leading experts, will be continually reviewed
and applied to our GIS project. I have applied the first of these
factors to our GIS project development as an evaluation and report on
our efforts to date:
Evaluation of user needs: Application of the first criteria listed
above to Athens County's GIS Project:
* As part of our initial GIS Implementation Plan, we evaluated
our user needs, and set our direction appropriately:
* Initially, we developed in cooperation with Day and Zimmerman
(DZGIS), Inc. a GIS Implementation plan, based upon the user needs
study. We interviewed potential GIS users and set our direction
based upon the needs study.
* We decided that a de-centralized GIS would best serve our user's
needs;
* Participant's individual users would be empowered with user-
friendly GIS technology as an integral part of their desktop
computer. The goal is to make the GIS program as familiar to the
user as their word processing program, GIS would be incorporated
as a tool into existing work processes.
* Each participant would be responsible for it's own data, software,
equipment, and personnel,
* Each participant would be the sole custodian of their own data,
but would share their data to other participants in read-only
format, and in return, all other participants would share their
data in read-only format.
* A central core GIS operation would be the hub connecting all
de-centralized participant's users in an intranet, and would
provide a secure repository for data storage, systems
administration, user training, backups, and special projects.
Thereby, our GIS would incorporate the strength of having the very
most current data and maps from each participant, and these data
and maps would be stored in a secure location and served in a
coordinated secure fashion back not only to each partici pant, but
to the community at large through an Internet web site. This
simple but powerful concept would present data and maps to users
through public access terminals in our public offices as well as
to homes and private offices through the Internet.
We decided to base our GIS data upon aerial photography tied to highly
accurate surveyed ground control.
* Installed permanent monuments.
* Utilized very accurate GPS satellite survey methods.
* Registered the monument points with the federal
National Geodetic Survey (NGS).
We decided to develop highly accurate digital orthophotography
A real world basis for creating a geographically based map.
Used as base map layer on which all other layers are referenced.
High level of accuracy through rectified aerial photography.
As a mid-course reviews of our GIS development, we evaluated our GIS
development progress after two years, in cooperation with Farragut
Systems, Inc. We have reviewed our progress twice more with ESRI
during regular development consultations over th e past 18 months.
Attesting to the success anticipated by our original needs study,
several GIS users have already developed excellent GIS applications:
* Athens County Health Department
* Athens County Auditor
* Athens County Planner
* Athens County E-911
* Athens County Engineer
* City of Athens
* Ohio University Facilities Management
I believe that we have positioned our GIS very well for successful
implementation by an initial thorough evaluation and continuing evaluation
of our user's needs throughout the Project. Next month I
will cover the second item of the list of success factors for GIS as
it applies to our GIS Project.