Athens County
Cooperative Land Administration
and Information Mapping system
January 31, 2006
Athens County Commissioners
15 South Court Street
Athens, Ohio 45701
Re: GIS Progress Report
Commissioners:
Our GIS Technical Users Committee met: Bret Allphin from Buckeye
Hills attended to see our GIS and give us a brief rundown of what
Buckeye Hills is doing in GIS. They help counties with FEMA
mitigation projects, run their Operations Data Center, collect GPS
data, and use GIS in grant applications. Darren gave a NASA World
Wind tour, and a demo of ArcGIS 9. Chuck Hart is working with ILGARD
and concentrating on indoor GIS work by linking attribute data to
building floor plan drawings. He has applied for a Homeland Security
grant on Campus Vulnerability. Chuck Hammer is working on a Pandemic
Flu Mass Vaccination Plan by finding locations throughout the County
for vaccination centers, and linking furniture, etc. needs to the
building floor-plans.
Darren will check with Jill to see about obtaining permission to
directly access the new Electronic Tax Card System from within our
GIS website parcel layer.
I met with Jennifer (Chamber of Commerce) and Dave Simon (ILGARD) to
discuss a future partnership among Athens County, ILGARD, and the
Chamber of Commerce. We envision a rural economic development
enablement project for Athens Township. Dave will get a CD of the
rural utility data collected a few years ago by the County Planning
Office and study it over as a starting point.
The State of Ohio Office of Information Technology, Ohio
Geographically Referenced Information Program (OGRIP) has released an
RFP for the acquisition of seamless statewide imagery for the Northern
Tier of the state during the spring of 2006 and the Southern Tier
during the spring of 2007. The statewide orthophotography project will
acquire 1-foot pixel resolution natural color digital orthophotography
data for the entire state. As an option local government will have the
opportunity to purchase various enhancements to the base 1 foot
product, one of which is the capture of 6-inch pixel resolution data.
This program is not a mandate. This is an opportunity for the state
and counties to work together to save taxpayer money and to obtain the
best data at the most affordable cost. No funding commitment is
required at this time. I sent OGRIP notification of our interest.
Our next GIS Technical User's Committee meeting will be held
February 16, 2006 at 10:00 A.M. in the ILGARD conference room.
Our next GIS Steering Committee meeting will be held
March 16, 2006 at 10:00 A.M. in the ILGARD conference room.
A summary of GIS work accomplished in 2005 is included
on the attached page.
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
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GIS work accomplished in 2005:
We worked with ILGARD and LeAx Water District and developed a pilot
project to link their water billings database to their waterline maps.
LeAx continues to develop the pilot project into a system-wide GIS
application through a contract with ILGARD.
ILGARD developed an Area Computation Application for the County
Planning Office and prepared several maps for the county commissioners
regarding a coal mine location project.
Ohio University is considering a central GIS Office with Chuck Hart
developing the proposed plan. Howard Fokes continues work on the
Campus-wide Utilities Project, the Ohio University Master Plan, and
the Facilities website.
The Honors Ecology Class at Athens City schools expressed interest in
developing a GIS Program.
The Auditor's Office completed a CLT CAMA System Operating System
upgrade to OS 4.0.
Tuppers Plains Water District commenced GIS Operations with
Donald Poole and Tracy White working to improve their data.
We developed a disclaimer for our GIS website. The basis of the
disclaimer is that a GIS is a pictorial representation of layers of
data displayed as maps, and is in no way representative of actual,
legal survey grade data. The Deed is the only legal instrument for
property description.
We shared our GIS development and operation with representatives of
Morgan and Washington counties.
Hocking College has resumed their GIS Program. Mike Haas is directing
the program, and regularly attends our GIS meetings.
OGRIP came to Athens with their Regional Forum. I presented our
development history and current work of our Athens County GIS.
Jeff Smith of OGRIP presented an update on the OGRIP LBRS Program.
Dave Simon of ILGARD discussed Strategic Planning and with Jeff
presented the National Hydrographic Dataset.
The City of Athens is considering contracting with ILGARD to host
their GIS similar to our County agreement with ILGARD, and partnering
with Athens County to purchase bulk annual ESRI software maintenance.
The County Auditor's Office deployed an Internet based CAMA Database
Tax Card Viewing Application.
We received our new Land Use / Land Cover Data from ODNR. This new
layer was paid for through a partnership among the U.S. Department of
Agriculture, the local office of the Soil and Water Conservation, and
the County Engineer's Office.
ILGARD continued development of the automated Portable Document File
(PDF) based Section Map application for the County Auditor.
Planning continued to bring a GPS based real-time emergency vehicle
location capability to enhance our already excellent E-911 operation.
New radios and frequencies were purchased and once operational, the
old County Engineer frequency will be donated for use as the vehicle
locater data transmission channel.
We received additional orthophoto and elevation contours data sets
developed for the new Athens to Darwin U.S. 33 corridor, East State
Street in the City of Athens, and two Ohio University tracts.
The County Engineer's Office completed a project with the Ohio
University Cartography Center to scan and catalog old Road Survey
maps. This created a valuable archive from the rapidly deteriorating
paper maps. The next project is underway to scan o ld property survey
maps.
The Engineer's Office continued a project to locate countywide
Section Corner Monuments by Global Positioning methods.
We continued the process of migrating our GIS to a geo-database and
will eventually further migrate to an SDE (Spatial Data Engine)
Enterprise enabled system.
We continued development of an Athens County Highway Map from our GIS
data layers. This will enable us to create an updated Highway Map
each year by simply incorporating changes into the master map file
created initially.
The Health Department began work on a Pandemic Flu Mass Vaccination
Plan by finding locations throughout the County for vaccination
centers.