October 31, 1999
Athens County Commissioners
15 South Court Street, 2nd Floor
Athens, Ohio 45701
RE: Monthly GIS Progress Report
Commissioners:
Thank you for meeting with me regarding an annual Athens County GIS
budget beginning with the year 2001. I reported on the progress of
development of our GIS project "ACCLAIM".
Our E-911 Dispatcher Map Display and automated House Numbering
applications are on schedule for implementation January 31, 2000.
We plan to consider alternative Central GIS equipment configurations
and system designs and make appropriate selection decisions in 2000.
We plan to consider alternative Central GIS locations, make an appropriate
selection decision in 2000, and plan for occupation of the preferred site
in 2001.
Our digital parcel-based mapping application is on schedule for full
implementation in 2001.
We anticipate hiring GIS staff, installing necessary GIS computer equipment
and beginning a Central GIS operation in 2001.
As we discussed, I will prepare and submit to the Commissioners
by June 1, 2000 our GIS budget request for 2001.
Ted Jacobson reports that our GIS progress reports continue to be read on
a regular basis on the Auditor's Web Site. The most recent check by Ted
indicated a rate of 12 to 25 contacts per week. He has also received
requests to have copies of the progress reports delivered by e-mail.
We have considered this concept and decided to proceed with e-mail
deliveries of the progress reports as requested.
David Underwood, a representative from the Athens Chapter of the American
Red Cross will attend our next GIS Steering Committee Meeting and our Pilot
Project Class in December. He is interested in how GIS can be applied to
Damage Assessment and Family Assistance functions of the Red Cross Disaster
Response missions. He feels that Red Cross efforts if properly coordinated
with a County GIS could:
* Speed FEMA and State reports,
* Pinpoint infrastructure damage earlier,
* Increase family assistance response, and
* Aid in planning and mitigation efforts.
I contacted Tom Reid, O.U. C.N.S. about problems encountered with
installing fiber-optic cable conduit during the Chamber of Commerce Court
Street sidewalk project. He believes the conduit is out of the plans
all together because of various problems. He says however, that we have
the possibility of working with American Electric Power Communications LLC
to achieve the same thing, except the fiber would be attached to power
poles instead of being buried in the sidewalks. Tom likes the AEP
approach better because they already have the right-of-ways established
for provision of electrical service.
CNS continues to work on our request for providing an estimate of cost
for networking County buildings and they are still interested in the
old County jail building for a Network Access Point.
Version 8 of ArcInfo is due out soon. We are on ESRI maintenance and
will receive a free copy. There are three new "desktop" applications
(recently previewed in an ESRI White Paper) included in ArcInfo 8:
ArcMap, ArcCatalog, and ArcToolbox.
ArcMap is the map-centric application for editing, displaying, querying,
and analyzing map data. In addition, ArcMap contains a sophisticated
scientific charting and graphic system, an object-oriented editor,
and a full report writer. ArcMap is the environment for working with
map data and creating production-quality cartographic output.
ArcCatalog is the data-centric application that locates, browses, and
manages spatial data. With ArcCatalog you can create and manage spatial
databases. ArcCatalog is where users lay out their data schema in the
database and specify and use metadata.
ArcToolbox is a complete environment for performing the hundreds of rich
geoprocessing operations provided by ArcInfo such as data conversion,
overlay processing, buffer creation, and map transformation.
The "back office" applications of Arc, ArcPlot, and ArcEdit, remain
essentially as their previous configurations with a only a few updates.
The new features will be interesting alternatives to consider as we design
and implement our Central GIS System next year. I will attend a free
ArcInfo 8 seminar in Columbus next month.
ArcView 3.2 has shipped. Anyone interested in upgrading should contact
our St. Louis Regional ESRI Office. New features include a new shapefile
projection utility, providing support for an extensive range of data
projections and datum transformations; an updated CAD data reader, an
updated report writer, now based upon Seagate Crystal Reports 7; and
improvements to database access in SDE or Open Database Connectivity
(ODBC) databases.
EmergiTech and Digital Information Systems are progressing with our
E-911 project. This project is on schedule and is now 84% complete.
The completion date for this project is January 31, 2000. Ron Lucus sent
address ranges to Digital Information for the City of Athens. J.B. Hoy
sent them the parcel data linked to the parcel ID for Glouster, Trimble,
Jacksonville, Chauncey, Amesville, and Coolville. ILGARD will soon finish
The Plains parcel data and will work on Nelsonville parcels next, and
forward this data to them. Dave Owen sent them CAMA addresses linked to
parcel ID. The CAMA address data (which is also linked to parcel ID) will
be used to establish a link from the parcels to addresses and hopefully the
work may be completed. These actions will hopefully enable
EmergiTech/Digital Information to complete all E-911 addressing by
the end of the year.
J.B. Hoy finalized the Ames Township Pilot Project. I evaluated the
initial project, and the final CD is being distributed to our GIS users.
This Pilot Project demonstrates and evaluates the Auditor's CAMA data
combined with parcel data, and the interaction of this data with road
centerlines, streams, lakes, soils data, orthophotos and an image rendering
terrain through use of USGS topography data. We have scheduled a one day
Ames Township Pilot Project class for December 10th at 9:00 a.m. in the
ILGARD facilities using our Pilot Project data. Anyone interested in
participating in the class should give me a call. Seats will be filled on
a first come - first served basis. This is not a certified ESRI ArcView
Class! We have nine people signed up so far and can take up to 15.
We have made provision for a second class as needed.
I spoke with Keith Fournier, Senior GIS Analyst for the Lucus County
Auditor's Office regarding their method of "registering" Internet users
of GIS as a security measure. I will report on this concept in a future
progress report.
I participated in the local "Viewpoint" radio talk show with Doug Bentley,
E-911 Chief; Bill Wend, Nelsonville City Council; Bill Theisen and Mark
Sullivan, County Commissioners, and Jim Pancake, York Township Trustee.
The subject was E-911 operation, and my contribution was to explain our
E-911 Dispatcher Map Display and Automated House Numbering applications
as well as our overall GIS development status.
I plan to attend a GIS conference in Columbus late this month.
I will report on the conference in next month's progress report.
I will meet with the Hocking College (Ralph Moran, Instructor)
GIS students next month.
Enclosed is a copy of a paper by URISA entitled GIS Database Concepts.
Types of data and access, data quality, metadata, and data development
are explained.
Our next GIS Steering Committee meeting is scheduled for November 18, 1999
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