Present: Donald Ijams, William Burris, Steve Whitney, Christine O'Connor, Teri Schultz, Paige Hamner, Daniel Casey, David Taylor, Vickey Bagley, Mary Szczepanski, Sandy Elder, Steve Balance, Michael Honomichl, Travis DiScenza, Casey Townsend, Genny Martin, Virginia Carroll, Ron Platt, Autumn Quinn, Janet Nickell, Dave Hochede, Skip Maselli, Dan Falkner, Robert MacArthur, Fran LaSala, Eleanor Sees and Robin West.

Adjustments of Pima County GIS Layers Using Orthophoto Data

Steve Whitney reported on a problem that has developed with the software being used to do the "rubber sheeting" of AutoCAD drawings, to closely match the orthophotos.

This effort, being carried out by Pima County DOT/GIS, is to match the 1998 set of digital orthophotos with the parcel base of Pima County, Arizona. A software approach is being taken to match GIS line work to orthophoto features. The work is focusing on cul-de-sacs, intersections and readily identifiable areas of the parcel drawings, and is a 2 step process:

An evaluation of the results shows that the rubber sheeting and "warping" process somehwat degrades the edge matching of adjacent sections. Preliminary testing of the "from-to-point" approach seemed to eliminate edge degradation. However, Steve's group have started noticing anomalies in the interiors. This has caused a temporary halt to the work. They are now developing a test matrix in an attempt to understand the software utility and come up with a solution for some of these interior anomalies. It has been frustrating for staff. It appears that the more from-to-points included in the process, the more features affected. (Staff may have gone overboard trying to fix small things.)

On the ArcInfo side, Steve said they are not seeing as many problems. There are a lot of variables that need to be looked at. They will start with the number of from-to-points compiled in each area. They will compare AutoCad and ArcInfo. Tiled data sets are the ones that are the edge match concern, not the regional sets as much.

Eventually, all the adjusted layers will be placed on the shared server (MARS), while older versions will be kept for a while as well.

Address Standards Implementation

Don reported on a meeting involving Dave Taylor, John Jones and others where the use of the business license and occupational privilege files for Rio Nuevo reporting purposes was discussed. Address quality was of primary concern, which generalized into the whole issue of getting City data sets in shape for GIS purposes. Geocoding software can be of some help in dealing with current data, but a strategy is needed that addresses acquisitions of new software, current data entry, and cleaning up existing databases.

On December 9, 1999, the Official Address Guide for Pima County, Arizona was adopted as a recommended standard for the City's use. Implementing this standard has been challenging. Part of the problem is that no one has a full set of all the ordinances establishing street names, we are still establishing all sources and cleaning up any that require it. A proposed administrative directive would officially acknowledge the official street guide and reference data entry standards including such things as correct spelling. It's now time for more detailed work, and Don will be reconstituting the Addressing Sub-Committee.

Refinements are now complete with the ADCOUNTY addressing file. There is now nightly processing creating a new version of ADCOUNTY which is the point file of all valid addresses. It is on the MARS shared server. Development Services is now in the process of comparing ADCOUNTY to Permitting to ensure that they are synched up. While the implementation of Permits Plus has taken longer than anticipated, this effort is now moving forward.

ADParcel.dbf is currently the best available master file (Official Address subset of ADCOUNTY). A recent effort to match ADParcel addresses against stnetall (street network file) produced a match rate of 95.21%. Of the 14,597 records that didn't match, there were no records for 6,000 and for 8,000 addresses there were differences found. Continuing work on the differences is proceeding.

GIS Intergovernmental Agreement - Work Continuing

The draft GIS agreement between the City of Tucson and Pima County is still under discussion, but has been set aside for the time being because of higher priorities.

GIS Training Plan

This group has been very active, meeting two or three times to fine tune a budget for this year's training funds. The budget as submitted to Budget and Research was handed out, discussed and concurred in by the large group. Three initiatives for proposed classes were discussed. The first is a basic overview class, which we need to get going on. It is meant to be a class about concepts. The second class would be a locally customized ArcView class, which would use local data sets. The third would be focused on the Pima County Land Information System CD. Vicki Bagley mentioned that eventually we would also like to offer a cartography class. Christine emphasized the need for an aggressive plan for the year, and the need to start thinking about next year.

Feedback from Recent GIS Conferences

Attendees at the recent Az Geographic Information Council conference (Aug. 14 - Prescott) discussed presentations on satellite imagery and the usefulness of cartography and basic web design classes. Don shared two presentations from the URISA conference (Aug. 19 - Orlando).

Time ran out before the CityScan and GIS Roundtable items could be discussed.