Present: Donald Ijams, Ron Platt, Dave Koss, Elisha Zavala, Steve Whitney, Jim Ebert, Steve Smith, Joaquim Solis, Frank Sousa, Ike Shaffer, Robert MacArthur, Daniel Osgood, Ed Neville, Kristi Jenkins, Stephen Harris, Chris Bruning, Larry Cassen, Andrew Acuff, Daniel Casey, Cheryl Van De Beuken, Marjorie King and Diane Tentschert

Current GIS Related Activities

Don Ijams, of the Tucson Police Department, made a presentation on TOP: Targeted Operational Planning. TOP began operation in Tucson during May 2002 and is based on the 1993 NYPD Compstat model. The goal of the program is to reduce crime and increase the quality of life. It provides a forum where top managers can review the current crime situation and consider strategies designed to achieve program goals. By this process, more attention is placed on the street.

Periodic crime strategy meetings are held where commanders are held accountabile for activities and results. Core principles include: timely and accurate intelligence communication to all, rapid deployment that synchronized and focused, effective tactics and strategies and relentless follow-up and assessment.

The Tucson implementation has had a total of seven sessions, including the October 3 meeting. The meetings include Chiefs, Assistant Chiefs, Captains, Lieutenants, and Analysts. Maps, graphs, digital photographs, and PowerPoint slides (on two screens) are used for visual communication. The TPD Intranet web site has a wide distribution of information and provides easy access to staff. There are current crime problem descriptions, benchmarks, and various maps including high call locations. Early publication of TOP materials ensures there are no surprises. These materials are discussed at an analysis meeting the Monday that precedes the Thursday TOP sessions. The web site also has the agenda, meeting minutes, crime maps, and listings of future sessions.

Current issues include improved geocoding, to access exact addresses of the crime scenes and information linked to addresses. Also being expanded are the datatypes appended to map points and consideration whether they are useful in drawing connections. The TOP staff is using ESRI Spatial Analyst to examine crime clusters. How hot are the hotspots uncovered? Assessment and evaluation will help evaluate TOP program efforts.

Ron Platt, of the City Department of Transportation, handed out a sheet listing some of the monthly TDOT activities. They have recently completed a joint project with IT and Development Services for a MapGuide application. They have also developed and implemented several line and polygon digitizing applications, also using Mapguide. Several "maplets" have been developed with some free web-based java software and can be found at the TDOT Map center. The "Virtual Ride" application is fully developed and ready to deploy when the backup servers arrive.

City Hydrology is modeling storm runoff using a variety of digital data. With photography, digital elevation, drain modeling, some components in Arcview, and some that perform independent of those, watershed delineation and collection of necessary hydrologic data can occur. This is needed to figure how much water is going down the wash in order to do flood plain mapping and figure areas that may get flooded. When this gets implemented, it will be a very useful overall tool.

Larry Cassen, of Solid Waste Management, reported that many mobile home park addresses have been identified for purposes of recycling services. A GIS layer is available for anyone who is interested.

Steve Whitney, of Pima County DOT/Tech. Services, advised that the disk arrays on MARS that house the GIS library will be expanded by November 20. The storage size will move up to 100 GB.

Address Cleaning Project

A handout from Linda Coon was reviewed regarding the progress report of this project. Using a number of cross-checking procedures, DSD is continuing to update the master file with needed changes, missing addresses and identification of questioned locations needing further investigation. The GIS Cooperative is sponsoring a GIS intern position to assist in making the necessary changes and updates to the files.

GIS Cooperative Program Review

At the Chairman's (Donald Ijams) request, a program review is being undertaken. Todd Sander and Christine O'Connor of the City IT Department have been quite helpful in the preliminary discussions. The Cooperative has been in operation for three years and a review of its original intentions is being done. What are future needs and intentions for the Cooperative? The Chairman expressed his desire to step aside in the leadership role.

Other Business

The third Tuesday of the month, from 3:00 PM until 4:30, appears to be the best time for future Cooperative meetings. For November, however, the GIS Cooperative will host a special review meeting on Friday, November 15 at 1:30 PM.