GIS Cooperative Meeting Notes

Tuesday, January 20, 2004

In Attendance: Present: Dave Koss, TDOT; Larry Cassen, Environmental Svcs.; Steve Whitney, PCDOT; Jack Avis, Marana; Steve Smith, TDOT; Chris Kelleher, TDOT; Laura Pinnas, TEP; Teri Schultz, TFD; Andrew Acuff, PCDSD; Manny Rosas, PAG; Ron Platt, TDOT; Greye Passarelli, Pvt.

Steve Whitney presiding.

New GIS Cooperative Chairman

Steve Whitney, the new GIS Cooperative Chairman, wanted to provide his contact information, so those interested could contact him:

Steve Whitney
GIS Manager
Pima County DOT/FCD
201 N Stone AV, 9th Floor
Tucson AZ 85701
(520) 740-6729
steve.whitney@dot.pima.gov

What's new in the GIS Library

This will be a standing item on the agenda, to report on additions/changes in the Pima County GIS Library.

Contours and elevation models - CN_* and EM_*, i.e. CN_T13 or EM_T13. CN_* = Township row tiles containing vendor-supplied contours, from the PAG orthophoto projects. See metadata example.

Please note: An area of the Houghton Road corridor within the 1998 project area was re-flown as part of the 2002 project, and there are discrepancies in the elevation values between the two years. Efforts are under way by TDOT to field verify the data.

EM_* = Township row tiles containing vendor-supplied breaklines, from the PAG orthophoto projects. See metadata example.

Both layers should only be used for reference, and not for TIN or elevation model generation. Both layers are now available on the County's ftp site. The site has information on accessing GIS Library layers off of the ftp site.

County Board of Supervisors boundaries, DIST_BOS and DISTBOS5.

Clarified that DIST_BOS contains the County Board of Supervisors jurisdictional boundaries effective until the end of this year. DISTBOS5 contains the new jurisdictional boundaries that will become effective the first of 2005, and are being used for this November's election.

Precincts, DISTVOTE and DISTVCEN.

DISTVOTE, voter precincts, has been updated based on new State congressional and legislative districts. DISTVCEN is a version of DISTVOTE with Census 2000 PL94-171 population attributes.

Landuse layers, LU_COT93, LU_CNT90, CPINTENS

This item was in response to a data request from ASU for landuse layers. Jack Avis has since sent me Marana's layer, and I will get that into the GIS Library. Andrew Acuff has since supplied me with PCDSD contacts and I will follow up with them regarding an updated County layer. I will contact COTDSD, Oro Valley, Sahuarita, and South Tucson.

Budget

We have $43,000 left in the budget for this fiscal year, ending June 30th. If you have any procurement requests, please get them in by the end of February. This will help us plan for the use of remaining funds for special projects (see below).

E911/TFD

At the December meeting, Christine O'Conner of City I.T. began a discussion on focusing the Cooperative's effort towards one or two major issues over the next year. One of the potential areas that were discussed centered on the Tucson Fire Department, and their desire and needs for integrating more GIS into their operations. Further discussions have expanded to include the use of GIS in E911 and communication systems within the state.

We continued these discussions and generally came to consensus that this would be a good focus area for the GIS Cooperative. The project has direct ties to the re-engineering of the street network into a routable layer, as well as direct ties to Homeland Security, and possible grant potential. It will result in the enhancement of infrastructure and hazard layers, including the potential for acquiring building footprints, oblique photography, and other advanced data. It has a big community impact.

TFD is tentatively scheduled to present at the February meeting. I have asked them to report on their existing processes that involve mapping and geospatial data, to give us a baseline for planning our direction.

It was also discussed that TPD's demo on their in-vehicle GIS integration would be a good presentation for TFD management to see. Ideally, the presentation would take place at TFD's downtown facilities.

GIS Parcel Landbase

Laura Pinnas, presented a TEP draft proposal for CAD standards for use when submitting electronic drawings of new subdivisions/developments. TEP needs to get subdivision/development plans as early as possible for their planning purposes. This has always been a huge issue, dealing with questions regarding who needs/gets subdivision plans first, whether a system can be developed by which firms can submit subdivision/development plans electronically, whether CAD standards, cross-reference tables, and/or data dictionaries can be implemented for expediting updates to the GIS parcel landbase, whether this effort relates to electronic plan review, and many, many other questions and issues. A similar effort was started years ago, named Regional Electronic Plan Submittal (REPS), but for various reasons, REPS is no longer active. This continues to be a need in the GIS community.

From our discussion, this could obviously serve as a second focus for the Cooperative and Laura has volunteered to head a sub-committee to further explore this issue.

Open Floor

The meeting attendance was low, which reminded me that I need to send out a meeting reminder =:-).

Jack Avis reported on the Arizona Center of Population Monument project. The state level effort will eventually expand to the counties as well. All these monuments will be NGS Blue Booked.

Next Meeting:

Tuesday, February 17, 2004 / 3:00 P.M / City I.T. Pueblo Room