|
Back to SAG Winners 2004
Sioux City and Woodbury County Iowa GIS
View Photo(s) of Award Presentation
Project Goal
Woodbury County, Iowa covers over 873 square miles, roughly double the size of most other counties in the state. Sioux City, the county seat, is positioned in the NW corner of the county. To help ensure equal access to all residents across the county, an effort to modernize the old plats and CAMA data into a GIS was initiated. A good GIS was seen as being indispensable to E911 services and of great value to many of the departments in both Sioux City and Woodbury County government. The roots of the Sioux City –Woodbury County GIS date back to 1997, when Sioux City Assessor Mel Obbink and Woodbury County Assessor Kathy Sands joined resources to develop and implement a GIS that would effectively serve both jurisdictions.
The goal of the project was to increase the access to information which was duplicated many times in different offices by maintaining one centralized set of maps that could be served to government offices over their common computer network and to the public over the internet.
Learn more about us
Learn more about our application
Business Problem Solved
Through technology the county has become a much smaller place. Abstractor’s which previously had permanent work areas in the Recorder’s office are now only there a couple of time during the week. Citizens across the county and those interested parties elsewhere are just a few clicks away from a huge collection of data on any property in the county.
With this Assessment function in mind, the base map project has served as a foundation for the GIS needs of departments such as Police, Fire, Schools, Environmental Services, City Planning, Real Estate, and Elections to name a few. Local E911 services are being dispatched with the help of GIS tracking and analysis of incidents are compared using the same.
The success of the project has been phenomenal and both Assessor’s Offices as-well-as the County recorder’s office have noticed the demand for public help at the counter down by 70% or more. With the ability to display CAMA data combined to its geospatial location, assessors were able to eliminate many taxation irregularities that would’ve otherwise not been discovered.
Technology Implemented
Software:
ArcGIS 8.3
- ArcInfo - 3 seats
- ArcView – 38 seats
ArcSDE 8.3 – 1 seat 2 CPU
ArcIMS 4.0.1 – 1 seat 2 CPU
ArcGIS Extensions:
- 3-D Analyst – 1 seat
- Spatial Analyst – 1 seat
Novalis Parcel Editor
(Switching to The Sidwell Company’s Parcel Builder in Aug. ’04 as their first Beta site)
Microsoft SQL 2000
Hardware (servers):
ArcSDE Server – IBM xSeries 360, Dual 1.4 gig processors, 3.6 gig RAM, Windows 2000.
ArcIMS Server – IBM xSeries 360, Dual 1.4 gig processors, 3.6 gig RAM, Windows 2000.
Web services:
Sioux City Assessor’s Office Website – Parcel maps with CAMA data for Sioux City Parcels
hosted by The Sidwell Company
www.siouxcityassessor.com
Woodbury Assessor’s Office Website – Parcel maps with soils information for Woodbury
County Parcels outside of Sioux City
Hosted by ProMAP
www.woodburyassessor.org/pmc
Sioux City Economic
Development Website - Available commercial and industrial real estate
with demographic data
www.discoversiouxcity.com
Sioux City Police Department - Public Relations and Crime Statistic Mapping
Hosted by Woodbury County Information and
Communications Commission
http://www.siouxcitypolice.com/stats_crime/stats.html
GIS Intranet - An ArcIMS driven intranet mapping site for all city and county employees to utilize.
Development Team Biography
The Sioux City – Woodbury County GIS is benefited by the input and efforts of many users, but the core development team consists of four people.
Mel Obbink and Kathy Sands (Sioux City and Woodbury County Assessors respectively) worked together to envision and to fund the GIS. They continue to shape and direct the efforts of the team as technology changes. Mel and Kathy promote the use of GIS technology through the Iowa State Association of Assessors. Both have invested heavily in maintaining a high standard of training for their staffs.
Bob Heien is the GIS Systems Analyst; he maintains the GIS servers and is responsible for creation of much of the web technologies that serve such information. Bob helps organize the SiouxLand Users Group (SLUG) and a City – County GIS educational meeting. Bob is a part of the Woodbury County Information and Communications Commission Information Technologies (WCICC-IT) which serve both Sioux City and Woodbury County government.
Ron Koch is the GIS Cadastral Technician; the GIS system contains about 58,000 parcels. Ron maintains and creates maps for other departments and for public requests. Ron has been the event chair for the SiouxLand Users Group’s GIS SLUG-fest for both 2003 and 2004.
|
|
)
)
)