User Conference 2007 - Special Achievement in GIS

The goal of our project was to facilitate the sharing of GIS data amongst a diverse and wide-spread user community within Pima County, Arizona. Some of the main entities in this community include local, state, and federal government agencies, Indian Nations, municipal planning organizations, utilities, engineering and development companies, E911, real estate agencies, land planning companies, and colleges.

As the use of GIS data was increasing exponentially, we saw the need for systems that would serve to centralize data, keep it up to date, and easily disseminate it to the user community. As geospatial technologies advanced, we have been able to enhance existing applications and develop newer and more powerful ones to meet increasingly sophisticated user needs. One of the biggest returns that we have realized from freely sharing data and fostering this within user community is the amount of valuable feedback that we get back from all levels of users, including the general public.

Business Problem Solved

The business problem that we solved was how to disseminate the most current GIS data to the user community. One of the primary benefits of this effort was that all GIS organizations in the region were able to use the same base layers, such as parcel boundaries, the street network, address points, and jurisdictional boundaries. This alone helped lay the foundation for data sharing, collaboration, and cooperative efforts towards enhancing the GIS layers to meet constantly evolving needs and applications.

The emergence of web-based mapping systems further advanced our ability to disseminate GIS data to the user community, along with providing a mechanism for developing applications that tie together a wealth of government data and provide it via an interactive map-based interface available world-wide. During the first quarter of 2007, our web-based mapping systems received 3,076,921 requests.

Technology Implemented

Our primary focus was on the data and its organization into a central GIS Library. The creation of the GIS Library was facilitated by an intergovernmental agreement (IGA) between Pima County and the City of Tucson. The IGA directed that the City procure an enterprise level server to house the GIS Library data, and that the County move its GIS data to the City's server along with developing the framework for the City to include its GIS data that was under development at the time. Currently there are over 600 user accounts on the enterprise server for County and City staff. An FTP server is currently used to distribute GIS layers to users other than County and City staff. Nightly, over 200 GIS layers are uploaded to the FTP server. Currently there are over 500 non-commercial use FTP accounts established, along with 16 commercial use FTP accounts.

Development Team Biography

Numerous teams were involved in this effort, and continue to be. The primary groups involved in the launch of this effort and the establishment of the GIS Library framework included transportation department GIS staff from both the County and City. Today, a core group of GIS professionals remain within the Pima County transportation department who act as a coordinating group for maintaining county-wide base layers, managing the GIS Library, and developing new applications for web-base mapping, and data distribution. A multitude of government GIS groups contribute to the GIS Library and participate in regional GIS coordination efforts.