GIS Production
Local Government GIS
GIS Application Development
Legislative Reapportionment
The Institute's GIS Production workforce includes managers in charge of cartography, hydrography, internal support, soils, parcels, and transportation/addressing. These managers are backed by a large staff of GIS technicians, student employees, and interns.
The Institute offers a multitude of GIS solutions:
- County parcel mapping
- School district rezoning
- Transportation
- Global positioning system (GPS) technology
- Addressing systems using county road centerlines
- Creating new data and photorevising existing data using aerial photography or multi-spectral satellite imagery
- Digital GIS data conversion for use in other applications (for example, converting Natural Resource Conservation Service soil maps into digital format)
- Consulting and restructuring for GIS systems
Major projects include the High Resolution National Hydrography Dataset, the Georgia DOT State Map Update and the Georgia Forestry Commission Fire Locator Maps.
The local government team is available to assist county governments in making the right GIS decisions. The Institute provides a complete GIS solution—from data creation to employee training to no-obligation advice. With a strong emphasis on data quality and practical training, the local government team can create new data by building specialized coverages or enhancing existing GIS data. The local government team, drawing on extensive local government experience and backed by a staff of GIS and IT personnel, can assist county governments negotiate the challenges of implementing and managing a GIS project and can coordinate GIS activities with surrounding jurisdictions and state agencies.
The Institute can assist local government agencies in the following areas:
- Parcel data. The Institute converts paper tax maps and AutoCAD drawings into GIS datasets and combines GIS datasets with tax assessor databases such as Computer Assisted Mass Appraisal (CAMA). Counties can also save time and money by publishing their parcel data on the Web. To include your county in this program, contact the ITOS Local Government Group at (706) 542-5308.
- Using soil type data in other applications such as tax assessment, site suitability analysis, and determining erosion potential.
- Using land cover data for planning, change detection (land use, timber, economic growth, etc.), and property tax assessment
- Conservation use analysis
- Zoning. The Institute can create GIS zoning data from a GIS parcel dataset, account for split-zoned parcels, and create complete, high-quality, zoning datasets in short order.
- Creating addressing systems. The Institute can update and enhance county road datasets for many tasks such as emergency response and accurate assignment of new addresses.
- Creating utility infrastructure GIS using GPS. Unlike road centerlines, fire hydrants, valves, and other hardware such as meters cannot be seen on most aerial photographs. The Institute uses its GPS equipment to quickly and accurately locate utility infrastructure that will form an accurate foundation for the conversion of water, sewer, and gas line drawings. With a high-quality foundation, the Institute can digitize as-built drawings in such a way that underground features such as pipes are also accurately positioned with real-world coordinates.
By developing custom-designed toolkits for geographic analysis, the Institute delivers GIS technology to users who may not be GIS professionals. GIS applications developed by the Institute include:
- Utilities planning for Georgia Power Company (PowerTRAC)
- National Hydrography Dataset (NHD) Conversion Tools
- Windows Georgia Appraisal Program (WinGAP)
The Institute has its roots in applications developed for legislative reapportionment. Our "seed project" was a natural outgrowth of the spread of IT applications in government. Today ITOS provides technical support and hosts the legislative reapportionment site for the Legislative Reapportionment Services Office (LRSO) in Atlanta.
Understanding the political implications of the 2000 census is simply one phase in the ongoing mission of the LRSO, which serves one of the fastest-growing regions of the country with some of the most advanced technology in the business. The Institute successfully hosted the legislative reapportionment Web site for the most recent legislative reapportionment process, which began in late June 2001. The Web site has enabled Georgians to review and compare proposals online—in real time.
