Managing a Cooperative County-wide Orthophoto Project--It's More than Storing Just a Few Pictures

Author: Donna Wendt
Organization: City of Tacoma

747 Market St.
Tacoma, WA 98402
USA

Phone: (253) 591-2052
Fax: (253) 591-5232
dwendt@ci.tacoma.wa.us

Pierce County, Washington, led a cooperative orthophoto project also involving funding and project participation by the City of Tacoma and the City of Lakewood. Nies Mapping Group, Inc., used aerial photography photo scales of 1"= 600' and 1"=1,500' for the urban 6" pixel data and the rural 1' pixel data respectively. Deliverables included 2' or 5' contours.

This paper will feature the steps in managing the project from the creation of the RFP through funding, QC, data storage, and user applications for County and City government departments. The technical discussion will cover use of LizardTech's MrSID compressed image files and IMAGINE software by Erdas, as well as servers, networks, and deployment to ArcInfo, ArcView GIS, and the Internet.

The authors of this paper are senior GIS analysts from Pierce County and the City of Tacoma.