Have GIS, Will Travel: Using GIS as an Interactive Decision Support Tool in Community Meetings

The Maui Planning Department is the lead planning agency for the County of Maui, Hawaii. The county is made up of four major islands: Maui, Molokai, Lanai and Kahoolawe. This presents special problems in providing accurate land information at community meetings. In 1996, the department opted for portability in developing a laptop-based GIS to support its community planning program. After many meetings and much travel over land and sea, GIS has become an integral part of the county's planning process. This paper will document the sometimes bumpy road to interactive GIS.

BACKGROUND

The County of Maui is made up of four major islands: Maui, Molokai, Lanai and Kahoolawe. The four islands are divided into nine (9) community planning regions (see Photo 1). County regulations require that public hearings on amendments to the regional community plans be held within the affected region. This presents special problems as some of the regions are only accessible by aircraft or boat.

In 1997, the County Planning Department was midway through a comprehensive update of the regional community plans. The update included dozens of proposed amendments which affected scores of properties within each community plan region. All of these changes had to be reviewed by the appropriate planning commission and then transmitted to the Maui County Council (the County's legislative body and final authority on planning and zoning issues) for review and adoption.

During the course of the Council's review of the update of the Kihei-Makena Community Plan, it became readily apparent that the use of hard copy exhibits was adversely affecting the planning process. Whenever a complex question arose, the process would be put on hold while the department researched the issue and then transferred the findings onto an acetate overlay. The overlay would be draped over a hand-colored display map (1:24,000 scale) of the region. Delays of several weeks were commonplace.

Finally, the County Council and the Planning Director agreed that the situation had become untenable. The only solution was to develop a fully functional GIS which could be used to support the Council's deliberations on the community plans. The staff of the Office of Council Services and the Department of Planning were directed to deliver a working GIS for the Kihei-Makena region within 90 days.

THE PROJECT TEAM AND THEIR APPROACH

The project team was made up of Wayne Boteilho (Legislative Analyst within the Office of Council Services), Walle Landenberger and Bill Medeiros (Cartographic Technician and Planner, respectively, within the Planning Department). The team immediately realized that, while replacing hand-colored maps with computer-generated maps would improve quality, paper maps were not going to be the answer. What was really needed was a fully interactive GIS that could be taken out to community meetings and be able to answer questions on-the-fly. Once this goal was set, the team divided up the workload and dove in.

The initial step was developing the system specs. This turned out to be the easy part. Portability required using a laptop. Both Planning and Council Services were already using Microsoft Windows as their base operating systems. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that if you needed to run GIS on a Windows laptop, you had to get ArcView.

After purchasing a laptop and a copy of ArcView (version 3.0a), the Planning Department licensed digital parcel data for the Kihei region from an Oahu GIS vendor, GDSI Hawaii. Using the parcel base, Planning began to develop layers of Community Plan designations and zoning. Planning also acquired GIS data from the Hawaii Office of State Planning. However, as is commonly the case, the datasets were in different map projections. The State data had to be reprojected into the County's map projection and datum. Initially, this had to be outsourced. Later, with the help of the Esri CA/NV/HI/GU Regional Office staff, the Esri Hawaii User Group was able to figure out the answer to a particularly pesky problem involing trying to convert between Hawaiian datums. Once this was resolved, the Planning Department was able to do reprojections inhouse using ArcView.

While the Planning Department worked at acquiring and developing base layers for the GIS, Council Services contracted Royce Jones of GDSI Hawaii to provide GIS support and to digitize specific data layers requested by the County Council. These layers included historic and cultural features, wetland areas and proposed roadways. Council Services also scanned photographs taken during the Council's visits to the various sites. These scanned photos were loaded into the machine and pulled up using ArcView hotlinking tool. (See photo 2)

THE SYSTEM MAKES ITS DEBUT

In June 1997, the County Council prepared to take up the Kihei plan again. The team feverishly worked to get the data double-checked and edited. Of course, an hour before the meeting, the machine crashed and the entire project had to be rebuilt from scratch. The work continued as the meeting started and the Council went through the initial items on the agenda. Finally, the lights went down, the digital projector was switched on and the outline of the Kihei-Makena Community Plan region came up on screen.

The system worked flawlessly. The Planning staff explained the various data layers while Royce Jones ran the machine. Zoom in. Query the ownership of a parcel. Zoom out. Show all the proposed amendments to the community plan. Zoom in. Identify which changes are in proximity to defined wetlands. After a few questions about the system, the Council started to discuss the Kihei community plan in earnest. As the discussion began to center on the amount of vacant hotel-designated lands within the region, the staff jogged over to Royce and whispered, "Building value equals zero and CP equals 200."

On screen, the parcels started to draw up in ArcView's standard selection color. Staff leaned into the microphone and said, "The properties highlighted in yellow are vacant and designated for hotel use."

We haven't used very much clear acetate since then. And three years later, the system continues to impress. We make a concerted effort to add a little more functionality each time we start up a new project. We work diligently on developing new data as well as verifying and editing existing data. Incremental improvements, no matter how small, add up over time.

WHERE ARE WE NOW

ArcView has not changed the world as we know it. But it has made us more able to do the job that the taxpayers of Maui pay us to do. Nor does GIS guarantee better decisionmaking. But it does much to promote better informed decisions.

Since 1997, the GIS has been used in the Community Plan updates for three regions: Kihei-Makena, Lanai and Wailuku-Kahului. The Planning Department is already gearing up for the Molokai update later this year. The GIS has also been used to support major zoning projects such as the Lanai Comprehensive Zoning project which rezoned over 800 individual properties.

There has also been an interesting side benefit to our decision to use interactive GIS in meetings rather than paper maps. Participants, no matter which side of an issue they are on, feel more a part of the process when they can see the information live and can pose questions and see the results come up on screen. The GIS has also quickly resolved potential disagreements or misunderstandings and kept meetings on track and let the participants focus on the key issues.

GIS has become an integral part of the planning process within the County of Maui. The system has been taken on the road to community meetings and public hearings in school cafeterias, community centers and libraries throughout the county. The County has begun to utilize GIS to support community-based efforts in areas such as disaster preparedness and the identification of community-defined cultural resources. (See photo 4)

In 1999, Esri recognized the efforts of the GIS team with a Special Achievement in GIS award. This proves that a small-scale GIS can make it to the big leagues. In March of this year, the County initiated a reorganization to move the Planning Department's GIS team into the Office of the Managing Director in order to promote countywide GIS. To this date, seven County agencies, including the Department of Public Works, County Civil Defense and the Maui Police Department have begun GIS projects.

THE LESSONS WE'VE LEARNED

We have learned a lot in these last three years. We have tried share this knowledge with others in Maui and throughout the state through conferences and user group meetings. This paper gives us the opportunity to share some of what we have learned with folks outside of Hawaii. And, if there is one thing that we have learned, it is that you don't need a multi-million dollar system to create an effective GIS. A clear focus on a specific goal or issue, a little ingenuity and a lot of hard work can go a long way in reducing costs and maximizing the potential for success.

Here are our top ten keys for a successful GIS:

• First, get the right people. This is half the battle right here. If you get the right people on your team and get the right consultants, then you will have a shot at a successful project. Get the wrong people, and it will be uphill the whole way.

• Get the right software. For us, the right software is ArcView (or as we say in Maui: ArcView no ka oi!). Whatever software you choose, be sure that there are other people in your area already using it. And if vendors want to show you a demo, make sure that it is the real software running real data. Powerpoint is not GIS.

• Memory is more important than megahertz. When purchasing hardware, people tend to over-estimate the importance of processor speed. Most of our experience shows that you will run out of memory (especially RAM) before you come close to exceeding the CPU's capacity. This is particularly the case if you use large raster files, such as aerial photos or DRGs.

• Find one clearly defined goal and go get it. It is easy to get off track, so pick a goal and stick to it until you deliver it. And remember the LHF principle (LHF means "Low Hanging Fruit"). Do what is achievable and start getting results right away.

• Walle's Law: Everybody does grunt work. There will always be more than enough work for everyone, so everyone works. Work also includes lobbying and signing checks -- and occasionally, begging and scrounging.

• Bill's Corollary to Walle's Law: Know your data. If you are going to be running GIS live, you have to know what data you have and what all the codes mean. And the best way to know your data is the work on the data yourself. Also, try to anticipate any off-the-wall questions that may come up. Community meetings tend to have free flowing discussions, so bring along any data that may be meaningful to the community, even if the issue isn't on the agenda and even if the issue is not directly within your agency's purview.

• Know your software. Equally important, you need to know the ins and outs of your software. Luckily, ArcView is easy to use and quite simple to customize using free scripts and extensions. For example, the Named Extents sample extension has proven to be incredibly useful. This extension creates a drop down menu where you can easily define geographic areas of interest and then quickly navigate to these areas during your presentation.

• Make the ArcScripts webpage your second home. If your program is rolling in dough, then hundreds of free scripts and extensions may not interest you. But for the rest of us, funding is always a problem. Esri's ArcScripts webpage is like having a full-time GIS programmer working for you for free.

• Your best friends hang out in user groups. So, how about having a few dozen GIS geeks working for you. Your local Esri User Group represents an incredible resource. Free advice. Free scripts and extensions. And if you don't have an Esri User Group near you, then check out the user group websites (the Esri Maui User Group website is at: http://www.maui.net/~mauigis/Esrimug.html).

• Your Esri Regional Office is YOUR Esri Regional Office. Still not satisfied? OK, how about having hundreds of GIS professionals ready to help you out. That's what Esri is there for. And it all starts at your friendly, local Regional Office. These folks are there to help make your GIS project a success. We cannot thank the CA/HI/NV/GU Regional Office enough for all their support throughout our sometimes stressful, but ultimately successful, project.

On that note, let me pass along a big mahalo or two to all the folks that have helped us out along the way.

ALOHA AND MAHALO

First, let me thank the rest of the project team:

Wayne Boteilho, Legislative Analyst, Office of Council Services

Walle Landenberger, Cartographer, currently on special assignment as GIS Project Team Leader, Office of the Mayor

Eric Matsuo, former GIS Intern, Maui Community College Cooperative Education Program

Ray Legsay, former GIS Intern, Maui Community College Cooperative Education Program

Robin Wainui, GIS Intern, Maui Community College Cooperative Education Program

Second, the folks behind the data and the software:

Royce Jones, "Mr. GIS", founder of GDSI Hawaii and currently head of the Esri Hawaii Office.

Craig Tasaka and the staff of the Hawaii State Office of Planning, GIS Program.

Lee Johnston and staff of the Esri California/Nevada/Hawaii/Guam Regional Office for their patience and support. And especially a big mahalo for nominating us for the 1999 SAG Award.

Thanks also to Esri for giving the folks from Maui the opportunity to toss in our two cents at User Conference 2000.

Next, the folks that got us into this back in 1997:

David Blane, former Director of the Maui Planning Department, currently Director of the Hawaii State Office of Planning.

Lisa Nuyen, former Director of the Maui Planning Department.

Alan Arakawa, former member of the Maui County Council and former Chair of the Council Planning Committee.

Alice Lee, former member of the Maui County Council and currently Director of the Maui Department of Human Concerns and Housing.

James "Kimo" Apana, former member of the Maui County Council and currently Mayor of the County of Maui.

Pat Kawano, chair of the Maui County Council.

Sol Kaho'ohalahala, former member of the Maui County Council and currently State Representative for the 7th District (Lanai, Molokai and West Maui).

Charmaine Tavares, member of the Maui County Council and current chair of the Council Planning Committee.

J. Kalani English, member of the Maui County Council.

Wayne Nishiki, member of the Maui County Council.

Dennis Nakamura, member of the Maui County Council.

And finally, much thanks go out to you for reading this paper (or worse yet, actually sitting through my presentation). I hope some of this has proven helpful to you.

Mahalo nui loa from the Maui GIS folks...