Washoe County’s GIS program has changed dramatically from its inception in 1984 to its current status. The paper examines how the program has changed from parcel maintenance to a regional decision support mechanism. It also discusses changes in ownership, accuracy, database storage, products, procedures and data dissemination methods. The final part discusses the future of the program.
Washoe County’s planning managers and staff began building the foundations of a departmental geographic information system (GIS) in 1984. It took a leap of faith and a lot of determination by the Planning Department to set out on their own to create a GIS. At the time, whether due to budget constraints, differences of priorities, or a lack of familiarity with GIS technology, other county departments, the cities of Reno and Sparks, and local government agencies declined to be part of the new program.
Creating a GIS from the ground up was not easy. Factors such as tight budgets, high hardware and software costs, and the nascent level of GIS technology in the 1980s limited what the new GIS could accomplish. The new software was complex and cumbersome, requiring extensive staff training. Despite obstacles, the Planning Department stuck to their vision. The first step was to develop a database of county parcel boundaries. Section corner control points were digitized from USGS 7.5 minute topographic quads, a necessity due to the size of Washoe County (6600 square miles) and the limited amount of surveyed control point data. Boundary lines for approximately 100,000 parcels were traced from assessor maps onto Mylar sheets for a “best fit” within the control points, and then digitized into a seamless database using a large-format digitizer (this process would eventually take ten years to complete). Although creating an automated land parcel map for the entire county was the highest priority, the development of other spatial datasets occurred at the same time, e.g., soil and hydrologic units, and city and county boundaries. Creating all those new datasets was costly: Over the next five years, approximately $1.5 million was spent developing the capabilities of the county’s GIS. The Planning Department went on to win numerous awards for their GIS products and services, including Esri’s Presidential Award in 1989.
In 1996, the County Manager’s Office hired a consultant to evaluate overall county GIS usage. One conclusion from the report was that the county needed to evolve its GIS capabilities from being departmental in nature to being more of an enterprise-wide spatial information tool, accessible by all county employees. To appeal to a wider audience, the report suggested, the GIS had to have better parcel accuracy and currency. This brought up the realization that adjusting multiple spatial data layers to align with the parcel database would be an arduous task involving multiple datasets, some with dubious origins. It was decided that the way to make a low cost, quick impact was to tackle the currency issue first. One major problem was that it took an inordinate amount of time to update the parcel database. After a parcel map was recorded, the new property information was sent to the Assessor’s Office and then, months later, would eventually be added to the parcel database. Staff members reduced this cycle from six months to approximately two months by simplifying database and editing procedures, and restructuring work processes.
A January 1997 flood that inundated the cities of Reno and Sparks along the Truckee River highlighted the need for more extensive GIS datasets. Although the Emergency Operations Center was equipped with maps showing the boundaries of the flooded areas, it was hard to comprehend the full impact of the disaster simply by looking at maps without accompanying photography. Shortly after the disaster, 1100 square miles of 1-foot resolution orthophotos were acquired for populated areas in southern Washoe County. Viewing the photography with parcel lines overlaid on top, it was obvious that something needed to be done to create a more accurate parcel database. Parcel lines at that time had positional accuracy errors of anywhere from 40 - 100 feet, depending on where the parcel was located.
Obtaining a highly accurate parcel database was the main impetus behind the creation of the Regional Basemap Committee in 1998 by a consortium of public and private interests. The Committee’s charter outlines goals intended to improve the accuracy and currency of the parcel database; to centralize technical map checks for Washoe County and the cities of Reno and Sparks; and to fund the acquisition of spatial data such as orthophotography and topography contours. Forming the Basemap Committee has been the highlight of regional cooperation among local government and private industries. Formal members of the Basemap Committee include Washoe County, the cities of Reno and Sparks, and Sierra Pacific Power Company. Nevada Bell and Truckee Meadows Water Authority have since become major subscribers to the Basemap Committee datasets.
In April 1998, the City of Sparks, with representatives from the City of Reno and Washoe County, selected a vendor to help automate its parcel level data within its jurisdiction. The same vendor was hired by Washoe County and the City of Reno in 1999 to convert their respective areas of the digitized parcel data layer to a database with coordinate geometry line attributes. After the vendor completed the conversions in May 2000, GIS staff took another 18 months to fine tune and QC the approximately 130,000 re-engineered parcels. The results: With the exception of downtown Reno and very old neighborhood areas, parcel line accuracy in the southern portion of the county is generally within 2.5 feet of ground coordinates, and new developments are usually accurate to within a few inches. Concerned about maintaining the accuracy of the new parcel database, Basemap Committee members funded the installation of five GPS base stations in November 1999 to support regional GPS network, surveying and other real-time tracking applications. Surveyors and engineering firms, as well as county personnel, now have 24-hour access to GPS correction files via the Internet. Concomitant with the GPS stations is a requirement that all county development project drawings be submitted digitally to the Public Works Department. These submittals help staff post address and parcel number information to a Web site for most county subdivision projects usually within 24 hours, and have helped to reduce the amount of time needed to update the parcel database from two months to approximately five working days.
Local public entities had been acquiring orthophotography to suit their individual needs, which resulted in regional photo data that were incompatible in terms of film type, scale, file format and accuracy. This incompatibility created problems when mapping projects requiring orthophotography extended across jurisdictional boundaries. In stepped the Basemap Committee, who started a regional orthophotography acquisition program in April 2000. Products from that program include 6-inch resolution orthophotos for urban areas and 1-foot resolution orthophotos for rural areas. Additional acquisitions of 2-foot interval contour data, and Landsat 7 satellite data, have added important tools for use in flood management, engineering design needs and regional mapping and analysis.
Selling data of any type for a fee can be a difficult task. GIS data is no exception. It’s been a Washoe County practice to provide spatial data to the public at minimal cost, and many organizations have grown accustomed to the service. In 1997, the Nevada Legislature created a new law that allows state public entities to recoup the costs of data collection and maintenance. In order to get local spatial data users accustomed to paying higher fees for high quality GIS data, GIS staff have held workshops to educate community members about the costs associated with acquiring, processing and managing spatial data. Moreover, Washoe County has had to be careful not to compete, price wise, with private industry data sellers. So far, selling GIS data has been a modest success: Fee income for the first year was approximately $176,000, most of which was used to offset maintenance costs.
After the creation of the new parcel database, all Washoe County GIS data were moved to the Nevada State Plane coordinate system, a change that has brought on controversy due to the use of a local relief modifier. Data format standards are Arc/Info coverages and shapefiles. Washoe County is responsible for maintaining all Basemap Committee data, including the parcel database, street centerlines, orthophotos and contours. Reno, Sparks and Sierra Pacific Power Company have online access to GIS data stored on county servers or FTP sites. Truckee Meadows Water Authority and Nevada Bell will soon have similar access rights.
Over the last four years, Washoe County and Basemap Committee members have worked hard to establish a solid regional GIS technology foundation. Enhancements to spatial data accuracy and currency, data maintenance procedures, coordinate system and data format standardizations, and the establishment of a regional intranet have been instrumental in the successful expansion of local GIS activities. Noting strong countywide support and a spirit of regional cooperation, Washoe County senior management and department heads, well aware of the benefits associated with an enterprise-wide GIS, have backed their enthusiasm by providing funding and resource support for GIS core projects, and by keeping barriers to a minimum while working across departmental boundaries. Additionally, because the GIS Division is part of the IT Department--whose director is the former GIS manager who initiated the modernization and regionalization of the parcel database--support from IT staff is exceptional.
Washoe County is working toward integrating GIS functions with other countywide non-spatial databases. For example, database applications used for issuing business permits will allow users to view spatial information in a speedy and reliable manner, and work is progressing to link the Assessor’s Office Computer Assisted Mass Appraisal system with GIS data through ArcSDE. The goal is to have all countywide applications with strong spatial components integrated with GIS.
Central to expanding the usefulness of the county’s enterprise-wide GIS will be incorporating legacy utility data with outside agencies utility data into seamless datasets registered to the parcel database. These types of spatial data will help the community tremendously in resource planning, engineering development and emergency management. Extensive coordination will be required, however, to develop a consensus plan on how to integrate the utility data from the various agencies with those developed internally. Upgrades to Washoe County’s five GPS base stations will increase the size of the service areas and eliminate current blind spots. A countywide capital improvement plan is being considered to replace GIS PCs every two years to help keep spatial data users at the forefront of computer hardware technology.
Other future improvements to Washoe County’s GIS include converting sets of “old data” to match the new parcel database and orthophotography. GIS staff will, with the help of ArcSDE technology, move to vertically integrate data layers so changes in one layer automatically update information in other related layers. Currently, Washoe County is working toward standardizing and consolidating the assignment of addresses for use in various county business applications. Lastly, the GIS Division is planning to develop other advanced applications tailored to specific department needs.
Although Washoe County has made progress in moving its GIS capabilities forward, a few issues remain:
Can software development catch up with our needs? Current ArcInfo software programs still have problems manipulating large image files, especially in the plotting process.
Can GIS professionals catch up with the technology? It is a welcome sign to see a new generation of GIS software getting much more user-friendly. However, as the cycle of major software updates speeds up, and due to the increased diversification of software applications, GIS professionals must maintain heavy training agendas in order to remain current and informed.
Can network infrastructures catch up with large data flow volumes? Washoe County’s GIS database contains a large volume of orthophotography and satellite images. By the end of the year, the database will be approximately one terabyte in size. Washoe County’s IT Department has been working hard to upgrade the county’s computer network system in order to meet increased bandwidth demands. With an increasing number of users accessing large image files, however, it may inevitably slow down the system, even using highly compressed image files.
What type of data should be on the Web or accessible to the public because of homeland security? GIS data are often vital to providing a host of services to county residents. There is also the potential of someone using these data for unscrupulous means. For example, Washoe County provides an Internet application that can be used to search assessor records based on a known address to pinpoint a parcel’s location and to retrieve ownership information. County officials must weigh the Sheriff’s Office concern of providing this type of information to the public, against the needs of the Assessor’s Office, which relies on this application to disseminate property information at minimal cost.
How do we balance free data distribution and licensed fee data distribution? In conjunction with the Regional Basemap Committee, Washoe County licenses basemap data for a fee. The purpose of the license fees is to recover partial database maintenance costs from user organizations. The licensed fee policy, however, has brought up concerns of price gouging. Some local private industries complain that pricing structures for GIS data are set too low. Currently, Washoe County provides a variety of GIS data free ofcharge for general use; data used for detailed planning and engineering purposes are available for a fee.
What level of public and private cooperation will ensure the viability of a regional GIS? Regional seamless datasets improve mapping efficiencies, reduce GIS labor costs and increase data usability. To gain these benefits, individual entities will have to decide if it is in their best interest to give up some of their decision-making authority in order to form a consensus regarding data creation, maintenace and dissemination. So far, this has not been a serious problem for Washoe County and other Basemap Committee members.
GIS program staff members have been successful in educating management and department heads about the value of using GIS technology. Yearly workshops keep GIS users informed about new software and hardware developments. Many employees now routinely access spatial data from three GIS data servers. Washoe County’s GIS has progressed from a planning to an enterprise-wide spatial information tool, used by county personnel and a variety of local public and private entities to display spatial data, and to help them make informed business decisions.
Thomas Lo, Ph.D., GIS Manager, Washoe County
1001 East Ninth Street, Reno, Nevada 89520
Phone: (775) 328-3614
Fax:(775) 328-3648
E-mail: tlo@mail.co.washoe.nv.us
Gary Beekman, B.S., GIS Coordinator, Washoe County
1001 East Ninth Street, Reno, Nevada 89520
Phone: (775) 328-3619
Fax: (775) 328-3648
E-mail: gbeekman@mail.co.washoe.nv.us
Gary Zaepfel, M.S., GIS Analyst II, Washoe County
1001 East Ninth Street, Reno, Nevada 89520
Phone: (775) 328-3627
Fax: (775) 328-3648
E-mail: gzaepfel@mail.co.washoe.nv.us