Xiaohui Wang, Merle Bishop, Jim Malless, Eugene Henry, Carl Metz, Celeste Murdock, Phillip Scearce, and Rodger Simmons

Using GIS in Development Activity Tracking: An Inter-system Effort

Local governments have been seeking effective methods to track development activities taking place in their jurisdictions for years, yet few have been successful , mainly because of the large volume of development activities and limited resources to track them. As rapid urban growth mostly happens in the unincorporated areas surrounding a metropolis, the burden of growth management often falls upon the county governments in these areas. The purpose of this paper is to share with the Geographic Information System (GIS) community the experience that the Polk County Planning Division has gained from its development tracking practice using GIS (ArcInfo software) and a Relational Database Management System (Advanced Revelation software) over the recent years. While GIS is primarily employed to deal with spatial/geographic information, relational database management system (RDBMS) is one of the most widely used software to collect, store, and analyze development tracking data among local governments. The conclusion drawn from this paper will encourage cooperations between GIS managers and database administrators in their efforts to bring both systems together to track land development activities.

1. An Overview of RDBMS and GIS Usage in the Polk County Planning Division

RDBMS

Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) is extensively employed in planning and development management processes throughout the county. A large amount of data is stored, extracted, and processed with the Concurrency Management/Information Management System (CMIMS), an Advanced Revelation based RDBMS, in the daily activity of the Planning Division.

The major functions of RDBMS applications in planning and development management in the Polk County Planning Division include: (1) storing Census data and socioeconomic data that serve as a base for comprehensive and project plans; (2) tracking development status and concurrency management; (3) processing development review results and comments; (4) generating reports, forms, labels and letters to applicants/developers; (5)processing applications and payments for development project reviews and issuance of permits, and (6) serving as a vehicle of integrated planning information system. As a professional planning organization providing expertise and information to the general public and elected officials in Polk County, maintenance of the functionality and integrity of the database management system is critical.

GIS

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is widely used in planning fields because the spatial analysis and mapping capacities of GIS provide tremendous assistance to planning and development. The Polk County Planing Division's GIS primarily serves comprehensive planning and land use planning functions.

The principal GIS activities involved in planning and development management in the Polk County Planning Division include: (1) mapping for land use planning, classification, and regulatory purposes, such as future land use mapping, CPA (comprehensive plan amendment) mapping for public hearings, and UDC (Unified Development Code) mapping; (2) uploading/downloading data between GIS and CMIMS to adopt spatial data from GIS to CMIMS and to populate GIS with concurrency information from CMIMS; (3) generating thematic maps, showing political boundaries, transportation network systems, utility district boundaries, and special area maps, for plan development as well as customers and elected officials; and (4) performing spatial analyses including buffering, overlaying and routing analyses for plan development and environmental studies. GIS is an essential part of the integrated planning information system in the Division and is critical for tracking land development.

2. Use of GIS in Development Trends Newsletter Publication

The Polk County Planning Division publishes a quarterly newsletter entitled Development Trends. The purpose of this newsletter is to provide citizens an extract and analyses of the development in the county over the past half-year. GIS and database technologies are extensively employed in the newsletter process.

Data Extraction and Statistics

Most of the statistical data in the Development Trends publication are extracted from the CMIMS by using R/BASIC, an Advanced Revelation programming language. Based on the format required by ArcInfo, the data extracted for graphic presentation is manipulated for ArcInfo uploading. The majority of the data extraction is done through the CMIMS side by database administrators. However, frequent communication is required between the database administrator and the GIS analyst in order the make the format of the data portable between the two systems.

Data Presentation

GIS is the major tool for data presentation in the Development Trends newsletter. The schematic maps and graphs used in the newsletter include development activity maps, a development area map, a commissioner district map, etc. The indicators of development activities that are analyzed in the newsletter are building permit issuance, development application requests, and impact fee collection. The development activities are grouped by township and range and grey-scale plotted to represent the frequency of the developments.

3. Use of GIS in Concurrency Management

Concurrency management is a process associated with growth management that is mandated by the State of Florida. It tracks the capacities of facilities that are essential to development, such as traffic, water, sewer, solid waste, and recreation and openspace, etc. Most of the facilities have their respective service districts and GIS is the best tool to track the capacity of these service districts.

A remarkable advantage of the use of dynamic segmentation in transportation tracking is proved through the Polk County Planning Division's experience. Dynamic segmentation is used for dual purposes of attribute management and presentation in the concurrency management process. By using the routing tool of dynamic segmentation, a transportation link, which is sometimes made of more than one arc, is used as an integrated entity. Moreover, the presentations of the transportation maps are greatly improved by routing because of the labeling and marker endpoint features of routing.

4. Customizing GIS for Non-GIS Professionals

With many governmental agencies downsizing, automation has become a necessity. It is not an easy task to make complex ArcInfo AML (Arc Macro Language) applications simple enough for non-GIS professionals such as graphic technicians, CADD operators, or planners to use. In this instance, the multitude of benefits resulting from customization dramatically outweigh the time spent on customization.

We have been very successful in developing AML applications to enable a person with minimal GIS knowledge to perform complex GIS analyses, map series production and batch processing. This is usually made possible by using the "point-click" method of programming. This allows a user to perform different tasks simply by picking an icon or button from a menu.

5. Integration of GIS and RDBMS

Currently all GIS work needed by planners is requested through work orders. However, many planners in the planning division feel the need for a handy GIS capability to perform some minor GIS operations or analyses themselves. It is more efficient for a planner to retrieve a section or a subdivision map in his/her office when performing customer service or conducting case research than to request it done by a GIS technician.

As every planner has already had the access to the integrated development tracking database, an efficient way to give the planners ability to perform spatial tracking of the development activity is to integrate GIS with the database. Considerable efforts have been made in the past to enable CMIMS users to retrieve the county spatial data directly on the monitor through an operating system call to MapInfo software. However, it is not very useful because a location-specific retrieval mechanism is not established.

6. Conclusion

GIS has great capability to store and manipulate tabular information, however, it has certain restrictions such as high expertise and hardware/software requirements. Relational database is still the single most dominant avenue to collect, store, manipulate, and output data in the development tracking process, while GIS is the most powerful tool to analyze and present spatial related information. Most planning organizations of sizable jurisdictions in Florida use both systems to track development information.

To maximize the power of both systems, communication and cooperation between the professionals in both areas are most important. In the Polk County Planning Division, GIS and CMIMS are both under the management of the Data Management Section. Development tracking is a joint project of the staff of the two systems. Communication between GIS and CMIMS staff is routine and staff members of both sides cooperate with each other in various tasks. This cooperative environment has established a successful path to an effective development tracking mechanism.

We present this paper with GIS peers to encourage cooperation and communication between GIS professional and professionals in other systems. We hope that our experience could be valuable to other organizations that perform the similar job. Polk County has been successful in development tracking, and other jurisdictions can be successful too if their systems work together.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to take this opportunity to thank Mr. Shuqin Jin, GIS Analyst with the Polk County MIS Division, for his generous help in various resources. We appreciate Ms. Elizabeth Smith, Planner II with the Polk County Planning Division, for kindly revising this paper and giving her critique without reservation. We also would like to express our gratitude to the Planning, Building, and Development Service Divisions staff members for their hard work in development tracking, which makes the subject of this paper possible.

Author Information

Xiaohui Wang, AICP
Planner III
Polk County Planning Division
330 W. Church Street
Bartow, FL 33830
Telephone: (941) 534-6084
Fax: (941) 534-6021

Merle Bishop, AICP
Director
Polk County Planning Division
330 W. Church Street
Bartow, FL 33830
Telephone: (941) 534-6084
Fax: (941) 534-6021

Jim Malless, AICP
Planning Manager
Polk County Planning Division
330 W. Church Street
Bartow, FL 33830
Telephone: (941) 534-6084
Fax: (941) 534-6021

Eugene Henry, AICP
Principal Planner
Polk County Planning Division
330 W. Church Street
Bartow, FL 33830
Telephone: (941) 534-6084
Fax: (941) 534-6021

Carl Metz
GIS Supervisor
Polk County Planning Division
330 W. Church Street
Bartow, FL 33830
Telephone: (941) 534-6084
Fax: (941) 534-6021

Celeste Murdock
GIS Analyst
Polk County Planning Division
330 W. Church Street
Bartow, FL 33830
Telephone: (941) 534-6084
Fax: (941) 534-6021

Phillip Scearce
City Planner
City of Lake Wales
Lake Wales, FL 33830
Telephone: (941) 678-4195
Fax: (941) 678-4180

Rodger Simmons
GIS Technician II
Polk County Planning Division
330 W. Church Street
Bartow, FL 33830
Telephone: (941) 534-6084
Fax: (941) 534-6021