Update: Local GIS Tidbits
An update on the The city of Longview, WA tree mapping. “The Longview City Council decided Thursday to reject a $10,000 state grant for mapping Longview’s urban forest with satellite imagery, saying the city’s grant matching funds would be better spent battling the aphid problem.”
- TDN.com
—- original post 7/22/10—-
McKinney, Texas has four city council districts and needs to update them based on the 2010 census. Who’ll do that work? The same firm that did it ten years ago: a law firm.
According to a timeline presented during the council presentation, Bickerstaff Heath Delgado Acosta LLP will begin collecting and developing Geographic Information System (GIS) data later this year in anticipation of the deadline for the release of census data: April 1, 2011.
I had no idea law firms did that sort of work.
Chesterfield County, Virginia won the Digital Counties Survey 2010 a “competition” put together by the Center for Digital Government, the National Association of Counties, Government Technology magazine and the Digital Communities program, Among the tools cited that helped capture the award:
* Citizen GIS, a new online-mapping and aerial-photography feature available on the county’s website that is making county geographic information more readily available to the public.
The city of Longview, WA plans to find out the details of its tree cover using high-resolution satellite imagery. “By creating an aerial map of Longview’s urban forest, which includes trees on private property, the city can evaluate where it needs to plant more trees to achieve or maintain a goal of a 30 percent canopy. In future years, the map can be used as a baseline for comparison.”
The project will cost about $21,400, part of which will come from a $10,000 grant from the Department of Natural Resources Urban and Community Forestry Program.
- TDN.com
Even the smallest of public transportation “agencies” can get GPS tracking. The wholly volunteer run Astoria Oregon trolley now has its own GPS-enabled phone and a system in place to broadcast its location to the Chamber of Commerce website. Rides are still $1 per person or $2 per day.
