Collier ironing out GIS wrinkles for Web use

Most of the county's departments have some type of geographical information system.

GIS is a computer program that manages geographical information, like zoning for development or street locations for transportation.

But there's a problem with the county's information.

"One of the issues we're dealing with is our data is not lining up with each other," said Bert Miller, the county's GIS manager.

So the county is creating a base land layer for the GIS program so there are no discrepancies.

To get all the information aligned, the county has to resurvey the land. A public land survey of the urban areas has been completed, and now the county, with a budget of $250,000, is undertaking a survey of the rural, undeveloped lands.

Collier County, like the rest of the United States, is divided into a grid comprised of squares of land. Using land monuments from the original grid, surveyors need to record the accurate corner coordinates for the land.

"What it helps to do is you can take those survey monuments, and they're set in the ground," Miller said. "Then we actually know the coordinates for them."

Surveyors even need to find the exact location of the county's corners.

This information will serve as the base layer for the rest of GIS.

Parcel and zoning layers can be placed on top of this base so county departments, developers and land owners have the same information.

"If we don't have a common base layer and a developer submits data to us," Miller said, "our data may not align together."

But with the public land survey, the county, the property appraiser's office, and developers will have the same information.

And that information will be available online so that when a developer clicks on a parcel's corners the state-certified coordinates appear.

After the land's corners are marked, the county can take aerial photographs to identify those markings and the parcels of land.

The photographs can then be uploaded onto the Web and the public may access them.

"If we have section corners we know what is ground truth," Miller said. "You don't have to keep fixing the data. ... The last thing you want to do is give out bad information."

The land information can be used to determine flood plains and hurricane zones. Layers of information can be placed on top of the base layer to determine the Future Land Use Element, or zoning plans, for a certain area or to find where county easements are and where they are needed.

GIS can store voter precinct information so that a person can find out where he or she needs to vote. For public meetings, mailing addresses within a certain distance of a parcel can be found.

"We need to get on the same base layer," Miller said, "so we can then freely exchange data."

The county also is working with other independent govern ment entities, like the supervisor of elections and the property appraiser, to share and incorporate all types of county information.

Some of the information will be available online by the end of the year, Miller said.

Already, the county appraiser's office has a GIS program that the public can access. Online aerial photos of the entire county can be viewed, said county tax roll analyst Kevin Lilly. The appraiser's office regularly takes aerial photographs of the entire county and county government uses those photos. But the surveys will determine the exact coordinates based on a standard system developed in the early 1980s. The state must must certify the coordinates.

Local builder Todd Gates uses the appraiser's GIS to determine the condition of land and its neighbors. He can e-mail photos to clients and architects.

"Really, it's kind of an old clich," Gates said. "A picture speaks a thousand words."

Before GIS, developers would have to obtain the written public records and do research on a piece of land, Gates said. Now all of that information can be stored on a computer.

"Having that information at your fingerprints is very productive and extremely informative," Gates said. "It saves a lot of time and makes things more efficient."

But as the county grows and changes, so does GIS.

"There's never a time that we're done," Miller said of GIS updating. "We're always improving our data."