A new Real-Time Property Search Application has been published for the largest county in Tennessee. Cheyenne Johnson, the current Assessor of Property for Shelby County, which includes the City of Memphis and its metropolitan area, published the web mapping application to facilitate increased functionality and usability for public consumption and enhance the experience of the applications’ users. The assessor’s site is the most visited in the state with over 90 million recorded visits. The Assessor’s Office worked with GEO-Jobe GIS Consulting, a consulting firm out of Nashville, Tennessee, who developed the Real-Time Property Search Application. The new web mapping application will make it even easier to tap into a wealth of property related information.
The site is built on Esri’s ArcGIS for Server technology and the ArcGIS API for JavaScript. Key features of the site are:
Current Data: Through the use of nightly data transfer routines, the property data being exposed via the site is updated on a nightly basis to offer the public up-to-date information.
Advanced Property Searching: Users are given the option to search for property by a variety of criteria such as owner, address or parcel ID. Upon identifying a property on the map or selecting a property from the search results, the map control zooms to the subject property and displays additional related information.
Service Mashups: Users can view a variety of basemaps from Esri, Google and the State of Tennessee’s ArcGIS for Server environment (Tennessee Map). Based on the current extent of the map control, users can also view content from Bing Bird’s Eye, Google Street View and Google Earth.
Sales and Foreclosures: Users can view color coded parcels based on recent sales and/or foreclosures. In addition, more information on the sale (date, amount, etc.) can be viewed by simply hovering over a sale parcel.
To avoid a large financial investment and increased IT responsibilities, the site is being hosted in the GEO-Jobe GIS – GEOPowered Cloud environment. While the site can be implemented on-site, the decision to leverage the GEOPowered Cloud allowed the Assessor’s Office to quickly realize the benefits of an enterprise GIS with minimal financial and staff related expenditures.
GEO-Jobe GIS Consulting develops and hosts numerous web mapping applications for local governments, utilities, and airports throughout the country. According to the firm, the Real-Time Property Search Application (like the one developed for Shelby County) will soon become a revenue generator for counties. GEO-Jobe GIS has partnered with Maps inDeed Inc. to offer clients the most complete GIS data access and acquisition solution on the market. The integration of the Maps inDeed Online GIS Storefront targets the commercial sector and gives clients the ability to easily sell GIS data through an automated purchasing process without the need for manual distribution. Keep an eye out for future posts on the key components of the storefront that set it apart from the competition.
Consider checking out the GEO-Jobe GIS website to uncover more GIS and GPS solutions like the Real-Time Property Search Application and the Online GIS Storefront.
The Tennessee Geographic Information Council (TNGIC) 2012 Conference registration is open but only 50 seats remain! Register for the GIS conference at tngic.org and “Elevate Your GIS.”
Montgomery Bell State Park
The 2012 TNGIC Annual GIS Conference will be held at the beautiful Montgomery Bell State Park on March 28-29 (pre-conference classes are available March 26-27). The Tennessee Geographic Information Council was established in 1994 to improve the linkages between the various agencies working with a Geographic Information System in Tennessee. At present, there are over 200 members representing many varied agencies. TNGIC is a non-profit group of GIS users, designers, and those who influence the use of GIS in federal, state, and local governments as well as private sector representatives within the State of Tennessee.
For the conference flier and maps and directions checkout the Conference 2012 page. The guys here at GEO-Jobe GIS Consulting looks forward to seeing you there.
The new Trimble Juno Series handheld has delivered on customer requests by giving it a longer battery life, more memory, an improved screen, a high resolution 5 mp camera, and a rugged shell. The evolution of this unit is familiar to the upgrades in Trimble’s Mapping Grade flagship product, the GeoExplorer 6000 Series handheld. The Juno is now an all in one mobile solution that increases collaboration between the field and office through real-time data transfer. The unit runs on windows mobile and can run TerraSync, ArcPad, or ArcMobile software for GPS data collection. Contact your local Trimble dealer for questions and orders!
This map was created by Matthew T. Campbell from the Department of Cartography and Geography East Central University (Oklahoma). The map was based on 120,464 respondents who were asked what they called “soft drinks.” – Pop, Coke, Soda, Other. I wonder what “Other” is…. Also, Alaska is very interesting… leave a reply and let us know what you call soft drinks today!…
Click to Enlarge
As I mentioned in my previous post “Redistricting with GIS: Exposing Powerful People to a Powerful Technology”, Geographic Information System (GIS) is the key technology behind the redistricting process. As the redistricting process winds down and candidates transition into campaign mode, they need to be aware of some tremendous opportunities to continue leveraging the power GIS.
Targeted Campaigning with GIS
If we look at the campaigning process in three phases, GIS brings tremendous value from start to finish.
Phase 1 – Build a Strategy: Strategists are immediately confronted with the challenge of understanding their new district boundaries and the constituents that fall within. This information is the foundation for building a strategy for targeting likely voters, efficiently and effectively communicating your message and ultimately getting out the vote. This process will be especially challenging for candidates from the party that didn’t control the redistricting process. This is because they have just recently seen the new boundaries while their opponents have been analyzing them for the past several months.
The ability to overlay new district boundaries with relevant political information (age, race, income, party affiliation, past voting results, etc.) is by far the most efficient way to build this strategy. It allows campaigns to identify the geographic areas of their district that contain voters that are most likely to vote for them. While using GIS can make this process much more efficient, it can still be a challenge if you’re a state party official that needs this to happen across the state. This is where web-based GIS applications (Web Mapping Applications) come into play. State party officials really need to be focusing on building a centralized GeoCampaigning database that is exposed to campaigns across the state via the Internet. Build it once, use it many. This type of system will allow campaign strategists from across the state to log in to a website and start using the power of GIS to organize their outreach efforts. A longer-term benefit of this approach is that you are exposing party officials across the state to the value of GIS and how to use it as a campaigning tool moving forward. The party that is maximizing the use of geospatial technology will definitely have a strategic edge moving forward.
Phase II – Outreach: With a campaign strategy built, it’s now time to focus on reaching out to likely voters to gain their support. This has historically been done with walk lists and canvassers, but I’m proposing that we spatially enable these walk lists and allow canvassers to also leverage the power of GIS while in the field. Through the use of smartphones and tablets, which most campaign staff already have, canvassers are able to see where they are currently at (via GPS technology) on an interactive map in relation to the portions of the district that they are targeting. In addition, canvassers can enhance the centralized GeoCampaigning database by collecting information in the field as they place signs, talk with voters, etc. Because all of this information is being stored in a centralized database that is (securely) being exposed over the Internet via web services, other campaign staff (canvassers, strategists at campaign headquarters, etc.) are able to see this information in near real time.
Phase III – Analysis: With all of this information flowing in to a centralized location, strategists are able to quickly analyze the progress canvassers are making in addition to the reaction of voters. Every time a canvasser talks with a voter and collects information, this is represented by a dot on the map. Dots are color coded by likelihood to vote for the candidate and by clicking on the dot you can see the information entered by the canvasser. A “common operating picture” for spatially analyzing campaign information and connecting campaign staff is very powerful. In addition, this information will be stored for analysis against actual voting results and thus preparation for the next election year.
Campaign Message
While you may think that GIS is just a technical tool for making your campaign operate more efficiently, it’s actually much more. Whether you are for big government or small government, I think that all candidates can agree on a more efficient and effective government. If this is part of your campaign message, which I personally think should be, then GIS is key to following through on this campaign promise. We are already seeing this from incumbent John Isbell, Assessor of Property, Sumner County, TN who is referencing “GIS Implementations” as an accomplishment while in office. I am really encouraged by this and it makes me proud that public officials are looking for ways to leverage technology to increase operational efficiency. There are very few technologies that bring value to so many different aspects of government. By visiting the Esri industries page, you can see the vast array of government agencies that can benefit from GIS.
So as you start to build your campaign strategy and craft your message, don’t forget about GIS. After all, it is the secret to success.
With the increase in political debates, campaign rallies and attack ads, it is clear that we have entered a new election year. What you may not know is that the elections this year will be completely different from those of the past. The 2012 elections will be the first to be held on new political boundaries that have resulted from redistricting. While I won’t go into a lot of detail on what Redistricting is, the process involves adjusting political boundaries/districts (U.S. Congressional, State Senate, State House, County Commission, etc.) to account for population changes that have taken place over the past decade. Politics is of course a part of this process which means that decisions are not strictly made based on population counts. Redistricting officials also use this process as an opportunity to shift the political makeup of districts and put their party in a better position to gain or retain control moving forward.
While gaining political power might be important to you, for me, the most exciting thing about redistricting is that it is exposing very powerful people to the power of Geographic Information Systems (GIS). GIS is the analytical engine that powers the redistricting process. It provides the ability to overlay relevant information (streets, population counts, demographics, political boundaries, past voting results, etc.) on an interactive map for officials to spatially analyze and base decisions. More politicians than ever are seeing, firsthand, the value of leveraging GIS to gain a more thorough understanding of information which ultimately translates to more informed decision making (political strategizing in this case). What these elected officials need to know is that the value of GIS is not isolated to redistricting and it definitely doesn’t stop when the Governor signs these new political boundaries into law.
The U.S. Department of Labor has identified geospatial technologies, which GIS is part of, as one of the fastest growing industries. This rapid expansion is driven by the fact that the value GIS brought to redistricting is also brought to nearly every sector of the economy. This is especially the case in the public sector. By visiting the Esri industries page, you can see the vast array of government agencies that can benefit from GIS. Below is a small sample:
- Public Safety
- Property Assessment
- Public Works
- Environmental Management
- Planning & Economic Development
- Education (Geospatial Learning)
The good news is that government is already a big user of GIS, but we are just scratching the surface. What this means is that there are real opportunities to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of government through the increased use of GIS. With the explosion of cloud based capabilities and widespread Internet connectivity, we find ourselves in a perfect position to deliver targeted, lighter weight, more cost effective GIS solutions these new users. This ability, in combination with support from our elected officials, can set us on a path to creating an efficient and effective government that we can all agree on.
In conclusion, I am someone that truly believes in the power of GIS. I believe that it can play a key role in creating a more efficient public sector, a more competitive private sector and ultimately a more competitive nation as a whole. My hope is that the exposure to GIS that has resulted from redistricting will trigger a sequence of events: Increased use of GIS in campaigning -> The election (or re-election) of pro-GIS public officials -> Increased support for the use of GIS within government -> A more efficient and effective public sector.
If “GIS in campaigning” caught your eye, check out GIS: The Secret to 2012 Campaign Success
GEO-Jobe GIS Consulting provides training for your organization to ensure you have the most qualified and trained staff working with the best hardware and software in the GIS industry. GEO-Jobe GIS
is committed to providing educational opportunities and training support to all our clients. We offer on-site training as well as our regularly scheduled courses at our GIS training facility. Please check our 2012 Class Schedule below as we are adding new classes and dates on a regular basis.
Esri Certified Training
ArcGIS Desktop I (ArcGIS 10) – $850 (2-Day)
ArcGIS Desktop II (ArcGIS 10) – $1,250 (3-Day)
ArcGIS Desktop III (ArcGIS 10) – $850 (2-Day)
Curious which course is right for you? Use the Esri course Wizard
GROUP TRAINING DISCOUNTS ARE AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST
GEO-Jobe GIS 2012 Training Calendar
| Class | Training Date | Course | Location | Register |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | February 8-9, 2012 | ArcGIS Desktop I | GEO-Jobe GIS Nashville | Register |
| 2 | February 28 – March 1, 2012 | ArcGIS Desktop II | GEO-Jobe GIS Nashville | Register |
| 3 | March 20-21, 2012 | ArcGIS Desktop I | GEO-Jobe GIS Nashville | Register |
| 4 | April 10-12, 2012 | ArcGIS Desktop II | GEO-Jobe GIS Nashville | Register |
| 5 | April 24-25, 2012 | ArcGIS Desktop III | GEO-Jobe GIS Nashville | Register |
| 6 | May 15-16, 2012 | ArcGIS Desktop I | GEO-Jobe GIS Nashville | Register |
| 7 | June 12-14, 2012 | ArcGIS Desktop II | GEO-Jobe GIS Nashville | Register |
| 8 | June 26-27, 2012 | ArcGIS Desktop I | GEO-Jobe GIS Nashville | Register |
| 9 | July 17-19, 2012 | ArcGIS Desktop II | GEO-Jobe GIS Nashville | Register |
| 10 | July 31 – August 1, 2012 | ArcGIS Desktop III | GEO-Jobe GIS Nashville | Register |
If you haven’t already, you should check out the WebGL Globe, an open platform for visualizing geographic data. This Chrome Experiment is created by the Google Data Arts Team and contains several interesting Google Earth views of different types of data. The team encourages you to copy the code, add your own data, and create your own map. Try it out, or at least checkout other globes that have been shared. I was unconsciously spinning around the Google Search by Volume Globe for about 20 minutes before deciding to add this as a post. Reminded me of that feeling you get while watching a documentary in an IMAX theater. ”The world is so vast, and I am so small!”
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