Catching Up!

It's been a long time since the last post. What has been going on with Iberia Parish GIS?

New data: Earlier this year, the Fire District #1 began a project to collect GPS coordinates and attributes for the fire hydrants. This project is about 90% complete. 

The Sewerage District #1 got a good start on collecting GPS coordinates, attributes, and photos for the manholes in the system.

Continuing projects: More miles of surface drainage have been digitized, about 470 miles so far. More data sources were found, so the current soil map source is being supplemented by a list of laterals and mains from the council office, and a point layer from public works. In addition, coastal LiDAR was acquired from the USGS, and this will help locate drainage features in the coastal zone.

The Iberia Parish Assessor's office has shared their 2018 ortho imagery, and the GIS Department has created an image service for existing web apps and desktop viewers. Having new imagery is a very important asset for all departments who use maps. 

With the re-establishment of the New Iberia Police Department, there were projects to add the new city police zones to the E911 CAD system. The ESN/ESZ layer was also refined and adjusted in the Delcambre area. New map packages and tile packages were created to update the CAD stations.

The Census LUCA was a big project this year. The Census Bureau needed local address updates in preparation for the 2020 census. This project had firm deadlines, so the work was concentrated in known growth areas, as well as marking out of jurisdiction features.

The proposed changes for the Economic District #1 involved the GIS department as well. A web app with bookmarks for each change area was created for council members to review.

In 2017, the ArcGIS Server was moved to a virtual server. The 2011 vintage IBM physical server is now used for imagery. This includes orthophotography and LiDAR.

The Iberia Parish GIS Department was asked to participate in vendor evaluation for the Acadiana Planning Commission's aerial photography grant purchase.

A vendor was chosen through an RFP process to work with us to create a public GIS portal. The proposed portal will leverage our ArcGIS Online subscription. We are waiting on grant amendment approval to proceed. 

Next steps - move forward on existing data collection projects, create public GIS portal, upgrade SQL Server and ArcGIS Enterprise.

2016 Esri International User Conference - The Beginning

Before the Plenary Session

Before the Plenary Session

The Plenary Session at the Esri International User Conference is a series of talks, videos, and multimedia presentations to foreshadow the topics covered at the conference.

The room is huge, and set up for about 10,000 people. Not very many empty chairs.

Here's the link to see the Plenary videos:  Esri User Conference 2016 Plenary Videos.

Current Projects - June 2016

I'm working on a number of projects. The two big data creation projects are: Create the lift station layer and treatment plan layer with all available attributes for the Sewerage District #1. The other project is to continue work on the mains and laterals of the parish drainage system. The addition of the NHD flowline layer is assisting in identifying channels that don't show up well on Lidar or aerial photography.

This is the time of year I attend the Hurricane Data Mining workshop and go over all my disaster response layers, check to see if there is updated information to download, and create portable layer packages.

Though the budget for the public/private geoportal was cut, the GIS Committee will meet next week to discuss specifications and layers to include for a future project. This is the only outstanding project that remains to be done from the original 2010 implementation plan.

I plan to attend the Esri International User Conference at the end of this month. I've already marked many sessions to attend, as well as hands-on training and demo sessions. It's always a very intense learning experience, and I'm looking forward to bringing new ideas and products back.

What's new since the last post

It's been a long time since the last post - lots of news since then. Where to start?

ArcGIS 10.1 Update
Well, in 2012 the desktop and server software was updated to version 10.1. This update to the server software gave the department the ability to make map services available outside the Iberia Parish Government network for the first time.

In addition to making map services available on the desktop, the map services are now available on ArcGIS Online, which means that they can be accessed by devices such as smartphones and iPads. The subscription to ArcGIS Online for Organizations began in December 2012.

So far, we don't have a dedicated public website for GIS. That is planned for the future. In the meantime, we can create maps in ArcGIS Online and paste the code into placeholders on the main Iberia Parish Government website.

Presentations at Esri International User Conference

Amy Brassieur made a presentation at the 2012 Esri UC titled "GIS from Scratch in Iberia Parish Government" that described our progress in GIS implementation. This presentation was part of a session titled "Small Jurisdictions Deliver Big GIS Benefits".

We have just received notice that Amy's presentation for the 2013 Esri UC has been accepted. The 2013 presentation is titled, "Maps on the Desktop, Maps on the Move". It will describe how the people use the products of the Iberia Parish GIS Department.

Please contact Amy at 337-369-4469 if you have any questions or any GIS jobs for the department.

ESRI's Community Analyst Subscription Service

I attended a live training webinar titled "Introduction to Esri Community Analyst" today, and would like to see who, if anyone, in the Iberia Parish GIS Intergovernmental Agreement would be interested in this product. The live webinar that I viewed was recorded, and will be available in a few days on the Esri training website.

Esri is offering a free 14-day trial of the product. I think we should try it, but I'd like the participation by some of you in the trial for specific examples of reports that would be helpful in your work. Since it works in an Internet browser, anyone can sign up for the trial, which includes up to 7 reports and/or maps. The link to sign up for the trial subscription is here.

Community Analyst is similar in many ways to the SCOUT for Local Government product by Buxton. Community Analyst is a web based subscription product that produces pre-formatted reports based on the variables chosen by the user. It is aimed at professionals in government, economic development, and related fields, but it does not require a GIS background to effectively use it.

Community Analyst subscriptions also include an add-in product for ArcGIS Desktop. Local data in shapefile format can also be uploaded to the cloud Community Analyst product for sharing among users on the same subscription. Community Analyst can be purchased in three levels of functionality.  The subscription options and preformatted reports included with each level are listed in a PDF document here. These are the list prices. I don't know if this product is included in the state's contract with Esri yet. Esri products on the state contract are usually priced about 10% below list.

Some uses that I can think of for this product would be:

• Disaster damage planning
• Community Analyst can show income levels by census block, allowing planners to focus aid
• Disaster damage assessment
• The user can draw a polygon around a damaged area, then produce a report showing numbers of households, real estate values, as well as other information
• Disaster damage recovery
• Using the damaged area polygon, resources for recovery can be mapped, and drive times computed.
• Economic development
• Buying patterns, income levels, existing businesses can be analyzed and reports generated similar to the SCOUT product.
• Grant applications
• Quickly create reports with demographic data to justify grant applications.

So, if you are interested in viewing the webinar or discussing the product further, I'd be happy to meet with you. At this time, the GIS department is not budgeting for this application since we don't know how much we would use it. Feedback from you, the IGA participants, will tell us whether we need it or not.

GIS Committee Proceedings

The GIS Committee met on Wednesday, August 10, 2011 in council chambers. Herff Jones was elected Chair and Pres Marshall was elected Vice-Chair.

The committee decided to hold regular quarterly meetings. The next meeting will be in early November.

A short report was given on the progress of the GIS function according to the Implementation Plan. The Chair asked for a presentation detailing the progress according to the plan phases for the next meeting.

After the meeting, Vince Palumbo forwarded a slide presentation on state laws pertaining to public records by Ryan Seidemann, Assistant Attorney General. This presentation was originally delivered in 2008, but the material covered still holds true for GIS data.

Intergovernmental Agreement GIS Committee Meeting

The next meeting of the Iberia Parish GIS Committee will be Wednesday, August 10, in the council chambers, 4th floor Iberia Parish Courthouse, 10:00 am.

In this meeting, the delegates nominated by each participating entity in the intergovernmental agreement will be recognized and installed as voting members of the committee.

There will be a presentation of the current status of the GIS Department, and discussion about future goals and deliverables.