OSU Agriculture Economic Extension Service
McCurtainCounty Geographic Information System (GIS)
Pilot Project
Project Demonstration Plan
June 2010
Promoting GIS Knowledge and Use in the Public Sector of Rural Oklahoma : A Pilot Project
Project Overview:
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are becoming increasingly important across nearly all industries, but can be particularly useful for those in the public sector. For example, being able to map the location of residents in a flood zone is important for individuals involved in emergency planning; looking at the location of all delinquent taxpayers can be helpful to the tax assessor; and viewing the location of available power utilities, transportation routes, and land typology is beneficial to the local industrial authority. However, very few rural counties in Oklahoma have public sector employees with enough knowledge of GIS to use it in their specific job. This project will address that gap by developing GIS training tutorials and providing hands-on GIS training via an easy-to-use (and free) GIS tool in McCurtain County. Each tutorial will be tailored to specific tasks of interest to a particular entity, such as the ones listed above.
McCurtainCounty in southeastern Oklahoma is in a unique position to serve as a pilot project due to the large amount of GIS data collected and public interest that exists due to work performed on a previous project not affiliated with OSU. McCurtainCounty public entities have expressed high levels of interest in participating in the type of GIS training that this funding would establish. In particular, signed letters of support (attached) have been obtained from the county treasurer, tax assessor, and director of the Idabel Industrial Development Authority indicating that they are enthusiastic about their employees participating in GIS training that is specific to the responsibilities of their offices. Other public sectors, such as the EMS director and school and rural water districts, have also been engaged and are supportive of this effort.
The primary goal of this project
The goal is to create a pilot-level training program for rural county and municipal employees on how to use GIS data in their jobs. This would entail several steps on the part of OSU Extension, including:
1) Development and hosting of county-level website with all relevant publicly-available GIS data – designed for easy use by non-GIS employees
2) Development of detailed GIS training workshops for 5-7 public sector offices using ArcExplorer (a free, lightweight version of GIS that is designed for 1st time users)
3) Delivery of 5-7 GIS training workshops (each at different public sector site)
4) Enhancement of GIS modules / assessment for transferability to other counties
The “tricky” part of establishing this curriculum will lie in combining publicly available GIS data with the sometimes confidential private data housed at each public sector office (for example, delinquent taxpayer data). Trips to observe and make sure this private data is GIS compatible, along with training workshops geared specifically towards using a particular type of data, will ensure that employees will know how to meaningfully use GIS technology in areas of interest to them and their constituents. If this 1-year pilot project is successful, similar efforts could be performed in other rural counties. Several counties in southeast Oklahoma have heard of the previous McCurtainCounty effort and are interested in participating in the future.
Potential Impacts:
Perhaps the largest potential impact relating to this program is the establishment of the AgEcon department as a knowledge base for GIS education and use in rural Oklahoma. This could enhance current rural development programs while leading to increases in other work requested from our department, including:
-Enhancement of current rural EMS / hospital / solid waste/ environmental analysis and operational performance
-Inclusion of GIS techniques in County Training Program
-Feasibility studies, operations analysis, and management dealing with rural school districts, water districts, volunteer fire districts
-Planning efforts for mayors and industrial recruitment offices
- Operations and management analysis to improve cost-effective municipal services
Additional impacts
These include the items that the public or municipal entities would improve on after participating in the GIS training:
-EMS: Improved decision making regarding emergency preparedness, planning, response, mitigation, and recovery
-Volunteer Fire Departments: Better understanding of current road / infrastructure scenarios (aerial footage), improved emergency planning analysis and response.
-Rural Water Districts: Improved assessment and management of District asset data (pumping stations, , water distribution, water lines,), and improved understanding of natural resources info in their Districts.
• Tax collector / assessor: Improved delinquent property collection, improved communication with constituents (better understanding of land issues)
• County commissioner: Better understanding of current road / infrastructure scenarios (aerial footage), improved site planning analysis
• Mayors / city managers: Improved assessment of asset data (fire hydrants, sewer lines), improved understanding of natural resources info in cities
• Industrial authority: Improved ability to work with interested parties to display relevant information (adjacent properties, boundaries, nearby infrastructure)
• School districts: Improved understanding of district maps, bus routing, boundary planning scenarios, population forecasts; availability of a teaching tool that encourages student participation
• Sheriff / police: Improved methods of analyzing crime locations / potential patterns, and better understanding of current road / infrastructure scenarios (aerial footage), and improved emergency planning analysis and response.
Scope
In an effort to document program impact, participants will be required to provide updates to the county extension director on how the training has affected their job performance.
In addition, the project will document completely the planning, organization, management, and conduct of the project activities to complete this project. This will include descriptions of the tasks, methodologies, and the how-to-procedures to conduct training and to accomplish the demonstration results.
Pilot Project Background to this Point
The project has completed the following scheduled planned activities outlined in the OSU pilot project planning documentation available in the OSU Econ Extension McCurtain GIS website: project planning and definition; user applications requirements definition; system, software, and capability development; user application training; and specific user training. applied to selected applications for demonstration.
The learning experience from these activities, the users have reached their own conclusions as to what applications they would select for their respective demonstrations. Their selection was based on their organization priorities, needs, requirements, and practicality of their skills to accomplish these selected applications outlined in this plan.
Although several potential application were defined during the requirements definition
phase and were submitted to OSU to determine application feasibility based on available
tools and capabilities supplied by the project, the applications selected for demonstration
are what is believed by the users to be what can best be accomplished within the time-frame of the project and with their manpower availability during that period. However, the
users do plan to pursue the remaining application after the project ends.. The requirements that were submitted are deemed valuable and can be accomplished as the users grow in experience with this new GIS capability.
Overall Demonstration Approach
The demonstrations will begin in mid-July and should be completed by September 1st. All user organization can begin this July, with exception of the Public Schools. The Schools applications are driven by the school year, which starts mid-August, and their demonstration will occur through mid-September. Each of the user groups will have assigned applications to demonstrate and will conduct the applications with their respective manpower from application setup to application completion. This includes data acquisition, data collection ie.GPS, data preparation, data manipulation,
mapwindows data manipulation, mapwindows map layer generation, mapwindow data
and map correlation/analysis, and data and map product results generation. The user groups are required to present their results to the OSU project management team and to
their respective user organization management. These results will contain time and cost savings assessment, and the specific contributions to their respective planning, operations, analysis, and management functions.
User Group Application Assignments
The user applications assigned to each user group are listed by the various user Categories ie. Fire & Emergency Medical; Emergency Management & Preparedness, Rural Water , Municipal, Industrial/Economic, Tax assessment and Collection, Law Enforcement, and Public Schools
Fire & Emergency Medical
-GPS updating of existing Infrastructure data and maps such as roads generated by the GIS and GPS
-Updating and adding roads to generate and District road maps
-Generating and updating existing fire district boundary maps via the GIS
-Generating site locations and address pin points of residences and structures using GIS and GPS
-Generating emergency scenario maps ie. transportation corridors
-General Planning, Analysis, and Assessment Using GIS Database, Mapping and Spatial Analysis
Emergency Management & Preparedness
-GPS updating of existing emergency Infrastructure data and maps such as roads generated by the GIS and GPS
-Generating emergency scenario maps
-Generating flood stage inundation emergency scenario map
-General Planning, Analysis, and Assessment Using GIS Database, Mapping and Spatial Analysis
Rural Water
-GPS updating of existing Infrastructure data and maps such as roads, water lines etc. generated by the GIS and GPS
-Generating water meter locations using GPS and incorporating the location data with the water infrastructure mapping data
-Generating and updating existing Water district boundary maps via the GIS
-General Planning, Analysis, and Assessment Using GIS Database, Mapping and Spatial Analysis
Municipal
-GPS updating of existing Infrastructure data and maps such as roads, water lines etc. generated by the GIS and GPS
-Generating and updating existing Municipal Ward boundary maps via the GIS
-Updating and adding roads to generate and District road maps
-General Planning, Analysis, and Assessment Using GIS Database, Mapping and Spatial Analysis
Industrial/Economic
-Vacant Land Identification mapping correlated with utility infrastructure, transportation,
-General Planning, Analysis, and Assessment Using GIS Database, Mapping and Spatial Analysis
Tax Assessment and Collection
-Generating various parcel distribution maps categorized by different values, attributes, parcel acreage sizes, and owners
-Validation of current tax parcel assessments and performing new parcel tax assessment by locating and viewing specific properties and adjacent properties to determine condition, characteristics, with various layers of natural resources data, geomorphic data and other taxable data criteria
-Complimenting the development of parcel mapping and validating current parcel maps
-Generating tax delinquency maps of owners not paying their taxes categorized by value, acreage size, and other criteria
-Finding, locating, and viewing specific tax delinquent parcels and determine to the condition of the property
-General planning, analysis, and assessment using GIS Database, mapping and spatial analysis
Law Enforcement
-Updating and adding roads to generate and County road maps
-Generating and updating sex offender, parolee, and other offender maps
-General Planning, Analysis, and Assessment Using GIS Database, Mapping and Spatial Analysis
Public Schools
-Generating and updating bus route roads, data, and maps generated by the GIS and GPS
-Generating and updating existing school district boundary maps via the GIS
-Generating and updating site locations and address pin points of student residence location using GIS and GPS
-Generating demographic maps of student population by precinct, and voting district
-General Planning, Analysis, and Assessment Using GIS Database, Mapping and Spatial Analysis