Holmes County GIS receives 2009 Excellence Award from state of Ohio
For the past five years, Holmes County has been hard at work developing a comprehensive mapping application called a geographic information system (GIS). This hard work was recognized by the state of Ohio in the form of the GIS Best Practice Award for 2009 given to the Holmes County GIS Consortium. This award is given each year at the Ohio GIS Conference by the Ohio Department of Administrative Services’ agency known as the Ohio Geographically Referenced Information Program (OGRIP).The Holmes County GIS Consortium consists of the auditor, engineer, Soil & Water Conservation District, commissioners, Department of Job and Family Services, EMA, health district, planning, sheriff, tax map office, and 911 board.
“Holmes County is fortunate to have a group of elected officials and department heads that had the vision and worked together to create a GIS. Unfortunately, not all counties have this level of cooperation,” stated county auditor Jackie McKee, whose Web site integrates the GIS. “We hear often from taxpayers, local governments, and local businesses how vital the GIS is to them and their operations.”
A GIS is a collection of map layers and databases that are linked together and stored digitally. Each feature on a map layer is connected to a record in a database. These features of a GIS allow maps to be created at any scale and with any number of map layers. It also allows complex querying of the data to help users make decisions that would otherwise take many hours to perform. Some layers in the Holmes County GIS include high resolution aerial photography, parcels of land, floodplains, addresses, elevation contours, soils, and many more. Holmes County’s GIS is considered an enterprise system due to the type and volume of data layers in the system, as well as the fact that the data is shared via Web based technologies and integrated into many governmental systems.
“It has been a challenge to start a GIS from scratch and develop it into the enterprise wide system we now have in just five short years. The elected officials and department heads recognized the need for Holmes County to have a robust GIS and have properly supported it,” said GIS director Erik Parker. “I am sure that the success our consortium has experienced will result in continued support and even greater benefits to Holmes County.”
Although used in many daily governmental functions, the one most people are familiar with outside of the auditor’s Web site is its use by 911 dispatchers and public safety officials to locate and respond to incoming emergency phone calls whether calling from a home or a cell phone. The GIS was instrumental in allowing Holmes County to become one of the first counties in the state to be Phase II compatible for cell phones, allowing for the latitude and longitude from those calling 911 from cell phones to be plotted on mapping in the sheriff’s dispatch center.
The general public uses are many and varied, including realty companies, title companies, surveyors, oil and gas producers, timber industry, hunters, mining, and many others. Other intensive government uses of the system are in the areas of property valuation, land use planning, sanitary sewer, county roadway infrastructure, and farmland conservation and planning. In the coming months, the road layer from the CIS will be used to accurately plot and analyze vehicle crash locations in an effort to obtain state and federal grant money to improve dangerous intersections.
“Having an inventory of all the county assets within a mapping application is critically important for the Highway Department and the Sanitary Sewer Department. Much of the infrastructure we manage is buried under ground, but in the GIS we can easily see where culverts, sewer pipes, or manholes are located,” said county engineer Chris Young. “After our experience with the GIS, I can really see how villages and water systems can benefit in much the same way as we have. The consortium looks forward to working with all interested entities throughout Holmes County over the coming years.”
In addition to the services provided internally to the GIS Consortium members, the Holmes County GIS also maintains public access to the GIS through the Internet or in select terminals at county government offices. The Web mapping applications can be accessed free of charge by visiting the Holmes County GIS Web site at www.co.holmes.oh.us/gis.