September 2012

We are pleased to announce our first GIS newsletter, hosted by sites.Dartmouth.edu/planning. The aim of the newsletter is to allow GIS professionals and users in the Upper Valley to share the highlights of their recent and current projects. This month features 3 in-progress GIS projects, shared by our colleagues Mark, Kevin and Rachel.

Name of project911 Addressing

Data development:  Attributing the existing address for for every building structure, and perhaps will need to a point representation of every “entity” within a building.  The simple ones will be a single family home.

The more complex examples will be the building that has 2 different stores on the 1st floor, and 3 apartments on the 2, 3rd, and 4th floors.

We will be selecting a address standard, such as the postal standard or perhaps some other industry accepted address standard.

Currently, we are limited to a parcel based address system for which you simply have one address per parcel and yet many parcels have multiple buildings or establishments.  The parcel base address system really limits what we can do in terms of geocoding information from other databases (e.g. water billing, etc.,).  Additionally, a “master address” product will provide the foundation for getting all the municipal departments on the same page, i.e. Assessing might refer to that lot as 1 Mascoma St.

Extension, where as Police Dispatch might refer to that house as 84 Old Pine Tree Road.

Progress:  Currently brainstorming the approach.

Approximate completion time: Hope to have sleeves rolled up by October, possibly completed in 2012.

Submitted by: Mark Goodwin, Planner/ GIS Coordinator, Lebanon, NH

Name of project: Building Georeferencing

Data development: I’m bringing all of Dartmouth’s CAD floorplans into ArcMap and Georeferencing them. The purpose of this project is to develop more accurate footprints for Dartmouth owned buildings. This data will also be used in the development of the new space data system. Building names and other attributes are also being updated as the buildings are brought in.

Progress: Half the buildings have been georeferenced.

Approximate completion time: Early to Mid-October

Submitted by: Kevin Nelson, Spatial Database Analyst, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH

Name of project : Rural Addressing to Identify Areas Underserved or Unserved by Broadband Service

Data development : The NH Broadband Mapping and Planning Program, managed by UNH, has been conducting a public survey of broadband access since 2010. As part of this project, all RPCs in NH are mapping residential addresses in rural areas (census blocks over 2 square miles in area) in order to identify exact locations where surveys were taken. Rural areas are a priority as these tend to be poorly served by broadband; knowing the exact location allows planners to calculate the cost of extending service to all residents. We’ve found commercial data sources to be incomplete and geographically inaccurate, so this fills an important state data gap. This is a first step in creating a public address database for the State.

Progress : UVLSRPC is mid-way through the project, thanks to volunteers who collected GPS data around the region and a GIS intern who has been processing much of the data. In Hanover, data has been collected but not yet processed.

Approximate completion time : December 2012

Submitted byRachel Ruppel, GIS Analyst/Planner, Upper Valley Lake Sunapee Regional Planning Commission, Lebanon, NH

 

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