What are you doing right now?

29 Jun 2010 3:37 PM | Doug Greenfield (Administrator)
As the only GIS employee in my town* (the only one with "GIS" in my job title anyway), I am often isolated from what other people are doing - both here in City Hall and among the other city or town GIS specialists. It's up to me to determine my priorities and what projects to take on, except of course when I'm responding to mapping emergencies which take up much of my time. I often wonder if there are better things I can or should be doing with my time. What are you doing at the moment?

I'll start with my task list for this week - keep in mind that many of these are ongoing projects and not things I expect to finish this week. Please tell us about your projects.

1. New web page update for the Assessor's Database from Applied Geographics - testing performance and server maintenance, some parts of the app still don't work, keep reminding them of this.

2. The Assessor's Database (Vision) app. Vision has a GIS piece. It is an old MapObjects piece with no easy access to the configuration files. The addresses are displayed using an Annotation coverage. The coverage has been updated but needs some tweaks because the display is off (numbers are shifted to the lower right or SE of where they should be).

3. Web GIS Browser - a JavaScript API application that is not public yet (we need to work out some server issues.) Need to add some better descriptions for codes in the data.

4. ESRI's Community Maps project. We are participants - or will be.

5. Post some content to the Eastern Mass Group Forum - doing that right now.

6. Street Light Viewer - a MapObjects application used in our call center and DPW. Need to add content for Gas Lamps and Specialty Street Lights as these are maintained differently from the regular street lights.

7. Newton History Museum - will be having a map exhibit this fall,. Need to set up some test online content and later some on-site content.

8. Water System Edits - several years worth of new pipes need to be entered. The DPW should do this but they don't so I do it or we look bad.

9. Building updates - new construction, most notably the new Newton North High School which we still don't have a digital plan for despite the
fact that it is now built.

*Newton, Mass is a "City", some of you are in "Town"s- I use the term "town" for simplicity.
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Comments

  • 16 Jan 2013 11:21 AM | Anonymous
    Greetings Doug and everyone else on this site.

    I am new here, although I have been "doing GIS" for my town for 4 years now. But I do not even have GIS in my job title, although my doorplate says Planning/Building/GIS, and I am politely called Mapping Specialist on the Planning web page for the town. I get to do GIS part time after all my other job duties are done, or when someone needs a map for a Board meeting. I often end up doing what I call "quick and dirty" maps, since I have so little time to do things elegantly.

    Rcently I have done:

    1. New assessors tax maps (parcel maps, 78 of them) in house for the first time.

    2. Oak Grove "bottle cap lots" (this is Map #99 of the assessors maps, a complete overhaul and long researched mapping project involving 1024 parcels in a small 44 acre area. Long story.)

    3. New Zoning Districts map, completly overhauled, with a series of historical zoning maps tracking all the changes going back to when zoning was first introduced in 1951.

    Open Space Trails map including town owned parcels, existing trails, proposed trails, and proposed parcels for purchase (to expenad the greemway) for Town Meeting.

    Adaptive Use Overlay District (AUOD) layers for online GIS and Zoning map.

    Historic District layers and display maps.

    Plow and Sanding route maps, including layers for DPW in house use, large display maps for the highway barn and office use, and individual route maps for the drivers.

    This week's chores:

    Route 495 Business District map (parcels, water and sewer lines, wetlands, zoning) for a joint Board of Selectmen and Planning Board meeting.

    Prepare (clean-up) assessors datadase info for GIS viewing within the CAMA.

    NOTE: Maps 1, 2, and 3 can be viewed on our town webpage (Assessors Parcel Maps, Ooak Grove Map, and Zoning Districts.)
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