Cartography

This segment is intended to facilitate discussion for cartographic principles and/or standards.

I was developing an annotation feature class and was wondering if there were font standards for various types of features - it turns out there are. Follow this thread at ESRI, and check out this Wikipedia entry.

Regional Resource Center

EIRGIS has submitted a proposal to Gail Ewart, the state Geographic Information Officer, for a GIS Regional Resource Center (RRC) in Eastern Idaho. RRCs are mentioned in the Idaho Strategic and Business Plans as a part of the Idaho Spatial Data Infrastructure.

County Boundary Pilot Project

County boundaries are the extents for which GIS data is maintained in local government. As such, it is important to local GIS managers to have a dataset that represents boundaries as accurately as possible, so that the extents of each subsequent dataset are known.

Jeff Servatius is the TWG representative for county boundaries in Idaho. EIRGIS has taken on a boundary pilot project to assist Jeff in exploring the feasibility of a statewide county boundary dataset that is maintained at the local level. 

Our inent is to generate a dataset in the eastern Idaho region using the best available data, including local surveys, local aerial photography, watersheds, and GCDB. We will submit a report to Jeff Servatius at the end of the project documenting the process, success and weaknesses, and overall feasibility of the project.

Imagery TWG

EIRGIS is participating in the 2009 NAIP program coordinated by Gail Ewart, Idaho Gegraphic Information Officer. 

Review minutes from the last Imagery TWG here.

Cadastral TWG

EIRGIS has discussed the national effort to create a seamless parcel layer as a future potential project. Click here to read the National Land Parcel Data: A Vision for the Future document, published by National Academics.

Standardized Pricing

Charging for GIS data in Idaho is a challenging issue, due in part to hazy or even conflicting state statutes. For example, Statute 31-875 authorizes counties to recuperate costs, while Statute 9-338 denies public agencies the ability to withhold data when requested. 

For more references on this subject: 

An article was published by the Idaho Business Review in 2006 on the inconsistencies of data charging statewide. A white paper by Bruce Joffe exploring data distribution policies. 

While it may not be possible to come to a consensus on standardized pricing for geospatial data, EIRGIS is exploring options and watching as related events unfold and new information comes along. 

Road TWG

EIRGIS is committed to participating in the Statewide road centerline project initiated by Frank Roberts of the Coeur d’ Alene Tribe, and Bruce Godfrey of Idaho State University (UofI). This project is intended to create a dynamic, seamless, statewide road centerline file that is updated regularly, and may be consumed by anyone at the State Clearinghouse hosted at the UofI. 

EIRGIS will participate in this project by encouraging each of the 9 counties in the region to submit data in those cases where it is routinely maintained, and in cases where the data does not exist, to explore options to acquire that data. EIRGIS also hopes to establish agreement points (coordinates where roads cross borders), and standardized schema (database field names).

Metadata

As part of EIRGIS’s mission to "improve the quality... of data", we encourage GIS agencies within our region to keep FGDC compliant metadata. This practice will improve the quality of GIS data by better informing users of the data we produce as to the purpose and methodologies used to create it. 

Along with encouraging the development and maintenance of metadata, EIRGIS is working toward the standardization of certain metadata fields, such as geographic keywords, security classification systems, and use constraints. 

We have created a database file that can be loaded into your Three Tab Editor which will populate your metadata with values unique to our region. Click here to download this database.