By Theresa Quill and Jennifer Liss
This interview is part of our Data Provider Series, which highlights local governments and institutions that offer open GIS data. In each interview, providers tell us about their missions and data resources. We hope this will be a great way for readers to learn more about local GIS developments and new initiatives.
Name: Laura Haley
Title: GIS Manager
Division/Department: Indiana Geological & Water Survey
Website: https://bloomington.in.gov/gis
City of Bloomington Logo
Check out more data from Bloomington, Indiana in the BTAA Geoportal here.
Have questions about the BTAA geoportal, or maps and geospatial data in general? Please don’t hesitate to contact our project team!
This interview is part of our Data Provider Series, which highlights local governments and institutions that offer open GIS data. In each interview, providers tell us about their missions and data resources. We hope this will be a great way for readers to learn more about local GIS developments and new initiatives.
Name: Laura Haley
Title: GIS Manager
Division/Department: Indiana Geological & Water Survey
Website: https://bloomington.in.gov/gis
City of Bloomington Logo
Which departments(s) in your city is the steward of your geospatial data? What other activities are you responsible for?
The City's Information & Technology Services (ITS) Department is primarily responsible for the City's geospatial data. We also have data stewards in the City Utilities Department for data specific to their operations. We are working more with the Planning and Transportation and Engineering Departments to bring them on as stewards of data they want to develop. The ITS GIS Team's other responsibilities include geospatial software/device management, mapping and spatial analysis services, application development, and user support.How long has your city created and/or maintained geospatial data?
In the late 1980s, our City Utilities Department was needing to update their aerial quad maps and it was suggested they look into GIS. We followed closely the model set by the Indianapolis IMAGIS consortium. Data collection started in 1990 with orthophotography for the City and surrounding Utilities Service Area. It included mapping of roadways, parking lots, buildings, hydrology, and elevation features from photogrammetry. We also received the city boundary, road centerlines, address annotation, and zoning districts. City Utilities started digitizing their paper maps of infrastructure then as well. We were not able to bring in other outside partners like IMAGIS, but were soon providing data to others and continued to grow our data catalog.Is your data available through the state clearinghouse?
Yes and No. Most of our data is available through our own public data portal, https://data.bloomington.in.gov. Some of our data gets incorporated into data on the IndianaMap via sharing with State agencies. We are working with our Country to make sure that our road centerline and address data makes its way to the State via the Indiana Data Harvest program. Most of our imagery is available through state sponsored clearinghouses.Who typically requests your geospatial data? And how are they used?
External requests for our data have steadily decreased over the years as we publish more data sets and other sources for geospatial data increase. Most of our requests come from other City Departments putting together data sets for consultants working on planning documents, analysis, and infrastructure projects. We occasionally get requests from researchers and students for data that isn't on our data portal. Lately we've been receiving requests from journalists looking for data to support stories on recent City activities.How do you create the geospatial data? (workflow, departments, processes)
We don't try to recreate data that is available and managed elsewhere such as County land records or State & Federal Agency data. Much of our citywide base data is maintained from ortho imagery we get from the State or the County every 4 years or so. We often use contractors to help us with those updates. That imagery is high resolution so we'll use it in house as well to create features for other data sets that are visible in the photos. In between imagery projects we may import or georeference development plans for significant changes. If imagery isn't available, we'll align features to other known locations. Depending on the data, we'll have a hierarchy of available data to use. MarkUps from paper or digital maps can still be effective. In those cases it can be an iterative process where we digitize the features and send it back to the subject expert for review.Check out more data from Bloomington, Indiana in the BTAA Geoportal here.
Have questions about the BTAA geoportal, or maps and geospatial data in general? Please don’t hesitate to contact our project team!