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2. Public Sector Applications of Remote Sensing Data
Pages 16-37

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From page 16...
... State case studies are from Missouri, North Carolina, and Washington. Regional studies are from Portland Metro in Oregon and the Red River Valley of North Dakota and Minnesota.
From page 17...
... The possibility of integrating remote sensing data into local GIS databases and using the databases in conjunction with locational GPS data has created opportunities for new types of information applications that were not possible using photographic remote sensing data alone. Baltimore, Maryland: Introducing Remote Sensing to Urban Planning The city of Baltimore initially looked to remote sensing to obtain urban data for a state map of forested areas in Maryland and to update the city's planimetric maps.1 City planners had long depended on l9th- and early-20th-century maps for information on building and street locations in the city.
From page 18...
... Once the remote sensing data were in hand and DNR had extracted the vegetation from the image, Baltimore officials recognized that there were many other uses for the data, and today they are using them to create a land use map of the city for development, environmental, and social purposes and for updating the planimetric maps. The city is also planning for new applications in such areas as flood plain mapping, watershed planning, and identification of viewsheds.2 2A viewshed is a panoramic view from a specific point and is a function within GIS software that allows visualization of the data.
From page 19...
... Issues Raised by the Baltimore Experience Among the first issues Baltimore planners faced was how to finance the purchase of new remote sensing data and the construction of digital geospatial databases. The city had had no previous experience in purchasing this type of data.
From page 20...
... It finds remote sensing data, including satellite remote sensing, digital orthophotography, and lidar, critical in monitoring urban sprawl for smart growth policies and creating "fly-through" presentations that allow city and county officials to see the impact of specific construction and development projects (Figure 2.2~. The county also uses remote sensing for managing its data on county infrastructure and monitoring the condition of pavements, floodplains, and land cover.
From page 21...
... Instead, using lidar data, the county GIS office was able to supply the necessary contours overnight, demonstrating cost savings of $140,000 for the county and technological efficiency to the potential investor. Another advantage of Richland County's experience with remote sensing is that it assigned a county GIS office responsibility for the management of all geospatial data and information.
From page 22...
... As state and local government revenues decline in the midst of a slow economic recovery on the national level, many workshop participants reported that public sector budgets are under strong pressures to constrain expenditures. As a result, cost savings will be a critical component of any new public sector remote sensing activities.
From page 23...
... Still other issues that arose in Richland County include the need for common standards across all counties so that the data in multiple jurisdictions can be compared and integrated into multijunsdictional databases; problems of data storage (Richland County already has one terabyte of data and is expanding its holdings) ; and legislation to limit the use of spatial technologies such as remote sensing and GIS in South Carolina.3 4 Boulder County, Colorado: Finding a Way Boulder County began to use spatial data in 1987 to maintain and upgrade tax maps of parcels in the county.5 From what was a modest beginning, the county now uses spatial data for a broad range of purposes, from locating praline dog colonies to identifying wetlands to tracing fence lines.
From page 24...
... When BASIC was faced with a price tag of over $150,000 for aerial remote sensing data, for instance, the organization reduced the cost by asking members to supply people to identify and mark section corners on the ground and to locate records of section corners held at the county courthouse before the aerial data were collected. Issues Raised by the Boulder County Experience For Boulder County, as for many other public entities, the cost of remote sensing imagery is a major issue.
From page 25...
... Despite the differences between state and local governments in the use of remote sensing data, they have some patterns in common. For example, the critical need to persuade public sector managers of the importance and utility of remote sensing data and the value of being able to provide these data in a GIS framework were common to both state and local governments.
From page 26...
... The flexibility of the contracts and the quality of the work at university research centers is a strong inducement to this practice, and it gives state officials access to advanced understandings and technologies in the field. However, relying on university scientists for significant remote sensing work under contract, instead of doing the work in state agencies, does mean that remote sensing activities are less visible to state managers and are therefore less secure.
From page 27...
... State managers recognize the utility of GIS databases but often do not recognize that remote sensing data are part of the GIS. Similarly, when data processing and research are contracted out to state universities, public sector managers can lose sight of the importance of the activity to state operations.
From page 28...
... The budgetary stringencies that affect the state of Washington, like so many public sector remote sensing data users, are eased by institutional innovations and partnerships like WAGIC and by obtaining private data to demonstrate applications. Issues Raised by the Washington Experience Funding limitations that keep the state from taking full advantage of remote sensing technologies are a major problem in Washington.
From page 29...
... , North Carolina has contracted with two firms that will obtain lidar data using airborne sensors. Initial mapping is determined by river basins rather than counties because flooding is a function of 6Iohn Dorman, "North Carolina Floodplain Mapping Program," presented at the NRC Steering Committee on Space Applications and Commercialization Workshop, "Facilitating Public Sector Uses of Remote Sensing Data," University of Colorado, Boulder, January 23, 2002; Brandon R
From page 30...
... Under a new agreement, however, FEMA has assigned responsibility for flood mapping in North Carolina to the state, making it the first cooperating technical state under FEMA's Cooperating Technical Community partnership program. FEMA has agreed to match state funding of the mapping program.8 Advantages Enjoyed by North Carolina North Carolina is benefiting in many ways from its remote-sensing-based flood mapping program.
From page 31...
... North Carolina is purchasing 20 terabytes of data and will be using these in conjunction with data from other sources. There is a commitment to making the maps available to the public over the Internet through the North Carolina Floodplain Mapping Information System, but because of the storage constraints, some of the more detailed data will be archived at the USGS EROS Data Center in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, rather than being maintained online in North Carolina.
From page 32...
... Metro officials told workshop participants that their current goal is to FIGURE 2.3 Annual vacant lots inventory of undeveloped land. The technique to produce the inventory uses visual interpretation of aerial photography to measure the land supply.
From page 33...
... Advantages Enjoyed by Portland Metro One of the advantages enjoyed by Portland Metro is that the need for spatial data for urban growth planning led to the setting up of an operational budget for remote sensing data. The resolution of the data available to regional planners has improved each year, and Portland Metro has been able to assess the land supply more precisely because greater spatial detail is available from the higher resolution data.
From page 34...
... Red River Valley Flood: Remote Sensing and Disaster Response In the spring of 1997, as the record snowfall of the winter of 1996-1997 began to melt and the waters ran north toward areas where the ice and snow were just beginning to melt, the Red River flooded its basin along the North DakotaMinnesota boundary. The floods were the worst on record, inundating farms and communities in the Red River Valley and forcing over 100,000 people to evacuate their homes.
From page 35...
... In the end, two areas within the Red River Valley elected to create new contour maps using lidar because of its speed, accuracy, and cost benefits in combination with aerial photography. Lidar was also selected because it can provide data for digital elevation models with 1-foot contour intervals, which can be used to reevaluate flood plains in the Red River Valley (see Figure 2.6~.
From page 36...
... Advantages Enjoyed by the Red River Valley Although the mapping projects were led by the two North Dakota cities of Wahpeton and Fargo, each city organized a regional bistate partnership to obtain broader financial support for the work. Wahpeton worked with the North Dakota State Water Commission, the Corps of Engineers, FEMA, the Minnesota DNR, and the city of Breckenridge, Minnesota; the Wahpeton mapping project covered 65 square miles.
From page 37...
... Regional officials told workshop participants that based on their experience, issues of data access and distribution should be addressed prior to signing a contract. A third issue arising out of the Red River Valley mapping project is related to the ability of the lidar data to discern very small differences in elevation.


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