The 2019 orthoimagery made available by MassGIS in February of 2020 is the fifth statewide imagery data set we have provided our constituency in the past 20 years. This does not count the statewide black and white orthoimagery project in the 1990s that took about 7 years (!) to complete. The refresh regularity suggests there has been a state imagery program. However, that has never been the case.
Each refresh resulted from opportunistic coordination by MassGIS, depending heavily on personal contacts in state and federal agencies. Whenever the imagery started to become stale, prospective funding agencies were asked if they could contribute funding for new imagery. In 2016, only one agency, the State 911 Department, was able to provide funding. The lowest cost option that met their needs was licensed imagery which we used from 2016 to 2019. Twice (2009 and 2013) MassGIS took advantage of free high-quality imagery available from the US Geological Survey that covered the state’s major urban areas. Three times we have partnered with the USGS to procure imagery using a mix of state and federal funding sources. Besides professional contacts, each of these projects required sophisticated understanding of state interagency funding agreements, of procurement procedures, and of how to partner with a federal agency (the U.S. Geological survey).
|
|
|
This lack of predictability in refreshing statewide imagery has often led municipal and regional agencies to acquire imagery on their own, typically at a higher unit cost. Municipal and regional governments sometimes need imagery with higher resolution than the most recent 2019 imagery. However, if there were a state imagery program acquiring imagery on a predictable schedule and with set unit costs, municipalities and regional government agencies could realize significant cost savings through a “buy-up” option. MassGIS will continue promoting interagency coordination on imagery and other GIS issues, including the need for a state imagery program. There is a high likelihood that the next imagery refresh may again be licensed imagery. However, the next imagery refresh is acquired, MassGIS will work to meet as many of the needs as possible of those who depend on us for imagery.
|
|
(Part 1 of this retrospective appeared in the January 2020 GISette.)
For the past two years, parcels and imagery have been the two most popular data sets downloaded from MassGIS’ web site. About 40% of the demand for parcel mapping data is from the private sector, not including commercial data aggregators. That percentage suggests, and anecdotal evidence supports, that standardized parcel mapping enables economic activity.
Examples of economic activity include:
- Solar field site finders save thousands of dollars of research time because of parcels and other data available through MassGIS’ OLIVER mapping viewer. They use the viewer to identify prospective solar sites, learn owner information, determine property areas, and assess slope and other constraints, all without leaving their office. They can also identify and screen sites more quickly. Work by a single solar site finding company has resulted in at least 275 potential sites. That company has estimated they’ve invested about $750M in site development and those sites are yielding 300 Mw of electricity annually. Additionally, municipalities where these sites are located will receive $4.5M of payments in lieu of taxes.
- A Boston-based survey firm was able to complete a preliminary assessment of development feasibility for a large parcel under existing zoning (using the ZONING code in parcel attributes). The company specifically noted that without the data available from MassGIS, the project (five figure value) would not have been possible.
- Property appraisers rely on parcel mapping available through MassGIS to complete their work more efficiently. Wetlands, elevation, and other data from MassGIS are also essential. However, without the context provided by parcel mapping, these other resources are significantly less useful. The standardized parcel mapping saves appraisers thousands of hours annually because they no longer must visit individual town halls for maps and data.
|
|
Additionally, the statewide parcel mapping and associated assessing data makes possible analysis that was not previously possible. Examples:
- Housing unit density near public transit stations
- Comprehensive mapping of state-owned property
- Statewide visualization of property values
- Assessing the scope of and impact on property values of concrete foundations across south-central Massachusetts failing due to faulty concrete (in support of the Legislature’s Crumbling Concrete Commission)
- Statewide Agricultural Land extract to assess impact of new US Department of Agriculture baseline value
|
|
Sustaining standardization of course requires standardized updates. As noted in Part 1 of this retrospective, most municipalities received state funding to facilitate their maintaining standardization. While that transition has been challenging, there are also municipal benefits:
- Better quality, more broadly useful, assessor’s maps with high match rates between maps and assessing records and vice-versa
- More flexibility in transferring map maintenance to a new service provider
- Lower development costs for applications using parcels because no customer-specific customization for parcel mapping needed
- Referring requests for copies of your data to the MassGIS web site
- Enabling use of MassGIS’ On-Line free web mapping tool (“MuniMapper”)
- Seamless parcel mapping with adjacent municipalities
Thanks again to all those involved in this space who have helped achieve this valuable result.
|
|
|
Since the 1990’s, MassGIS has provided access to Orthoimagery for both our own uses and for anyone else. For the past few years, we have been using licensed Google imagery, access to which has been limited to State and local governments, as well as consultants providing services to those entities. This imagery was provided as a WMTS and a WMS webservice that can be consumed by most GIS, CAD, and webmapping software.
|
|
Now that MassGIS has taken delivery and processed the 2019 Statewide orthos, we are providing a tiled WMTS service, published in ArcGIS Online. It can be used in most GIS software, which was heretofore consuming the Google imagery. After May 25, 2020, MassGIS will no longer be providing access to the Google imagery because it is no longer being refreshed and the service providing the WMS and WMTS is not being renewed. We are encouraging users who consume this current service in any mapping applications to make the switch to the 2019 WMTS service.Some users do not know how to add a webservice to their software or online mapping so we have created this illustrated, step-by-step guide.
Being a GIS shop, we have no access to CAD or Civil 3D software; however, we know that many of our imagery customers use Autodesk products. Due to the need for precise positional accuracy, we have read that these products cannot consume the webservice because the WMTS is created as a tile service with fixed zoom levels. While not ideal, as most AutoDesk software users are working in project-specific locations, we recommend that they download the individual tiles. If any of our Autodesk users can provide additional or clarifying information, please email us at massgismail@mass.gov
|
|
MassGIS is pleased to announce the availability of spring 2019 color orthoimagery for all of Massachusetts.
MassGIS partnered with the U.S. Geological Survey for statewide, 15 cm resolution, 16-bit, 4-band (RGB-IR) digital orthophotos. Funding was provided by MassDOT, the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, the State 911 Department, the Executive Office of Technology Services and Security (EOTSS) and the Massachusetts office of the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS).
These images are the highest resolution orthoimagery ever made available for public use and distribution by MassGIS for the entire commonwealth. To meets most users’ needs, MassGIS created one seamless, “natural color” (RGB) cached web tile service for fast display in Oliver, ArcMap, ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS Online, QGIS, and clients and apps that use OGC protocols such as WMTS. For those who need the imagery in local or offline applications, MassGIS is distributing the images as 8-bit, 4-band JPEG 2000 files.
For full metadata and links to access the web service and download the JPEG 2000 images, please see https://docs.digital.mass.gov/dataset/massgis-data-usgs-color-ortho-imagery-2019.
Standardized Assessor Parcels
Over the past 2 months, MassGIS staff has processed and posted updated parcel data for 75 (!) communities. We appreciate the cooperation of these municipalities and their mapping vendors for helping to keep this data current. We are no longer publishing the list here in the GISette, but you can find the data on this page and at the bottom is the list of updated municipalities.
View and query parcels statewide in the Massachusetts Interactive Property Map.
This online map now includes an option to download data for an entire municipality. From the Layers dropdown check the Download items and click anywhere to download all the parcel data for that city or town.
The cached tiled web service that appears in Oliver and is available in ArcGIS Online includes these latest updates.
*** Note for State Agency users: The updated feature classes (GISDATA.L3_*) are in the VWP instance of MassGIS’ ArcSDE geodatabase.
Energy and Environmental Affairs GIS staff have updated the Protected and Recreational OpenSpace layers (arcs and polygons), available from MassGIS.
Since the last publication to the web, staff at EEA and its associated agencies performed edits that improved the boundaries and/or attributes to nearly 2,300 polygons of recreational areas and open spaces in 141 municipalities.
New shapefile and file geodatabase downloads represent data updated as of 2/5/2020.
The details:
- Additions of or improvements to 12 school athletic fields, 338 conservation areas, 32 cemeteries, 36 water supply lands, 50 parks, and 133 conservation restrictions, resulting in a net gain of more than 3,700 acres in the database.
- The Department of Conservation and Recreation – Watershed performed edits in six municipalities, adding 300 acres to the database.
- The Department of Fish and Game performed edits in six towns, adding more than 75 acres.
- The Department of Conservation and Recreation – Parks performed edits in thirty municipalities for fiscal years 2019 and 2018, adding over 17,000 acres.
- Completed additional digitizing for EEA-sponsored programs:
- Three projects from EEA grants.
- Fifteen acquisitions that involved the Conservation Land Tax Credit.
The updates are reflected in the MassGIS Topographic Basemap that appears in OLIVER and is available in ArcGIS Online.
See https://docs.digital.mass.gov/dataset/massgis-data-protected-and-recreational-openspace for metadata and links to the free data download.
Data also may be viewed and downloaded in OLIVER.
The data are in the Conservation/Recreation category in Oliver and the ArcMap Data Viewer.
The MassDEP GIS Group has updated the following layers, now available from MassGIS:
Data are up-to-date through January 27, 2020.
Please see the above links for metadata and free data download.
In Oliver and the ArcMap Data Viewer, the data are found in the Regulated Areas folder.
|
|
The entire MassGIS staff is working remotely and can do virtually everything that we normally can. If you have any inquiries, please do not call the office; rather, please email massgismail@mass.gov with any questions or requests.
Some staff members have been supporting response efforts by helping the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency (MEMA) update and create necessary datalayers. MEMA has posted a public ArcGIS Hub site that illustrates, among many other things, the number of cases and deaths. Be sure to zoom in to add most of the layers found under the Layers button.
|
|
Spring NEARC Cancelled
This message is from the NEARC organizing committee:
It probably comes as no surprise that the NEARC Board of Directors and the Spring 2020 Host Committee have decided to cancel Spring NEARC this year which was scheduled for May 19 at Westfield State University. We are sad to do so but it is necessary at this time. We are working on the possibility of a scaled-down online version and will provide more information when we have it.
We hope to see all of you at Fall NEARC at the Mt Washington Hotel, November 15-18.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
