Help! Parcel Management

Question

I've asked a few questions about this Local Government Data Model and I'm not getting any answers. I've got a full plate and am working on quarterly work but I really want to shift gears and get our GIS foundation built on what looks like a great model. So, in the interest of try and try again, here is a new question.

We are a City Government where County Government is the entity that manages Parcel data. So we get a copy but we do not manage this data. We get updates, and up till now we just truncate-n-append to update the parcels. We would LIKE to use the Local Government Data Model for this, we've imported the empty model into SDE and we've dug around and found multiple locations for parcel data, but nothing that looks like we could import our parcel data to?

Can someone give me a few tips? Ideas? Anything?
Are we using a Parcel Fabric? What happens to the fabric when we get an updated dataset from County with new parcels... new parcel ID's... new boundaries... etc?

TomLucky · Answer

I'm not sure I am following exactly how your data is structured.  I see two possible gotchas for your work flow - 1) overlapping parcels  2) different data schemas from the counties.  If I was receiving data from multiple sources I would try to combine it first into a staging table with a structure suitable for loading into the LGIM.  Once normalized, I would then load the data into the LGIM by truncate and append.  I also think it would be helpful to have some kind of update tracking such as last update date and editor name so you can quickly resolve questions about the data.

You probably don't have any control over the county's data, but another option for sharing data is database replication.  It could be possible to create a one way replica of the feature classes you want in your SDE database and then you only need to grab the updates instead of the entire dataset.  This would, however, require the source database to be in a geodatabase and have a minor schema change.

BrianO_keefe · Answer

If you aren't maintaining the parcel boundaries from deeds and plats, I don't think the parcel fabric will benefit you.  You can still use the LGIM and load your data into the ParcelPublishing dataset.  That will get you the benefits of the LGIM and it's associated applications without the overhead of maintaining the parcel fabric.  A truncate and append might still be the best method, but you probably want to create some kind of automated process or tool to reduce error.  Good luck.

Tom

Thank you! So it would seem that a scripted process that truncates and appends my cities parcels will be the way to go. My next question is concerning the fact that I my city comprises several surrounding counties. For instance, I live in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The City boundaries go outside of the Tulsa County boundaries. So I have multiple Counties parcels for my city. I'm "assuming" that I'll just need to set up an addition "append" process for those outside counties to import their parcels correctly on top of the Tulsa County parcels (which are the most complete and up-to-date parcels out of them all). Does this seem right?

TomLucky · Answer

If you aren't maintaining the parcel boundaries from deeds and plats, I don't think the parcel fabric will benefit you.  You can still use the LGIM and load your data into the ParcelPublishing dataset.  That will get you the benefits of the LGIM and it's associated applications without the overhead of maintaining the parcel fabric.  A truncate and append might still be the best method, but you probably want to create some kind of automated process or tool to reduce error.  Good luck.

Tom