In our resort city with a residential population of 25k and 11k buildings, our new GIS system more than paid for itself within the first month with what I called our "$500k Map."
We're mostly within a regulated FEMA floodplain and were making application to the Community Rating System (CRS) program to obtain a communitywide discount for every flood insurance bill. One of the CRS discount activities was accounting for open space (parks, conservation areas etc.) where development is restricted and calculating the ratio of open vs. developed land.
Some deeded conservation lands and have triple credits. Creating this Open Space map allowed us to:
- Calculate the individual acreage
- Layer the different credits applicable to relevent parcels
- Display the differing and sometimes multiple credits
- Attach to each the qualifying documents
- Provide the reviewers with real-time digital access
The credits resulting from this one map earned us a $500k community wide annual discount. The entire series of credits earned a $3.5m annual discount. This year, we made and even better Open Space map and along with other accumulated credits our annual CRS discount will increase to $5m. The initial three-year GIS lease was $90k. Hence GIS paying for itself within the first month.
The ancillary benefits from a public services aspect have been an added plus.
- Spatially displaying for the public what documents are available for which properties and allowing them to access them 24/7 as attachments.
- Identifying approved newspaper rack locations, with photos of each attached.
- Erection and removal of temporary barricades.
- Fluid inventory of all buildings (resulting in the building shadows now seen on various online mapping platforms such as Google, Apple etc.)
- Event mapping (booth assignments, road closures, public safety positions etc.)
- Unified street numbering feeds 911, building permits, planning.
- Public parking
- ADA parking identification
- Detailed damage assessments to qualify for federal disaster recovery reimbursements
- Cemetery plot data
- Flood zone identification information
- Old flood maps
- New flood map impacts per structure
- Historic structures identification
- Ground elevations every 10 feet
- Bicycle crash location analysis
- Bicycle rack locations
- Endangered species habitat areas
- Political district boundaries
- Zoning
- Use of the Collector app to map just about anything in the field using cell phones & tablets.
Once you've got GIS capabilities, the list is limited only by your imagination.
