January 18 , 2006
Arkansas State Land Information Board
Minutes January 18, 2006
Meeting held at AGIO offices, Little Rock, AR
9:30am – 4:00pm
Board Members Attending
Mr. Bill Bush
Mr. Russell Gibson
Dr. Rob Kissell
Ms. Tracy Moy
Ms. Phyllis Poche
Board Members Absent
Judge David Hudson
Dr. Fred Limp
Mr. Yancey Reynolds
Mr. Earl Smith
Mr. Bob Stanley
Ms. Mary Kay Sullivan
Arkansas Geographic Information Office (AGIO) Staff
Kimberly Bogart
Shelby Johnson
Guests
Suzanne Wiley
It was determined that a Quorum was not present and no votes or decisions would be made by the Board at this meeting.
Agenda
Meeting called to order by Chairman Gibson at 9:51am
Minutes from November 18th, 2005 were reviewed for correctness and changes were noted.
Welcomed to meeting by Chairman Russell Gibson
AGIO report from State Geographic Information Coordinator
GeoStor
GeoStor production release was January 17, 2006, there has been no negative feedback received thus far. The AGIO will no longer be submitting GeoStor usage reports to the Board. A new feature has been implemented that will allow Board members, and the public, to review GeoStor usage statistics for themselves on-line. A demonstration of the statistics web-site was provided to those present. The URL is located at: http://www.geostor.arkansas.gov/Portal/htm/output/stats.htm. Discussion ensued.
The AGIO is utilizing software known as Geocortex to monitor the service and map log to track usage. Other use monitoring is being conducted by DIS (Department of Information Systems).
The AGIO is currently investigating the purchase of additional disks and blades to be used in the support of the GeoStor system in anticipation of needing additional space for the new aerial imagery and elevation data.
Arkansas Road Centerline File (ACF) Grant Update
The AGIO is waiting on the Governor’s office to make its final decision on the grant awards to counties that applied for the ACF Grant in the first round. Doug Elkins (State Executive Chief Information Officer) and Shelby Johnson (State Geographic Information Coordinator) met with the Governor’s policy advisors to brief them on the centerline program, the needs, the benefits and positive impacts of the program. The advisors asked beneficial questions regarding the applicants, and the history of the ACF Program and concluded that meeting prepared to brief the Governor. Discussion ensued.
Due to the delay in the approval of round ones applicants Shelby suggested to the Board they might want to delay the next application deadline (currently due on or before March 1st, 2006) to limit a situation where all 31 eligible applicants were trying to get started at the same time. If this happened it would create an extraordinary amount of work for the office.
ADOP
EarthData (The ADOP Contractor) publishes an online project tracker that allows the AGIO to follow the progression of the project all the way from flight tracking to the final delivery of the product. A demonstration of this tool and the ADOP progress was provided to Board members present. The project tracker showed that approximately 1/10th of the state had been flown as of January 18th. The demonstration also included a view of the local buy up option showing outstanding progress made on the initial flights of those areas in the local buy up project. The Communication between EarthData and AGIO’s Learon Dalby, the ADOP Project Manager, has been superb from day one.
EarthData uses an internal quality control (QC) check before releasing the product to AGIO for our QC of the imagery. The AGIO has been collecting GPS’d control points across the state to quality check road centerline files and these points can and will be used to QC the new orthoimagery.
Discussion ensued.
NHD Training
The AGIO and the USGS have joined together to provide free National Hydrography Dataset (NHD - a comprehensive set of digital spatial data that contains information about surface water features) training in the State of Arkansas. There have been over 80 applicants for the course and it has been determined that several training sessions will be held in both Central and Northwest Arkansas to accommodate the locations of the applicants. The site for the Central Arkansas sessions will be held at the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality’s (ADEQ) training facilities and the Northwest Arkansas site has yet to be determined as of this meeting.
Discuss long-range sustainable funding for counties and cities to assist with continuous creation and maintenance of usable local-level data.
There is always a challenge in obtaining funding for local-level data. Not only to identify funding sources but to keep up the momentum for the development of data. The most critical data layers at this time are Roads, City Boundaries, and Cadastral.
In the 2003 session there was a proposed bill that included a fee that would be turned back to pay for the development of cadastral data (parcels). But, the bill was not well received at the time because the revenue was split between the AGIO and the counties developing the data. At that time the AGIO did not have sustainable funding to support its operation. Through the leadership of the Governor, the Legislature and the Executive Chief Information Officer that issue has since been resolved by General Revenue funding for the Office. The Board might now want to consider supporting a bill that would generate revenue that could be entirely directed to the counties for development and maintenance of local framework data such as centerlines, cadastral, administrative boundaries, floodplains, and higher resolution orthoimagery.
Other states handle this issue by placing a fee on wireless 911 (VI, UT, WV, …) or placing a fee on to real estate transfers (MT & WI) that is used to develop and maintain data. In TN the General Assembly of the state carved out a set amount of money from general revenue to support GIS development across the state. Extensive discussion ensued with the conclusion that it is the Board’s responsibility to continue to study and address this situation.
Discussion and vote to approve loading of new data into GeoStor2.
The Board’s Policy on loading data into GeoStor was passed out to members present for their review. Following the policy the AGIO prepared a recommendation for the following layers to be loaded into GeoStor.
- Ortho imagery from Crawford County, Poinsett County, the City of Hope, and the City of Arkadelphia
- FEMA’s Digital Flood Insurance Rate Maps (DFIRMs) both City and County level
- 8-Digit level High Resolution NHD Hydro Data
Since there is not a Quorum present at the meeting the vote for approval was tabled until the next meeting.
Discuss the Board’s potential role in law revision(s) regarding city boundary changes.
This issue was recognized during the recent merging of the cities previously known as Helena and West Helena in to one city now known as Helena-West Helena. There are several different ways that a city can change its boundaries and not all of them require the same reporting procedures. Shelby suggested that in order to track the changes in municipal boundaries that all boundary changes be reported in the same manner. This will synchronize all of the modifications and help create and maintain an updated boundary for the community at both the local and the state levels. Discussion ensued.
Chairman Gibson requested that the AGIO study the legislation surrounding municipal boundary changes and report back to the Board.
Strategic Planning and discussion of future goals and objectives for the SLIB.
Guest Suzanne Wiley presiding. The Strategic Plan was reviewed and edited for content. The newest version will be distributed to all of the Board members for their consideration prior to the next meeting.
Future meeting dates
Wednesday, March 22nd, 2006 9:30am – 4:00pm
Held at the Offices of AGIO
Future meeting issues:
Travel Reimbursement for Board members
Statements of Financial Interest from Board members
Items not voted on at today’s meeting
Comments from guests
None
Meeting concluded at 3:52pm
Minutes prepared by Kimberly Bogat
