In January of this year the Arkansas GIS Office released guidance outlining the Address Point File (APF) Fea_Type field. This guidance identified several categories that the Arkansas GIS Office felt covered the gamut of potential addressable structures. That guidance can be found here, please reference the last page of the document to see the category types and their respective definitions.
The capability to quickly be able to differentiate all the possible types of addressable structures in a geographical area is incredibly valuable, for instance future 911 systems will rely upon GIS data in order to identify the most appropriate response. Providing a 911 dispatcher or Emergency Manager the capability to prioritize and tailor a response to an emergency that accounts for habitation, or the lack thereof is critical to minimize loss of life and/or property. It is with this mind that Arkansas GIS Office undertook an effort to assist 911 Addressing Authorities in populating feature type for their respective jurisdictions.
The effort to assist addressing authorities currently consists of a workflow that uses an aggregate state agency address list that is cross referenced to identify any address point that previously did not have a feature type assignment. Additionally, the agency leverages parcel information to further identify address points that failed in the former process. The intent of this program is to minimize the amount of time required to backfill the thousands of addresses that currently do not have an assigned feature type.
With this being said the Arkansas GIS Office is proud to announce that we are publishing updates to Woodruff, Randolph, Bradley, Johnson, and St. Francis address points and these updates include feature type populated for the majority of the Counties respective addresses. We would to like to thank each County for providing their Address Point data, and look forward to assisting future Counties in our efforts to make already great data even better.
