Northwest Indiana
GIS Forum
Meeting Notes
Thursday, February 23, 2006
Meeting Location: Indiana University Northwest
Members in Attendance:
Joe Alamillo, City of Hammond; Lorraine Bank, City of Hobart; Roy Evans,
Purdue Calumet; Brian Gallego, Town of Merrillville; Betty Kiechle, Lake
County Surveyor’s Office; Bryan Lane, Town of Dyer; Amy Manke, NPS –
Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore; Becky McKinley, Hammond Sanitary
District; Bill Meeks, City of Crown Point Engineering; Kevin Miller,
Indiana Department of Environmental Management; Cele Morris, IUN/NWI
Center for Data & Analysis; George Olmsted, IUN; M. Scott Rediger, City
of Crown Point Engineering; Lauren Rhein, NIRPC; Susan Rizer, OCS
Environmental, Inc.; Craig Shillinglaw; Tim Sutherland, IUN/NWI Center
for Data & Analaysis; John Toleikis, City of Whiting
Local Implementation
Becky
McKinley hopes to hire a new GIS Assistant in the near future for the
City of Hammond. Property parcels have been delineated within a quarter
mile buffer zone of the Grand Calumet River in Hammond in conjunction with a
restoration feasibility study project coordinated by IDEM and the Army Corps
of Engineers. Layers for lot lines and parcel ownership were created for
the restoration project. A kiosk application allowing community members to
search for current zoning of property is waiting for final approval before
implementation.
The
Town of Dyer has been using GIS for its storm water management
program. They have been busy collecting data for their MS4 report.
Information collected includes location of outfalls. Pictures were taken of
pipe sizes. The system is being televised and can be related to their GIS.
Lake
County
is waiting for year four money on their five year GIS implementation
project. Work on the County parcel layer continues and includes verifying
accuracy by researching property deeds from the Auditor’s Office. They are
talking with local municipalities regarding the data. Release of the data
is unknown at this time due to the immensity of the project. Maintenance
records for creeks and drains in the county are also being included in the
GIS. 3-D coordinate section corners are almost completed. All corners use
the HARN system as a foundation. A website is planned for access to the
section corner data.
Roy Evans at
Purdue Calumet would like to rekindle GIS ideas for ongoing economic
development and transportation projects in the region. Work continues to
secure additional funding for the Marquette Plan. Roy has been named
a co-coordinator of NICE (Northern Indiana Consortium for the
Environment). In this position, he will be meeting shortly with the mayors
of lakeshore communities to create a checklist of regional environmental
problems. The list will be prioritized for research activities to be
undertaken by participating universities and funded by grant monies
The Hammond
Department of Planning and Development reports that the Mayor’s Housing
Taskforce has begun a long term project to inventory all of the city’s
housing and commercial stock. A new database has been adopted to help tract
the inventory activity.
The Data
Center at IUN is working with PlanGraphics, Inc, and the City of Gary to
write metadata for their existing spatial datasets. Metadata presentations
have been scheduled to comply with the Federal Geographic Data Committee
grant being administered through the Data Center for the GIS Forum.
Presentations will be offered at the State Conference in March and the at
the POLIS Center Road Show at NIRPC in April. Future workshops will be
scheduled for metadata education and training in conjunction with the
grant. The Data Center provided a final GIS workshop for Save the Dunes
Conservation Fund/Indiana Coastal Restoration Action Team grant in
December. The half day workshop provided hands on GIS activities for
restoration activities. The Data Center has been included in several IUN
based mini grants to provide GIS services. One project will involved
geocoding regional companies presently involved in international trade. GIS
Services will also be involved in a project that will seek to inventory
regional restoration projects. The Data Center and NWI GIS Forum hosted a
successful GIS Day on
November 16, 2005, at IUN. Numerous presentations were
offered by some of our members during the half day event. The
Hammond Times covered the event and published a nice front page article
the next day. IU Bloomington included IUN’s
GIS Day activities on their website.
The
Northwestern Indiana Regional Planning Commission (NIRPC) has upgraded
to ArcGIS 9.1 software. They await new hardware for complete
implementation. On the transportation side of their activities they will
be working with a database containing traffic volume and accident data. The
environmental section will be dealing with watershed data for the region.
NIRPC is also involved in a cooperative project with Chicago Wilderness that
seeks to define natural areas in Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin.
The
National Lakeshore will be using GIS to document prescribed burns.
The City of
Hobart continues work for their storm water management program.
The Town of
Merrillville looks forward to future GIS activity including acquisition
of software. Town departments including Engineering and Police anticipate
benefits from the technology. A new website for the city has recently been
rolled out:
http://www.townofmerrillville.com
The City of Crown Point is progressing with its GIS implementation.
They are currently working with The Schneider Corp. as their contractor. A
number of GPS units have been purchased. Data currently residing in AutoCAD
format needs to be converted in the future.
George
Olmsted
is working on a project with the Public Safety Institute – Police Web
mapping at Calumet College of St. Joseph.
Kevin Miller
with IDEM is currently working on the
Grand Calument Feasibility Study
with Army Corps
of Engineers. This project is related to restoration along 12 miles of the
nonfederal portions of the Grand Calumet River and Indiana Harbor Ship
canal. Data is being compiled and categorized in a geodatabase. Kevin has
also been involved in assembling four catalogs of historical aerial
photography compiled by the EPA. The photography covers northern Lake
County from the 1950’s through the 90’s. The method of future accessibility
of this data is presently unknown. Ways to fund update and maintenance of
the
Lake Rim GIS
interactive mapping website are being investigated. The
site, providing numerous downloadable GIS layers relative to Lake, Porter
and LaPorte counties, was developed by the Indiana Geological Survey for
IDEM in the late 90’s.
The City of
Whiting continues to seek information about GIS. They presently operate
with AutoCAD.
NWI GIS Forum Activities
Training
A successful ArcGIS 9.1 training session was held Feb
13-14 at IUN. Thanks go to IDEM for again generously donating the
instruction materials and to Becky McKinley for providing the instruction.
Becky anticipates holding another session in April. An email will be
sent to announce the future session. Due to the popularity of this
training, a waiting list has been started from those not able to participate
in the last session. Be sure to contact to express interest in
participating in any upcoming sessions.
Administration
The Data Center now has the ability
edit the NWI GIS Forum website. Meeting notes will continue to be posted to
the NWI GIS Forum website as soon as possible after meetings (click on
Minutes).
Resource links were recently checked and updated/removed where necessary.
Please contact with any comments or input on the website.
The Polis Center will hold a Road Show
at NIRPC in Portage on April 19, 2006. This will be a full day workshop.
The morning will include presentations related to the 2005 statewide
orthophotography project. It is expected that information will be offered
about how the deliverables can be utilized. Regional projects will be
showcased in the afternoon including the Online Metadata Tool. Lunch will
be provided.
INGISI/IGIC Report
IGIC has changed to a fee based membership
organization. The fees will be used to support overhead. Legislators had
suggested that a fee based membership organization would increase
credibility for IGIC. Members will now participate in the election process
for the organization. Information about membership fees can be found at:
http://www.in.gov/ingisi/member/membership.html A free annual
membership is currently being offered with registration to the Annual State
GIS conference.
2005
Orthophotography Project update – All of the aerial photography for the
state was flown in the spring of 2005. Date of delivery for Northwest
Indiana photography is presently unknown. Lake County was one of the last
counties flown since it opted to upgrade to 6” resolution. Due to the
lateness of the flight, there were some leaf-on conditions visible on the
photography for Lake County. During Quality Control procedures, 13 tiles
in Lake County failed requirements for acceptance due to excessive leaf-on
conditions. These areas will be re-flown this spring to provide photography
with leaf-off condition. Delivery deadline for the photography for Lake
County from last spring (containing leaf-on) is scheduled for May 31, 2006.
The re-flown photography will be exchanged for the unacceptable tiles and
will be redelivered as a complete set next spring. Information related to
deliverables can be found on the IGIC website. The Lake County Surveyor’s
Office will be responsible for delivery of the county data to interested
parties. The Lake County Data Board will meet on 2/24/06 to finalize how
the data will be distributed.
The
2006 State GIS Conference
will be held on March
7-8, 2006 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Indianapolis.
Contact if you would like to participate
on the IGIC Standards Committee.
Contact
if you would like to participate
on the IGIC Education Committee.
Other Business
In lieu of our next meeting in April, we encourage NWI
GIS Forum participants to attend the April 19, 2006, POLIS Center Road Show
at NIRPC.
Indiana University Information Technology Services (UITS)
has partnered with the Indiana Geologic Information Council to host an
enterprise geodatabase service for the Statewide Digital Orthophotography
Program. Be sure to periodically check the progress the the program by
visiting the
Indiana Spatial Data Service.
Next Meeting:
Friday, July 28,
Indiana University Northwest, Library, 2nd
Floor 9:00 –11:00 am
Some useful links:
Online Metadata Tool
POLIS Center Emergency Management Seminars:
http://www.in.gov/dhs/
National Map
Google Earth
Track the 2005 ortho project.
Steps to delivery include:
Yellow: Recieved by Dewberry
Green: Returned to EarthData (for correction)
Blue: Received by Pinnacle (for packaging and distribution)
Burgandy: Delivered to County & State
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