Northwest Indiana
GIS Forum
Meeting Notes
Thursday, July 28, 2006
Meeting Location: Indiana University Northwest
Members in Attendance:
Martin J. Brown, Gary Sanitary District/GSWMD; Joe Butler, IUN Student;
Eman Ibrahim, NIRPC; Becky McKinley, Hammond Sanitary
District; Kevin Miller, Indiana Department of Environmental Management; Cele Morris, IUN/NWI
Center for Data & Analysis; Richard Morrisroe, City of East Chicago;
Dan Niksch, City of Crown Point Engineering; Lauren Rhein, NIRPC;
Anthony Walker, Gary Sanitary District/GSWMD; Gregory White, Lake County
Surveyor's Office
Local Implementation
Becky
McKinley intends to create an image library for the 2005 orthophotography
for the
City of Hammond. She has loaded the Mr. Sid orthophoto for Lake
County on her laptop for presentation purposes. The orthos are also
being used to update existing city project
maps. Future plans include using the new photography to update
municipal planimetric data. Potential uses exist for investigation and
analysis of city housing stock by the Mayor's Housing Task Force .
Kevin Miller
with IDEM is currently working on the
Grand Calument Feasibility Study
with Army Corps
of Engineers. A draft study was recently submitted to Washington.
The Army Corps is presently conducting field work for the project. This
project is related to restoration along 12 miles of the nonfederal portions
of the Grand Calumet River and Indiana Harbor Ship canal.
Funding for two years has been secured to update of
the
Lake Rim GIS
interactive mapping website maintained by the Indiana Geological
Survey. Bernie Engle at Purdue University will be developing some new
analysis tools for the
site. Kevin is working with ESRI in hopes of including some of their
demographic and economic development data for the three county region on the
site.
The City of Crown Point is
using the new orthophotos to update subdivision, centerline and street
maps. Schneider Corp. continues to convert AutoCAD data for their GIS.
Lake
County
has been distributing the new county orthophotos by request. Demand for
the photography has been steady. Requestors furnish a hard drive for
overnight download. A small maintenance fee of $50.00 is charged for
the service. The county is using the orthos to update their centerline
data for Emergency Management Services. Hobart and Lake Station
parcel data has been received and is presently going through quality control
procedures. Parcel data for Hammond, East Chicago and Whiting is
expected sometime next year.
The Data
Center at IUN has been involved in two GIS projects this summer.
Both involve providing geocoding services for faculty research projects.
Introduction to Computer Methods in Geography is on the 2006 all schedule of classes.
At present five students are enrolled. Additional enrollment will be
necessary for the class to carry. A three class intro to GIS has been
scheduled for later this fall through the Division of Continuing Education.
Cele will lead a half day workshop for the Save the Dunes
Indiana Coastal Restoration
Action Team (ICRAT) program on August 25. Topics related to
wetlands and GIS will be highlighted. The GIS lab will be rebuilt for
the fall semester. Plans nclude AccuGlobe and Google Earth
installation on the computers.
The
Northwestern Indiana Regional Planning Commission (NIRPC) has completed
implementation to ArcGIS 9.1 including necessary hardware upgrades. The
2005 orthophotos for Lake, Porter and LaPorte counties (Mr. Sid county
mosaics) were downloaded and are available on CD's to other organizations through NIRPC.
A draft map was created for the Greenways/Blueways project overlaying trail
locations on the new photography. The orthos will be helpful to
designate areas of interest along the Little Calumet River. NIRPC will
be updating their website soon and will also continue to publish their electronic
newsletter. Work will start soon on the 20/40 Transportation Plan that
will include GIS for transportation, planning and zoning analysis.
The City of Gary is currently very
involved with Storm Water Management issues. Summer interns have been
capturing locations of catch basins with GPS equipment.
NWI GIS Forum Activities
Training
Becky plans to provide an ArcGIS 9.1 training session
sometime early this fall. Contact Becky for additional information.
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 Becky to express interest in participating in any upcoming sessions.
Administration
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 Data Center at IU Northwest has received an
extension from the Federal Geographic Data Committee to continue using up
their funding to support metadata outreach and training in Northwest
Indiana. Cele participated in the IGIC Road Shows this spring and
summer by introducing the Online Metadata Tool through presentations around
the state as part of the activities associated with this grant.
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.
Other Business
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.
Members in attendance discussed how they might
celebrate GIS Day this year on November 15. Members were encouraged to
arrange presentation for schools or other organizations that would benefit
from learning about GIS.
Next Meeting:
Thursday, December 7, 2006 ,
Indiana University Northwest, Library Room 110,
Floor 9:00 –11:00 am - Possible
presentation on use of 2006 Infrared aerial photography.
Some useful links:
Digital Data Technologies (DDTI) (for download of free AccuGlobe
2007 software) http://ddti.net/
Indiana Spatial Data Portal (for 2005 aerial photography download)
http://www.indiana.edu/~gisdata/05orthos.html
Online Metadata Tool
POLIS Center Emergency Management Seminars:
http://www.in.gov/dhs/
National Map
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