Northwest Indiana
GIS Forum
Meeting Notes
Thursday, March 8, 2007
Meeting Location: Northwestern Indiana Regional Planning Commission (NIRPC)
Offices
Members in
Attendance:
Joe Alamillo, City of Hammond; Dan Gin, Town of Schererville; Kim
Holmquist, School City of Hammond;
Eman Ibrahim, NIRPC;
Naida Lehmann,
EcoNatives; Joy Marburger, National Parks Service; Elizabeth McCloskey,
US Fish & Wildlife; Becky McKinley, Hammond Sanitary District;
Chris McNamara, Indiana Department of Natural Resources;
Javier Mercado, Jr., 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;
George Olmsted;
Matt Popiela, Town of
Schererville;
Tim Sutherland, IUN/NWI Center
for Data & Analysis; Diane Taylor, IUN Student
Local Implementation
Becky McKinley
reports that
Javier Mercado, Jr., has joined the Hammond Sanitary District as
her assistant. She continues to make changes to basemaps using the 2005 orthophotography. She has been rolling out the free AccuGlobe
application to interested departments, including Planning, her bosses laptop
and the Mayor's Desk. She has created a handbook for those using AccuGlobe in the City and is willing to share it interested parties.
The handbook is 12 - 15 pages and includes basic functionality steps for
AccuGlobe. She continues work on building footprints within the City.
The Data Center at
IU
Northwest, working with its
School of Education just completed a series of 3 workshops to encourage
local High School Social Science teachers to incorporate GIS into their
lesson plans. Free ArcVoyager Special Edition software lesson plans
and Google Earth applications were showcased. Cele helped with
geocoding locations of environmental restoration projects in Northwest
Indiana for a grant received by a local environmentalist. A glossy
poster was created with the results of the project. IUN Division of
Continuing Studies is offering an Introduction to GIS in late March.
The three session class will provide GIS basics for non professionals.
Kevin Miller of IDEM has been
working on local projects for the last 12 years. He is currently
involved in a project to restore the Grand Calumet/Indiana Harbor Ship
Canal. The project includes partnership with the Army Corps. of
Engineers and Indiana Department of Natural Resources. He is creating
a GIS database for the project. During a project scoping meeting with
the public, it was asked if the data would be publicly available online.
The question was taken to the Army Corp. and it was decided to seek funding
to update the Lake Rim GIS interactive mapping website built by the Indiana
Geological Survey a number of years ago. Funding from the Army Corps.
and Indiana Department of Natural Resources has been secured to update the
website. Local data creators will be invited to meetings in the near
future to discuss the possibility of including their local datasets on the
updated Lake Rim website.
The City of Crown Point has completed their zoning map and will
continue to update it as needed . They are currently accumulating
data for a utility grid. Work on accurate TIF districts updates
continues. To aid local contractors, "as built" information
is being scanned to attach to the GIS. Dan Niksch worked with a local
elementary school to provide information related to Crown Point geography.
The students will create a walking tour using that information.
The Town of Schererville is
currently laying the groundwork for projects. They are looking for
funding to buy GIS software. Their street mapbook is in the process of
being updated. They are in the process of moving projects from paper
to digital.
The Northwestern Indiana Regional Planning Commission (NIRPC) is
using GIS for land use planning. They are responsible for creating a
comprehensive land use plan for the region. The will collect municipal
plans and incorporate them to determine how well communities are cooperating
with each other across common boundaries. The project will require
working with both GIS and AutoCAD format. They are also planning to
use GIS for transportation safety issues. With data from the Indiana State Police,
they will determine the locations of high concentrations of automobile
accidents in Northwest Indiana.
The City of East Chicago is working
with a consultant to create a comprehensive plan. Their Engineering
Department is using GIS.
Naida Lehmann
has been involved in a program at the Chicago Botanical Gardens dealing with
plants of concern. She would like to bring the same project to
Indiana.
George Olmsted has been working with
the Public Safety Institute at Calumet College of St. Joseph on a crime
mapping pilot project using Munster PD data. The plan includes using
the data to create an intranet for Police Departments.
The National Parks Service is
presently mapping vegetation in the Indiana Dunes National Park. Using
NatureServe protocol, they plan to
have the the project completed by Fall of 2007. Color infrared
photography is being used for analysis. A GIS workshop to be held in
July is being planned in partnership with the US Geological Survey.
The workshop is developed and presented by
WETMAAP will be geared towards teaching educators how to interpret
aerial photography. This workshop is sponsored by Purdue University
North Central. Contact Joy Marburger if you would like to volunteer to
help train the teachers involved in this workshop.
Elizabeth
McClosky with the Dept. of US Fish and Wildlife uses the ESRI tool
LINK that determines the possible locations of birds based on land cover
data.
IUN Geosciences student, Diane Taylor is
involved in GIS analysis using historical aerial photography of Mt. Baldy to
determine the migration of the dune over time. She is attempting to georeference older photos for her GIS project.
Indiana Department of Natural Resources,
Division of Law Enforcement is in the process of switching to a new records
management system. The mobile system will allow personnel to input
geographic coordinates of incidents for crime mapping.
School City of Hammond uses GIS to
determine school boundaries for enrollment issues.
The City of Hammond Planning Department
utilizes GIS for City's Adopt a Neighborhood program. Working in
conjunction with Purdue Calumet, they are also involved with the Mayor's
Housing Task Force. It is expected that another city neighborhood will
be surveyed soon.
The USGS will sponsor the 133 Cities
project in 2008. The project will involve producing aerial photography for 133
urbanized areas in the US. The Chicago urban area will be included in
the project and includes urban areas
in Northwest Indiana. The USGS would like to confer with local
governments included in these areas to allow them the opportunity to provide matching funds
for higher resolution products.
There has been local
press coverage recently indicating that Porter County is in the
process of GIS implementation. Newspaper articles relay that the
County Assessor's Office has committed $2 million towards the program.
Sidwell has been contracted to begin parcel conversion and software
purchasing is underway. Intensions are to have an online mapping
system with public access to county data.
NWI GIS Forum Activities
Training
IDEM continues to support GIS
training in Northwest Indiana by donating training materials for two ArcGIS
9.2 sessions this year. Free, 2 day, certified ArcGIS 9.2 training session conducted by Becky McKinley in the IUN GIS lab
are expected to be scheduled for this summer and fall. Training sessions will be
advertised via the NWI GIS Forum listserv. Contact
for
additional information.
Lake Rim GIS Update
As mentioned earlier in the meeting, funding has been
secured to update the Indiana Geological Survey interactive mapping website,
Lake Rim GIS. Meetings will be conducted in the near future with local
organizations that possess digital data to encourage their participation in
the website update. Input regarding website content and mapping tools
will be sought during meetings. Personnel at Purdue University are
being consulted for inclusion of specific watershed analysis tools to be
included with the update. Participation and ideas are encouraged.
Watch the listserv for meeting dates.
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.
Due to changes in Indiana Geological Survey hardware
and software, the Online Metadata Tool is not currently functional.
The IGS advises that they hope to be able to upgrade the Tool to provide a
more user friendly interface by the end of summer.
Last Fall, the Data Center received an extension for
its Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) CAP Category 1 - Metadata
Outreach and Training Grant through this summer. A grant proposal for
a 2007 CAP grant was submitted at the end of January 2007. If awarded,
the new funds will be available at the end of August.
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 last spring and
summer by introducing the Online Metadata Tool through presentations around
the state as part of the activities associated with this grant. Cele
and Becky will give a
presentation on the Online Metadata Tool at the state conference later this
month.
IGIC Report
The annual Indiana
State GIS Conference
will be held March 13 - 14, 2007. The conference will be held at the
Crowne Plaza Hotel and Conference Center in Indianapolis. Click on the
link above for more information. There will be presentations by
several members of our Forum during the conference.
IGIC has changed to a fee based membership
organization. Members of IGIC receive a discounted conference rate. 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
The IGIC Education Committee is scheduling a number of
classes and seminars for next year. Presentations will be free until
August of this year. After August, non members will be assessed a fee
for future presentations. Send
or
any GIS topics that you would like to
see included in the schedule. Presentations will take place at
the State Library in Indianapolis. The possibility of some of these
presentations being held in other areas of the state is under discussions.
Broadcasting presentations via the internet is also being
investigated.
Follow the progress of
Senate Bill 461 defining the
role of statewide GIS. The Bill promotes the Indiana Map and
coordinates GIS in Indiana.
Next Meeting: The next meeting
- August 9, 2007, 9-11, at Indiana University Northwest.
|
