Oregon GIS Association Activity Highlights

Summer Meeting Highlights for August 1997

OGISA's last general session meeting was in held in August in Grants Pass.

It was attended by people from 12 counties, 4 state agencies and USGS. The meeting was hosted by the City of Grants Pass and Josephine County who supplied a great facility and plenty of doughnuts.

Three presentations were made to the group as follows:

IRIS - Larry Harker demonstrated the new GIS additions to the road inventory system.

The system is based on map objects, Microsoft Access, and Visual Basic. The system will allow several different methods for importing data and will be made available to counties later this year.

Data Guidelines - Debbie Balsley (SSCGIS) presented alternatives for putting OGISA information and data guidelines on a WEB page. Everyone liked the format and we have requested the State Service Center for GIS give us a cost estimate for putting this on their web page.

Marketing - Kim Morrison, LCOG presented the results of a recent marketing study completed for LCOG. The study focused on ways to economically make information available to users on the internet. Copies of the plan can be obtained from Bob Swank, LCOG, 541-687-4435

Priorities - Small group meeting discussion resulted in the following priorities:

1. pursue hydro standards,
2. pursue Government Corners AOC application,
3. pursue taxlot statewide database,
4. ORBITS roads effort through ORBITS,
5. Improve taxlot minimum exchange standard. Respectivly, regarding government corners, it was felt the AOC application was critical. There was question as to the process for who would be entering the data. Regarding the statewide taxlot database, it was felt that coordination efforts could be potentially huge with a vast variety of interested users. The effort could largely impact on DOR.
6. Regarding roads, it was felt that ORBITS should begin to integrate IRIS with city and county systems. Regarding the taxlot minimum exchange standard....OGISA Board Meeting Decision and Highlights

URISA Special Interest Group of URISA

• URISA invite OGISA to become a Special Interest Group of URISA. By becoming a "special interest group", URISA would provide access to funding, to the websitefor announcing activities, to the newsletter for articles, would formalize their relationship at GIS in Action Conference, would increase visibility with cities, and would provide "banking type duties"
• Board Member Nominations - Jason Wegner, Josephine County and Ronda Grediagin, Deschutes County have been nominated to fill two slots on the OGISA Board (vacated by David Figueroa and Brian Mladenich.) Nominations will be approved (voted on) at the next OGISA meeting.
• Webpage - Rick Cvarak (Morrow County) will head up the OGISA website, work on OGISA organizational communications through URISA. As the OGISA Document is endorsed and supported by the Oregon Geographic Information Council (OGIC), SSCGIS will provide a website demonstration of the document data model guidelines on the web and allow OGISA members to provide input.
• Current Status of Data StandardsGovernment Corners - The guidelines are done, exchange prototype is done, and, at the fall AOC meeting in Eugene, the surveyors agreed to fund the development of a statewide government corners application system.
• Taxlots - The guidelines are done, graphic exchange (tiff) and polygons with attributes for exchange standard will be used, and the taxlot committee will be presenting to assessors Meeting to develop a demo application to show the utilities that will explore the benefits of a statewide taxlots database.Addresses - The NENA standards adopted, situs address and address ranges were defined.Roads
• (ORBIT - Oregon Road Base Information Team) - a general meeting is planned for January 20. For more information, contact Theresa Valentine, SSCGIS, 503-378-4036 or Marcus Lester, ODOT, 986-4298. Terrain
• (OTIS - Oregon Terrain Information System) OTIS - This new effort was brought before the OGISA board for approval. Oregon Terrain Information System will enhance the DEM from the Baseline97 effort lead by the State Service Center for GIS. OTIS will build a continuous DEM for the state in a common projection, use BLM converted data while ODF fills in holes and projects data. Development requirements include a

1. basic data structure with software independent data structure, data partition sizes,
2. advanced data structures [contours, grids, images, slopes]
3. storage & distribution [one CD per data partition and on-line]
4. Prototype development
5. Implementation Plan development.

Schedule includes a "go ahead" from and a review by the Oregon Geographic Information Council, as well as a review by OGISA. Metro will provide some administrative support for meeting set up and announcements.

OGISA MeetingsOGISA meetings historically follow the following schedule.

SPRING - inconjunction with URISA at the GIS in Action conference in Portland, generally the first week of April.

SUMMER - not inconjuntion with any other group, location floats, generally in August.

FALL - in congunction with AOC Conference, location floats, generally the third week in November.

WINTER - inconjunction with Assessors Conference, location floats, generally the second week in January.

The next meeting, however, is scheduled in conjunction with URISAs annually business meeting in late January.

For information contact Dean Anderson, 503-623-0704.