Bringing the information superhighway home

The Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) is exploring ways to help local jurisdictions prepare for the information superhighway that will occur in their own backyards.

Through its Access Project, 190 SCAG-member agencies will receive ready-to-use GIS software, data, applications and training as well. Internet access to connect with each other and outside agencies is also available.

“The real benefit is that hundreds of local planners will be able to share common methodological, and technological planning frameworks over the network,” explains Craig Gooch, a consultant on SCAG’s Access Project.

For some of these planners, it may be the first time that data has been shared across jurisdictional boundaries, alleviating duplication and opening forums for communication.

To organize and implement Access, SCAG made use of 13 subregional planning groups. Each jurisdiction assigned a member to subregional technical advisory committees, and through monthly meetings, committee members — the potential users of the system — exchanged ideas on system development, required applications, implementation strategies and training.

ArcView 2.1 GIS software from ESRI, Redlands, Calif., was selected as the foundation for the Access system to meet the wide range of needs of member jurisdictions.

SCAG retained Psomas and Associates, Riverside, Calif., a GIS systems integration firm, to bring the Access concept to reality.

“Imagine implementing a turnkey GIS and Internet communications package for 190 different sites, while coordinating with many different parties,” Gooch says. “It’s tough.”

Each of SCAG’s local jurisdictions will receive a PC workstation configured to support GIS and Internet applications. In addition, each member will have immediate access to the Internet with tools for electronic mail, news groups and World Wide Web home pages.

Agency users are expected to access their own and other regional home pages to browse through information about meetings, join forums on planning issues and download important information.

Eventually, the home pages will become public access forums in which cities may post frequently requested information such as maps and reports.

Because SCAG is a regional repository for census data and other information, finding demographic data like income or household size to populate the system was easy.

More than 180 census variables are incorporated into the GIS application to allow fast access to information, reporting and analytical capabilities for example, local jurisdictions will be able to use the data to analyze their own employment profiles by industry.

SCAG also has data on commuter patterns, transit availability, traffic volumes, levels of service and modeling results for regional transportation and air quality issues.

The GIS will allow this data to be easily accessible in a useful format. Additionally, specialized tabular data sets will be available upon request from SCAG.

In addition, SCAG’s own landuse file, derived from aerial photography, will constitute one of the primary land-use data files.

With easy access to this data set’ local jurisdictions will be able to identify land use in some 105 categories for the entire urbanized area in the SCAG region, down to a 2.5-acre resolution.

The file is periodically updated, allowing for an analysis of changes over time.

And while that file covers existing land uses, SCAG also has digitized planned land uses from each local jurisdiction’s general plan. These will be available to all members as part of the regional GIS database.

Local jurisdictions are being encouraged to acquire GIS parcel base maps from surrounding county agencies as well.

In addition to systems, software and data, SCAG provides each jurisdiction with GIS applications for address matching, land-use analysis, demographic and employment analysis, growth forecasts, property identification, damage assessment and land GIS data viewers.

Applications are designed to bring members with little or no GIS experience up to speed in using the system for data searches, spatial analyses and map creation.

Project planners also envision a day when agencies outside of SCAG, including transportation planning agencies, economic development agencies, university planning, ,,geography departments, environmental planning agencies, city managers and finance directors, will use the GIS data repository.

SCAG hopes its member agencies will mobilize local planning organizations into multi-disciplinary project teams capable of effectively addressing environmental problems such as traffic congestion and air quality.