In the News...
Local officials show off new regional mapping database
The computer program - to be completed within three years - will include information such as voter registration for communities across West Michigan.
By Jim Harger
The Grand Rapids Press
Geoffrey Ehler clicked a computer mouse on an aerial image of a Walker neighborhood and watched as sewer lines buried beneath the streets showed up as red lines.
Another click on a house in the neighborhood brought up a pop-up screen that identified the home's owner. Another menu item showed the home's assessed valuation and its winter and summer tax bills.
Ehler, a technician who helped design the complex computer program, then launched a topographical overlay to show there is a deep ravine running through the back of the property.
This is REGIS, a $1.5 million pilot project that took 10 square miles of Kent County and mapped more than 800 "data layers" describing every neighborhood, street and property into a single computerized database. The system is packed with data on voter registration, zoning codes, electrical grids, traffic data, street lights and crime statistics.
REGIS, which stands for Regional Geographic Information System, was sponsored by 21 Grand Rapids municipalities to demonstrate how a single database can be used by local governments and businesses to quickly gather information. Operating under the umbrella of the Grand Valley Metro Council, officials hope to load data from up to 1,000 square miles of Kent and Ottawa counties into the system.
The pilot system, completed after nine months of development work, was to be unveiled to local political and business leaders today at the Community Media Center. It includes parts of Grand Rapids, Walker, Kentwood, Wyoming and Alpine and Plainfield townships.
The entire project, to be completed over the next three years, is expected to cost between $11 million and $12 million, said Jerry Felix, executive director of the Metro Council. While $1.5 million may seem steep for 10 square miles of mapping, that money also was used to build the computerized framework for the entire REGIS project, Felix said.
When REGIS is completed, it will be shared by Metro Council members who need to get their hands on a variety of data. Some of the information may even be put on the Internet for use by the general public, he said.
Project Director Eric Frazier said assembling the data for REGIS was a difficult job that required a variety of programming tasks. Some of the information came from old yellowing maps. Some data was stored on file cards while other sources were databases that used different computing platforms.
At the heart of the system are high-resolution aerial photos, which carefully were plotted and assembled to digitally represent every square foot of the area, Frazier said. Most of the other data and maps are keyed to the photos.
Now that they've demonstrated the system will work, Frazier said his Colorado company, Convergent Group, plans to move ahead and assemble data from other municipalities and neighborhoods in Kent County, as well as parts of Ottawa County that participated in the project.
Frazier said the single database will allow planners to quickly measure and gauge an infinite variety of local statistics. It could be used to draw boundaries in redistricting questions, along with measuring criminal activity across city and township borders and identifying homes in danger of flooding.
The system would also offer quick answers to questions that otherwise would take months to answer. For example, REGIS could be used to gauge the impact of a corner liquor store on crime, traffic and home values in a neighborhood, Frazier said. "It takes all the mystery out of government and puts out all of the infrastructure for citizens to see," he said.
Felix said the system will allow local governments "to do more with less." With so many different municipalities in West Michigan, having access to a single source of information will cut a lot of time for municipal employees who need to gather information from different sources, he said.
Local government officials are enthusiastic about the system's potential.
"Ultimately, I think that REGIS will be as mainstream in the City of Grand Rapids' daily operations as e-mail, word processing and spreadsheet packages," City Manager Kurt Kimball said.