Phil Lund takes a visitor on a detour before he begins a demonstration of Regional Geographic Information System, a new computerized mapping system otherwise known as REGIS.

He stops at a conference room in which about 20 large moving boxes are stacked high on the table, chairs and floors. Each box, filled with zoning maps, tax records and plat records, is labeled with the name of a city or township in Kent County.

These boxes contain only about 5 percent of the raw data that's gone into REGIS' massive databases, said Lund, who directs the agency created to oversee the system.

REGIS, which was formally launched with a ribbon cutting ceremony today, is up and running after four years of planning, data acquisition and integration.

REGIS now has more than 400 gigabytes of information stores on its computers at the City of Grand Rapids' computer center, according to technical director Brian Berdanier. That makes it one of the largest GIS systems in the nation, he said,

Though more data will be added as REGIS matures, the system is ready for use by local planning officials, Lund said. As a database, REGIS is unique because it presents almost all of its data in the form of maps.

By typing in an address or name, REGIS users can call up maps or aerial photographs of any location in Kent County. To those maps they can overlay information about streets, water or sewer lines, property easements, flood plains, hydrant locations, parcel numbers and property tax records.

The database includes a library of some 438 detailed aerial photographs that have been stitched together to create a large single photograph of Kent County.

The system is designed to save local municipalities time and money because it puts at a planner's fingertips information that would otherwise be scattered.

REGIS specialist Christopher Bessert demonstrated by creating a 1,400-name mailing list of every property owner in the Federal Emergency Management Agency's flood plain for Plaster Creek. The list, which took minutes to prepare, would have taken days without REGIS.

In all, there are more than 250 layers of information available in the REGIS system, Bessert said. Each street alone contains "place holders" for up to 35 characteristics such as age, condition, traffic volumes and surface types, he said.

Now that REGIS is up and running, it will be made available to local municipalities which helped fund the $14 million project through the auspices of the Grand Valley Metro Council.

During the next six months, REGIS will also become available to Internet users, Lund says.

Before REGIS becomes available on the Internet, a policy board must determine what content will be made widely available, said Lund.

Eventually, the detailed data on REGIS also will be made available to architechts, developers or real estate professionals who can use its data, Lund said.

More information about REGIS can be found on the Internet at http://www.gvmc-regis.org.

Grand Valley Metro Council