Easy Search - Toggle maps

Click the ‘Parcel Map’ option to display property information on the selected parcel and adjacent  parcels.

Easy Search - Display Parcel map

Click the ‘Zoning Map’ option to display zoning information on the selected parcel as well as adjacent parcels.

Easy Search - Display Zoning Map

We hope to announce soon the availability of a map on the Easy Site Reports, but for now we encourage those seeking a map to try the blue hyperlinks at the bottom of the report page (the section titled Dynamic GIS maps).  These links let you start ‘easy’ then ‘go advanced’ if interested in more map layer information, functionality and tools.

With the Road Search we now provide the same resources as our older site that the majority of users need.  The Extract Data tools are the last remaining resources we will need to bring into our dynamic GIS sites.  Please email [gis@yorkcountygov.com] if there is something you use in our old ‘GIS Online’ that is not available in any of our new sites.  Be aware that the older ‘GIS Online’ website is outdated and will be removed at some point.

From Easy Search select the ‘Road’ option (see image  below, click to enlarge):

Easy Search - Choosing the Road Search Option

If searching for Waverly Av any of the following could be entered [Wav, Waverly, Waverly Av]. The Road Search also allows you to search by route number and York County road numbers.  Examples include 49, 161, 21, or F5-077.   Next, press ‘Enter’ or click on the ‘Search’ button.

Easy Search - Using the Road Search

A successful search produces the report below.  If you would like an interactive map that would allow you to pan, zoom, or add various layers (aerials, zoning, property boundaries), then try the blue hyperlinks at the bottom of the report.   All Easy Searches have these.

Easy Search - Road Search Report

Do you need someone to show you how our new GIS Online works? Click here to watch this short video tutorial (under 2 min).

Essentials Site Tools:

Map Widgets (Pan, Zoom)

Layer List

Search Query Tools

Select Tools

Hyperlinking Tool

Markup Tools

Upload Shapefile

Printing:

Printing Maps from Templates

Reporting:

Mailing Labels Report

Reporting Engine

Data Linking Tool

Fleet Tracker for Geocortex Essentials

Fleet Tracker (Silverlight viewer)

Fleet Tracker for Geocortex IMF

FleetTrackerIMF

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York County GIS staff proudly present our latest websites to staff and citizens. We are now able to offer training for these new GIS Online resources. These new online resources that allow us to view the land around us and search property have been in the works for over a year. All staff who currently rely upon and use the older (2004) GIS Online need to take this training to be aware of the wealth of tools and features now offered.

Our goal with this first round of training is to target County Staff willing to return to their offices and train or support their coworkers in the use of the new sites. Since there are hundreds of end-users for this product we want to target those who can (a) offer feedback on how to improve and refine the product, and (b) become a ‘go-to’ person to assist with implementation within their offices until more staff receive training over the next year.

Our intent is to phase out the older (2004) GIS Online Property Search since we now have more powerful, user-friendly alternatives. The vendor has indicated that this older software will not be supported in the future, so we strongly encourage staff and citizens to migrate to the newer websites. Certain features and layers have already been eliminated in order to provide a higher level of service within the framework of this older software.

Who: County Staff interested in learning about our new websites, and willing to be “Train the Trainer students”

Where: Law Enforcement Training Center computer room, 92 Stoneybrook Dr, York

When:

Monday September 28 9:00 A.M. to 11 A.M.
Monday September 28 2:00 P.M. to 4 P.M.

Tuesday September 29 9:00 A.M. to 11 A.M.
Tuesday September 29 2:00 P.M. to 4 P.M.

Wednesday September 30 9:00 A.M. to 11 A.M.
Wednesday September 30 2:00 P.M. to 4 P.M.

Thursday October 1 9:00 A.M. to 11 A.M.
Thursday October 1 2:00 P.M. to 4 P.M.

Friday October 2 9:00 A.M. to 11 A.M.
Friday October 2 2:00 P.M. to 4 P.M.

Monday October 5 9:00 A.M. to 11 A.M.
Monday October 5 2:00 P.M. to 4 P.M.

Monday October 26 9:00 A.M. to 11 A.M.
Monday October 26 2:00 P.M. to 4 P.M.

Tuesday October 27 9:00 A.M. to 11 A.M.
Tuesday October 27 2:00 P.M. to 4 P.M.

Wednesday October 28 9:00 A.M. to 11 A.M.
Wednesday October 28 2:00 P.M. to 4 P.M.

(Additional training dates may be offered in the future if required.)
Note: Seating is limited to 8 for each class so if you cannot attend and must cancel, please let Tammy (684-8549) know so someone else may have your seat.

For POL users, here is the Pictometry OnLine (POL) Help Doc (50pgs)

Ongoing training seminars are offered by Pictometry, stay tuned to this website to review the latest offerings: http://www.pictometry.com/cts/classes
We have one of these recorded seminars available as a file to review anytime on our internal S drive.

Here are some notes of interest about our new oblique imagery.  This should orient you to what is available and how to access this resource. Use this link to make the slides launch to full screen or download as ppt/pdf.

To review the slides quickly, try this.

Below are some End-User training Slides,
try this link if you want to view in a larger window.

In order to achieve their web GIS-related goals, York County deploys several products, including ArcGIS Server, ArcSDE, ArcIMS, Geocortex Essentials, and Geocortex Optimizer.

In 2008, the county recognized the need for an application that could track and help departments more effectively manage mobile assets, including vehicles and work crews. In 2007, an 800 Mhz Motorola Astro 25 radio system was implemented and integrated with desktop computers, handheld units, and mobile data terminals (mostly laptops) mounted in vehicles. However, problems arose when employees were in need of help but were unable to report their location due to lack of radio coverage. This was one of the issues that helped spark York County’s interest in automated vehicle location (AVL) technology for ArcGIS Server.

When an organization deploys tracking technology of this nature, it is important to communicate the value proposition to employees. When staff first hear of this technology, they initially may find it intrusive to learn their supervisors are able to monitor their location. We are able to move beyond that concern by pointing out to them that their safety is enhanced and that taxpayer resources, such as vehicle wear, fuel, and staff time are more wisely used.

York County deployed a beta version of their custom AVL solution in September 2008 and are preparing for the final implementation due this summer. Their solution was customized to poll their Motorola radio system, which enables them to capture location and attribute data sent from vehicles and store it in a database through ArcSDE. This interim AVL system lets staff observe the last known location of any vehicle; it can also report to supervisors when vehicle usage or location parameters are triggered. Examples include vehicle idle time, whether the engine is on or off, and whether a vehicle returns to the office at the end of the day (via geofencing).

York County’s early implementation of fleet tracking was custom built with Web ADF  and incorporated into Geocortex Essentials with a custom map refresh tool and ArcIMS-generation AVL components developed by Latitude Geographics. While the data they can query and report on is somewhat limited, it includes speed, date/time, vehicle ID, driver, and vehicle type.

GIS staff are eagerly awaiting the upcoming Fleet Tracker for Geocortex Essentials product using ESRI’s Silverlight API.  Despite the early success we’ve achieved with our custom solution, we’re standing by to implement Latitude’s productized solution that will provide a full-featured system streamlined around vehicle tracking and reporting.

One benefit of York County’s early deployment of ArcGIS Server-based fleet tracking is that it has allowed them to start a valuable conversation with end users. Staff are already thinking about various additional workflows that can benefit from this technology, including the coordination and management of multiple work crews. There is also value in knowing how much time is spent repairing a particular road segment, how often it’s been repaired, and how much time different types of crews need on average to complete their work. The collected data could be used for a variety of purposes, from reducing “downtime” between jobs to justifying the expenditure of capital improvement funds.

GIS staff are looking forward to the future because the technology is already showing tremendous value. Overall, customer service is improved and taxpayers’ dollars go further when we are able to better manage our resources-it’s a win-win situation for everyone.

(originally published in the 2009 spring/summer edition of Geocortex Newsletter)

Fleet Tracker (beta) (Click to make image larger)

Here is a look at the new Fleet Tracker:

Fleet Tracker (v1-Silverlight) (Click to make image larger)

(note that you can click on any image below to make it larger and more readable, then choose the ‘x’ in the lower right corner to return to this article)

We recently added datalinking for roads to include the County road inventory and work orders.

Roadway Datalink: County Road Inventory

Roadway Datalink: County Road Work Order

We also have datalinking enabled for parcels to include buildings with taxmapid’s, but with no land, situs addresses, parcel history and building permits.

Property Datalink: Building with No Land

Property Datalink: Situs Addresses

Property Datalink: Parcel History

Property Datalink: Building Permits

How do you access datalinking??

Datalinking is available after you perform some kind of search.  You can utilize our aspatial attribute search tools (see graphic below, “Search By” Road name is active) or make a layer selectable and use the selection toolbar (see graphic below, “Selection” toolbar is active allowing you to select “Parcels” by point, line, polygon, etc – note that in the layers list Parcels is active, the “i” has been highlighted).  The datalinking examples above (screenshots) are for layers Roadway and Parcels, so once you make some sort of inquiry (spatial/geographic or aspatial by attribute) on one of those layers, then choose the Summary Report, you will observe tabs for any Datalinking we have established.

Datalink: Spatial (Geographic Query Using Selection Tools) or Aspatial (Attribute Query) Search Methods

By making the imagery viewable online we can have multiple reviewers.  Each has access to a grid layer which they can mark with a ‘completion’ status as well as a layer where they can place a polygon surrounding any issues with the orthophotography they may discover.  We are extremely impressed with the job our vendor has done, so you will only see a few ‘purple’ spots representing issues (Most are the result of us testing out our ability to make a polygon in a browser-editing environment!).

The site is password protected, so we can assign a unique user name to all the reviewers.  All they have to do is zoom in, review the orthophoto within a grid by panning around, and then launch the “Edit Task” tools to update either the grid or a suspect area.

We have used these online editing tools a number of times for other scenarios, but this is the first where we have collaborated between multiple County departments and the City and been ‘on the same  map’ during the review process.

2009 Review Website with Edit Task Tools

The screen capture here shows the extremly long list of aerial/ortho layers as well as some DEM/Hillshade layers.  (click on any image to make larger, choose ‘x’ on bottom right to close.)

Layer List for Imagery Viewer (7/2009)

The need for this new website comes from those folks who routinely call and schedule a trip to our office to review older aerial imagery on paper.  We scanned these and georeferenced them a few years ago and made them available through our ‘Orthophoto Report’ in the ‘old’  GIS Online.  That report provided users with a quick way to view a specific property as it was captured for the last 40 years, but it was not interactive.  This site allows a user to make any of our 40 years worth of imagery visible and interact with each to produce the cartographic or professional map output as they need.  Most users will probably see any of the layers and find that they can easily make visible the year they want, but will be perplexed by the 1970 & 1980 aerials.  So that’s what the section below will describe!

TO ACCESS AND USE 1970 & 1980 AERIALS:

Note:  these represent a series of hundreds of scanned and georeferenced tiles.  Most imagery we are accustomed to looking at a large countywide mosaic.  Unfortunately, with these aerials you have to do a little work to get what you need.

First, perform a search either by using the zoom tool to locate an area of interest or by the various searches we have made available.

Imagery Viewer: 1970 Grid Layer (Toggled Visible) and with Red Label on Map

Second, expand either the 1970 or 1980 folder to observe two layers.  You will see ‘photo grid 1970 (or photo grid 1980) as well as 1970 Aerials (or 1980 Aerials).  There is an icon next to the ‘aerials’ layer, this indicates it is a ‘group’ layer.  If you click on a group layer it expands to show sub-layers below.  In our case here you will see hundreds of individual tiles.  Which tile to choose you ask??

Third, make the photo grid visible by ensuring there is a check in the box next to it.  Don’t worry about the ‘i’ for active or identifiable, just make the layer visible.  Observe the grid lines and the label.  You will want to take note of and choose the grid that covers your subject area.

Fourth, expand the group layer for the year of aerials you wish to view.  Scroll until you find the grid name discovered in the third step, above.  Make this aerial tile layer visible.

Image Viewer: Expand the Group Layer

Image Viewer: Making an Image Layer Visible

Thanks to those of you who have been using our latest websites and providing us with much needed feedback. This is a product of your needs and requests (both recent and cumulative from years past).  Please continue to email us with stories of how you are using our new GIS web tools and your wish list.

We encourage you to give our new training videos a look and begin learning the many exciting features of our GIS Websites.  There is a 2 minute ‘quick start’ and a more in-depth 5min video demonstrating more features. (give them a look) 

There have been a couple attempts to revise our county web page (www.yorkcountygov.com/GIS) so that everyone can continue to find the old website while previewing and learning the new sites. Until everyone is comfortable with our new sites (specifically the new ‘basic’ search which is under development) we will leave the old GIS Online for everyone to continue using. Change is not easy, we want to make the switchover and retirement of the old sites as painless as possible over the next year.

April and May 2009 have been a productive months!  We upgraded to ArcGIS Server 9.3.1 the first week of May and have been noticing how much more quickly our dynamic maps are rendered.  In June we plan on moving our map caches to a location on our big disk drive (SAN) that spins faster and has proven (in testing) to more quickly render the vector base map tiles (parcels, roads, address map features).

Essentials map with POL Navigator split screen

York County acquired oblique and ortho imagery in 2009.  The oblique Pictometry imagery arrived and we will be delivering that through the latest websites as a split screen later this year (see image).   Many staff have already started using Pictometry through their desktop EFS product.  The orthophotography project should wrap up at and be available by July.

Also completed in May was a rewrite of our searches to query related records.  What does this mean?  For around 2,700 parcels there are buildings that have parcel numbers but no associated land.  There are also physical addresses associated with each parcel.  Our updated searches now query these related records and display information in a window to the right of the land parcel selected. 

Essentials 1521 with Situs Address(es)

The example shown here (click image to view larger) is for Winthrop University with numerous physical addresses onsite.  For the address we are able to provide information such as council district representation, school district, county zoning, water/electric/fire district and census tract. 

 There will be a revised “Property Report” released soon that will also display these related records.

Also, a number of searches have been added.  Plan Tracking projects can be queried by name and project number.  Watersheds (name and HUC#), Adopt-a-Highway, search by Route # (county road numbers), Previous Owner, Deed/Plat  Book-Page, .  The ability to see driving time (geoprocessing task) in 5, 10 and 15 minute areas from any location is available also.

  One of the last items we are hoping to implement later in 2009 is data extract.  This should bring the ‘old’ and ‘new’ into feature parity.  Many users are reporting they have more scenarios where they are able to use the new tools found in the website, so we are excited to hear how many additional types of inquiries are conducted with the new GIS Online.

With our new website we now are able to accommodate users of both Mac and Windows! If you would like to report a browser compatible with our website, please email us. There have been a few Mac users who have worked with us recently to report compatibility, here is what one user reported:

Mac G4 Dual 1GHz, 512 RAM
Mac OS X, 10.3.9

Firefox 2.0.0.20 – tested, WORKING !! (see images below, click for larger view)

Navigator 9.0.0.6 – tested, WORKING !! – Screenshot

Camino 1.6.7 -  (v1.8.1.21 2009032711)  - tested, WORKING !! – Screenshot

Chrome – not yet available for Mac

Explorer 5.2

Opera – (Mac OS X) - not working

Safari 1.3.2 (v312.6) (part of Mac OS X 10.3.9) – not working

Wazilla (Mozilla) browser –  partially appeared but the buttons were not useable

iCab -  froze the machine.

Our new GIS Online web solutions (GISWebs) provide focused interactive websites that include the searches, layers and reports that you need to complete your geographic inquiry quickly. Contrasted with our older (2004) solution, which took a ‘one website for all’ approach with 50+ layers, only 4 searches and just a few canned report types, we are now able to provide a modern (focused) approach that has flexibility to be expanded on demand.

With that said, our goal today is to begin working with end-users to figure out how they would like to use GIS Online. The current plan is to build focused websites catered to specific vertical markets of end-users (e.g. Zoning and Land Use, Transportation, Property Sales, Historic Features).

The GIS Team is interested in designing the best possible solutions to meet a variety of needs. We anxiously await your feedback to learn how you use our websites and to see if the services we offer meet your needs.

Our plan is to continue to rapidly refine and develop our solutions for a couple more months to account for your specific suggestions. After that, we wish to hold a number of workshops for City and County staff and the community to learn about our solutions in a classroom setting.

Additionally, we want to provide a simpler means for anyone to ask geographic questions.  For example, the “Land Property Basic Search” was derived from our “Address Verification” site and customized to allow citizens and staff to look up their council representative by address.  After speaking with numerous staff and citizens we see that the majority of inquiries can be answered easiest through a ‘Basic Search’ application like these.   We will be designing something new around this that should be able answer most inquiries, but if it does not there will be an option to launch one of our more focused websites (mentioned above) to ‘Go Advanced’ and perform more in-depth spatial query.

Note that this new website/service may not have all the functionality or information available compared to the old GIS Online – those will be added as we continue to develop them.

http://maps2.yorkcountygov.com/ycgisonline/

First, navigate to the link above.

We encourage you to find the “Email Subscription” page so that you will hear about updates we make. All new postings to this website will be automatically sent by email to your inbox.

We have posted some training materials and hope you will review these before using the website. There is a “Quick Start Guide” as well as some “Tutorial Videos” to learn how all the tools work.

Please find the “HOME” link (to the left of the page) in the upper left. This website represents the services we target to our ‘advanced’ user. We are looking to build something similar to portlandmaps.com as a resource for those with other (simpler) information needs.

If you have comments, suggestions or questions, please email to gis @ yorkcountygov.com

If you know others who would enjoy participating in this feedback program please forward this email to them, make sure you cc me so that I can keep track of and continue to inform those participating.

We will definitely be making a lot of refinements as we go, so thanks in advance for your patience!

York County GIS Team

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We acquired the Geocortex Essentials software solution from Latitude Geographics recently.  The websites currently under development utilize Essentials software to provide you with an enhanced user interface.  We also utilize the ESRI ArcGIS Server Basic, Standard and Advanced as our GIS spatial server (Basic/ArcSDE with MS SQL Server) and the software that renders the map (Standard/Advanced).   The AVL links to the right of this website utilize another software component purchased from Latitude Geographics, Fleet Tracker.   You may observe that many of these links are password protected, these are not intended for public consumption.

If you make the All (Last) current locations layer visible you can see what information map tips provide. Map tips provide an animated pin icon and allow you to get attributes of the map feature. You can quickly observe the current speed & last date/time the vehicle reported in.

Each animal control vehicle on the map is now symbolized with the radio call sign. This was real tricky to configure to be more readable and may take some more improvement.

Also, we changed the session timeout to around 13 hours.

I have added two additional ‘reports’ today to GIS Online which allow everyone to review the Pictometry oblique images.  These may be found below the existing Parcel, Zoning and other Reports after using the Identify tool for property details.

Hopefully the information below will help you understand how to discover and use these new features, if not email or call.

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Under the Permit and Property Card links you will now see Pictometry.  I suggest maximizing the report window before clicking on any of these links.

The Street View & Birds Eye link takes you to a web page giving you three panels;

(1) The upper left is the Google Street View which provides a picture as if you were driving down the road.  You can navigate left/right and zoom in to see structures along the roadway.  Navigation within this pane will move the map & pictometry panes.

(2) The lower left displays a map outlining in blue where the Google Street View is available.  If you are placed in the middle of a large parcel and this pane is empty you may need to click on the nearest road outlined in blue to activate the Street View pane.  Navigation within this pane will move the Street View & Pictometry panes.

(3) To the right you have the Birds Eye, which is really Pictometry.  The coverage for this is a little more than what you have within the desktop Pictometry software, from York/Clover to the Lancaster County line and up to Tega Cay/River Hills and Fort Mill.    You can still review 5 views (North, South, East, West, Down/Ortho) for any point on the map (or building).  Note that you may have to click on the Birds Eye link from the menu to switch from the Aerial image view.  (Navigating in this pane will not move the other two panes.)

Also, note that there is an address search in the lower left corner of this window.  Enter the full address with city and state or zip.  This address search will query any location in the USA and display Pictometry and Street View if available.

A second Pictometry link is present.   There is a “Birds Eye (Printable)” link which provides only the Pictometry and its 5 Views, and allows you to print using the Print icon on the upper toolbar.

[The View BuildFax Permit link gives you any permit York County has issued for a parcel.  Other jurisdictions may have permits published here.]

These links for Pictometry and BuildFax Permits are available for all staff and citizens to use.  The Property Card links are the only links that become invisible to the public who are not using county computers. 

Note that the Pictometry oblique imagery available through these links are from 2007.  Countywide Pictometry was approved this year and should be available for you to use by June of 2009.  Hopefully we will have a new GIS Online to share with you by then.

As always, I look forward to hearing how you are using Pictometry!

You can sign up for an email list to be notified as new features are added and documentation is improved.  This URL is also a forum where you may leave comments to help guide us to better serve your information needs. 

For now, please consider this latest GIS Online website just as the title suggests, ‘beta.’   It’s only a few weeks old and at worst is available now for you to see what technology we will be using to provide improved GIS services. 

I believe there are many attributes of this new GIS Online that you may find useful right now.  Please take a moment and read the article which is titled ‘Quick Start Guide’ where I briefly describe how you can accomplish various tasks such as searching for a property by previous owner and view both Pictometry and Google Street view after selecting a location on the map.  

In the next couple weeks I plan on providing short video tutorials to better inform and instruct everyone about the functionality this website provides.  (Sometimes videos are easier to consume and understand than reading text.)   Until then, take note of the big ‘?’ (found in the upper right of the launched website) which provides very detailed, but generic documentation.  Click HERE for a direct link to the generic documentation.

This current website represents one of many we have planned for the near future.  It hopefully fulfills the requirements of the more advanced user.   We really like the report driven portlandmaps.com and hope to provide a website similar to it using ArcGIS REST technology later this year or early next to serve the basic user with a very simple website having a wealth of information.  

First, what is cached?   Here is a thorough description from the ESRI ArcGIS Server WebHelp.  A cached map service is one that draws on your screen more immediately because it was rendered earlier instead of on-demand.  Instead of waiting on our server to draw the map, your browser simply fetches the map ’tiles’ as needed instead of creating a new map for each request.

What you get is a map that displays more immediately.  The trade off is less control over the scale at which data draws (they are fixed and hard coded as part of the map cache) as well as the inability to alter the visibility for layers participating in the map cache.  The grayed out layers are those participating in the cached map service.

We will need to determine what map layers (ie parcels, roads, addresses, etc) can participate within a cached map service that gets updated every couple days.  These cached layers will be used most often by the majority of users and always visible.

We also need to determine what the ‘dynamic’ map layers will be.  These are map layers that are not used as frequently, but occasionally referenced.   Once a user makes dynamic map layers visible, the website render the map a little slower.  So there will be a performance hit, but will give folks the flexibility to alter or toggle visibility.

So with that said, we need some help from folks on what layers comprise the perfect ‘base’ map that balances what everyone needs at a minimum before turning other layers on dynamically.

Cartography Decisions such as:

• do addresses become visible at 2000 instead of 1000?
• when addresses are visible at 2000 are labels also visible (if they fit) within the boundary of the parcel.
• what should city limits be rendered as?  does a solid grey fill work at scales at and above 8000?  does the grey hatch work at 4000 and scales below?

Also, the cached basemap is ‘fused’ so that individual layers within the map are unavailable to toggle their visibility.  A cached map service is designed to improve the speed the website renders the map.  Any ‘dynamic’ layer causes the website to take a performance hit and renders the map slightly slower.  A balance must be struck between the perfect base map and what layer visibility options exist.