Minutes

GeoLibrary Board Meeting of December 18, 2002
Burton M. Cross Office Building, Conf. RM 300
1:00pm – 3:00pm

Board Member Attendees as follows:

Dennis Boston, Central Maine Power
Will Mitchell, Mitchell Geographic’s
Jon Giles, City of Portland
Paul Mateosian, City of Bath
Bob Faunce, Consultant to Lincoln County
Ray Halperin, Dept. of Transportation
Tom Asbeck, Photo Science, Inc
John Holden, Eastern Maine Development Corporation
Jim Page, James W. Sewall
Harlan Onsrud, UMaine, Dept. of Spatial Information Science & Engineering
Bob Doiron, Maine Revenue Services
Harry Lanphear, DAFS/Office of the CIO
Ed Suslovic
Barbara Charry, Maine Audubon Society

Not in Attendance:

Jim Damicius, Maine Science Tech. Foundation

Non-Board Member attendees:

Dan Walters, DAFS/OGIS
Larry Harwood, DAFS/OGIS
Mary Ann Hayes, SPO
Tom Howker, BIS
Marilyn Lutz, UMaine
John Armentrout
Jim Skillings, DeLorme
Richard Sutton, Applied Geographic’s, Inc

John Holden welcomed and thanked the Committee and Guests for their attendance.

Motion to approve minutes of the November 21h meeting

John presented the minutes of the November 21, 2002 for approval as written. Ray Halperin motioned to approve and Paul Mateosian seconded the motion for approval. There were no discussions only grammatical corrections. The minutes were unanimously approved by the Board.

Posting of the Minutes on the Website

Harry Lanphear motioned that the minutes not be posted on the website until it is approved by the Board. John Holden seconded the motion for approval. It was unanimously approved by the Board not to post the minutes until final approval vote by the Board.

Bond Process

Dale McCormick and Adam Krea from the Treasury’s Office attended the board meeting to discuss the process of issuing bond money and the Federal funding requirements.

The bond money is issued quarterly by the Treasury’s office and due to interest rates, they request the board only ask for the amount of money needed at the time. A plan is not required but is helpful to the Treasury office to ensure timely issuance of the bond money. If the federal match does not come through the Board will not receive any part of the bond funding. There is a 5 year window in the issuance of bond money, if the Fed’s decided to delay the issuance of the Federal match it will not be a problem. You will not be able to apply other funds to meet the federal match due to the condition of the bond and the deceit to the voters. Mr. Krea also suggests we consult with Ed Karass for guidance due to this bond being under the DAFS umbrella.

If the board has to obtain a new referendum the AG’s office will lend a helping hand in writing up the language.

Legal Issues

Mr. Crombie from the Attorney General’s Office stated that the private members of the Board can not be a part of any written process of an RFP. As far as the voting process is concerned, use your common sense; if you feel uncomfortable you should raise a question or simply excuse yourself from the voting process.

Imagery Subcommittee Report

John Guiles presented a summary report of the subcommittee’s recommendation of the orthophoto specification for the GeoLibrary Board. They have recommended that the Board allocate a portion of the recent GIS bond money to purchasing statewide aerial orthophotos. The specifications are as follows:

Leaf-off, no snow (or so little it’s inconsequential), mostly Spring imagery
Orthorectified
Natural Color
Sun angle > 30 degrees
Resolution and accuracy based on two different geographical areas:

Tier 1 (basically organized townships)

1”=1000’ imagery
Digital pixel resolution of 1 foot
Horizontal accuracy based on national standards for mapping (such as National Map Accuracy Standards, which would be about 3m at 1:5000).

Tier 2 (basically unorganized townships)

1”=2000’ imagery
Digital pixel resolution of 2 feet
Horizontal accuracy based on national standards for mapping.

Comments & Questions

Why is there only two tiers and not 3 or 4?

Due to development mapping and the needed resolution to get more detailed.

The committee felt that if it were at all possible, to be useful to any municipality, regardless of size, a high standard was required in both Tier1 and Tier2.

What is the shelf life?

Develop a 5 year cycle. The usual standard is to update ortho photos every 5 years. This would probably be done in sections every year with any given area being reflown every 5 years.

The original intent of the l Resolve 23 was to provide orthoimagery for planning, natural resource management, emergency response and as a base for digitizing existing tax maps etc. not engineering capability.

If we are delayed a year due to funding, will the cost come down?

It still will not be totally affordable but some of the cost will come down.

How much can we do based on the 1.6 million?

Cover the original proposal. We could do the three Tiers as originally proposed in the Needs Assessment report or a smaller area at the standard proposed by the committee.

If we combined tier 1 & 2 and created a new tier 3 the cost would be in the 7 million range and the subcommittee felt it was too high and recommend it to the Board.

Actually the committee tried not too be concerned with funding, but to develop a useful standard. The original recommendation was to find additional sources of revenue.

What is the need of going into more detail for the towns that can not even use it?

The subcommittee did not consider that, but they can.

Does the Board need to decide on the subcommittee’s proposal now? Why can’t we have bids on tier 1, 2 & 3 and have the bidder bid what ever they want, letting the bidder be flexible?

This is just a recommendation from the subcommittee and does not need to be decided on now.

We have to structure the RFP right to allow the bidder’s to be flexible.

The board needs to decide if were doing the whole State or not and whether we can space it out throughout the years.
The Board should consider looking at the number of parcels in areas rather than territory.
Does cost savings matter w/scale as to when it was done?

It does have some to do w/the terrain model. If we use a different model due to the hold on the federal funds it could have a cost savings or it could have a cost increase. It’s hard to tell at this point.

What about dividing the two tiers? What imagery might be available now versus something existing that can be incorporated?
The subcommittee did discuss incorporating some imagery but decided it would create more work for first time around.

Photo scale – allows for setup & helps the smaller towns afford startup costs.

The Board needs to prioritize on where were going to send the money and get the best return.
Access layout, tier based on population.
Hesitant to write off those counties with little technology.
If UT has maps of parcels we may not need to create them.

In closing it was recommended by Dan Walters to take back the comments of the Board to the subcommittee to come up with some new figures. Also, talk with USGS on NAPP. Discuss the support we have from Senator Snow & Collins office and the question of what if the funds were delayed.

2-Year Work Plan

Dan presented to the Board a 2-year work plan (handout attached).

Development of Detailed Data Standard:

Metadata – the GeoLibrary should update to the ISO Metadata Standard as the FGDC evolves it’s standard to ISO.
Orthophotography and digital Parcels – timeline Jan 2003 – May 2003. These standards can be developed using existing technical subcommittees of the GIS Executive Council and other entities as deemed appropriate.
Data Formats – Recommendation is that a contract be issued to study the available digital data storage & interchange formats for the GeoLibrary and make a detailed recommendation to the Board. The Needs Assessment report recommended adopting the Spatial Data Standard for Facilities, Infrastructure & Environment. This has been adopted by the National Committee for Information Technology as “NCITS 353”. The report also recommended that the Geolibrary be compliant with the open GIS Consortium.

Data Warehousing Infrastructure Improvement – timeline Jan 2003 – Mar 2003:

MEGIS Data Warehousing Improvements – recommendation is for improvements to the existing MEGIS data warehouse. A platform to store and distribute imagery needs to be developed. The initial recommendation is to store imagery in an image catalog on a dedicated server. Over time, as usage increases and funding becomes available, the imagery should be migrated to Oracle using ArcSDE to improve performance.
Application Delivery Infrastructure – timeline April 2003 – June 2003. Recommended that a contract be issued to develop an application Program Interface for the Geolibrary. The API will support the development of client side applications based on the data in the Geolibrary.
Group Purchasing Options for GIS Software – timeline June 2003. Recommendation is to renegotiate the state’s Master Purchase Agreement with Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) using the state government’s pool of ESRI licenses to get the best possible pricing. The sharing of licenses with regional and local governments should also be negotiated.

Additional Statewide Data Development:

Orthophotos – Timeline Jan. 2003 – October 2004. An attempt to issue an RFP for new high-resolution orthophotograhpy by February 1st, 2003. The technical subcommittee on orthophoto standards should complete their recommendations by January 2003. The RFP will be for the high priority “tier 1” section of the state as described in the Needs Assessment report.
Parcel Data Layer Development – Timeline Feb. 2003 – Nov. 2004.

I. A technical committee can begin work immediately on standards for digital parcels and related data layers. This should be completed by February or March of 2003

II. Upon acceptance by the Board, grants can be made immediately to municipalities having existing digital parcel data to bring that data up to standard for inclusion in the Geolibrary.

III. Depending upon the availability of high resolution orthophotograhpy or some other acceptable base at a somewhat later date ( projecting Fall of 2003) the board can make grants to municipalities for new automation of parcel data.

Targeted Application Development:

Standards Conformity Validation Applications – timeline Nov 2003 – June 2004. These applications will be important but their development will be long term. All new data will need to go through the validation process before being entered into the GeoLibrary database.
General Purpose Internet Based Data Viewer & Applications – An RFP can be issued and contract set for development of a ‘client side’ internet application, whish will enable municipalities to directly use the date in the Geolibrary.

Additional ArcIMS services should be developed to provide users the ability to do routing, geocoding, and edit capabilities for trusted users. An additional server may be required for routing and geocoding ($45,000 Windows server).

The items below have not been included in the two-year work plan as there is insufficient funding unless additional matching funds or grants can be found:

Statewide Land Cover
Road Centerline Enhancements
Development Tracking Application

Ongoing Operational Costs & Current Funding Sources:

State & Local Coordinator – State Enterprise fund through June 2003
½ Data Content Specialist – State Enterprise fund through June 2003
Enterprise Software Maintenance – State agency service level agreements
SDE Administration – State agency service level agreements
ArcIMS Administration – State agency service level agreements
Data Storage – State agency service level agreements

The board should consider submitting to the legislature a new bond to replace the one we have now in case we do not get the federal match. Especially if we have a plan for on going 5 year updates of the imagery we decide on. We need to also discuss with BIS about further funding of the enterprise fund for staffing purposes.

John Holden proposed to the board to create a subcommittee to work with Larry on standards and based on Dan’s presentation it sounds as if we can pull existing standards to create new standards. This committee will be on a voluntary basis’s due to funding issues.

A motion was made by Ed Suslovic to create a subcommittee to review standards (standards for digital parcel mapping data) and bring back their recommendations back to the board. Just to clarify the board wants the standards for the data that goes into the library including the parcel. Jim Page is willing to offer one of his employee’s to sit on the subcommittee as long as this is not a contract base committee and will not compromise the company’s ability to bid for any parcel projects that come out of the board.

Seconded by Jim page
The committee will consist of Sewall employee, Jon Guiles, Dennis Boston, Larry Harwood & Dan Walters
Dan will solicit more volunteers
Voted: unanimous
None apposed

Meeting Closing questions or comments:

Paul questioned the no dollars in the development tracking application and the State Planning Office made a bulk effort to move this forward, are they going to be comfortable with a zero in the budget column?

Given the reduce budget to really do development tracking you need to have a lot of the other information that we budgeted for. There was just no way around it and hopefully SPO will have other funding they may be able to pull from.
The work plan is just a draft the board has not adopted any plans yet.
The board hopes to have an RFP completed or at least the contents of an RFP by the end of January. We will discuss this more at next month’s board meeting.
If funding comes though who is going to manage the contract? This will be done internally within Dan Walters’s group. Unless, we decide to use bond money to hire a contractor to deal with it.
John Holden, Ed Suslovic, Harry Lanphear, Ray Halperin and BIS will discuss some staff funding issues.

Next Meeting items:

Approval of December 18, 2002 minutes
RFP
Image Committee
Standards Committee
Update on the Bond (Federal Match)

In Closing the next Geoboard meeting will be held on January 15th from 10:00 – 12:00 pm here at the Burton M. Cross Office Bldg. in Room 107. John Holden motioned meeting to adjourned and seconded by Harlan Onsrud and Paul Mateosian.

Meeting adjourned at 3:00pm.