Integrators marry disparate GIS projects
Federal, state and local governments often have discrete GIS groups working on task-specific GIS initiatives. But as geospatial data becomes increasingly important to all types of agencies, integrators are called on to marry disparate GIS projects and build applications that take advantage of unified geospatial information.
San Mateo County is considered a proficient user of GIS. Until recently, the county’s departments each pursued its own GIS projects. In 2002, Farallon Geographics completed a multiyear project to take the San Mateo County’s GIS databases and merge them into a single enterprise system accessible through Web applications. With a central repository of GIS data, San Mateo County was able to eliminate redundant work and make the information usable by a wider variety of government offices.
This year, the elections office wanted in on the action. To better target voter drives and education campaigns, they wanted a way to merge geographic data with census data to identify precincts on a map with high densities of Hispanic and Chinese populations but low voter registration.
Farallon developers were able to calculate the intersection of precinct and census data, break it down and redistribute it throughout the county’s precinct maps. The result was an interactive system that displayed voter turnout by ethnic group.
With this information, San Mateo County could deploy resources where they were most needed. They could have people doing canvassing and voter registration in targeted areas with appropriate language materials, and even send out bilingual staff to do community outreach.