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Press Information
For Immediate Release -- March 24, 2008
Andrew Koutsoukos
Phone: 415-381-1750
Email: info@boundarysolutions.com
Boundary Solutions, Inc.

R E C A P
FGDC National Map Development Activity


Mill Valley, CA: Recently, BSI attended several federal government-sponsored meetings. Much of what was learned directly applies to digital parcel map database sponsor operations. To expedite communication to the many parcel map database sponsors in America too busy doing their mission to stay current on such matters, BSI is pleased to provide to excerpts from key meeting notes and annoucement.

FGDC Cadastral Subcommittee Meeting Notes Jan 2008
(Excerpts Pertinent to County Digital Parcel Map Database Sponsors)

Trusted and Authoritative Sources of Cadastral Data
Department of Interior Authoritative Data Source report includes a specification for the source of cadastral authoritative data. For federal lands the BLM is the commonly recognized authoritative source. The discussion included the following:

  • Authority depends in part on who controls the glossary. How is the term authority defined and what does the use of this word imply?
  • What is the implication to state and county data portals with the DOI authoritative data source position? How will this position affect existing and future partnerships?
  • There are three stages of cadastral data management (production, publication, and project)
  • There is a difference between organizational authority and authoritative data. These concepts and terms need to be more fully described.
  • What is the affect of having this discussion for cadastral? States and counties are not governed by the DOI memorandum and states declaring an authoritative source won't make it true. The actual implementation of the standards relied upon source will evolve through stewardship practices.
  • We recognizes the problems posed by multiple representations of county and state boundaries has had on the user community, is this a time to help prevent the creation of even more representations of cadastral boundaries that will once again cause confusion especially at a time when we are striving to form stewardship partnerships?
  • Also, there is a review of data sets and their stewards going on at the federal level through the Geospatial Line of Business (see Appendix A for handout information).

ACTION ITEM - [A] project team [is] to develop a position paper on authoritative data sources and authoritative organizations for Cadastral information that will address the state and local laws as well as the terms and concepts.

Roles for Stewardship, Production and Publication .
The Subcommittee has been supportive of the NSGIC 50 states initiative and the efforts to define data stewardship for cadastral data. In 2007, the following was completed:

  • State planning template - this cadastral state plan template fits with the NSGIC state planning templates. Arkansas is completed, New Mexico and Arizona are in process.
  • State Parcel Stewardship - this document defines state level parcel core data and levels of state stewardship.

NRC Report - National Land Parcel Data

We reviewed the recommendations of the recently published NRC Land Parcel Study. The Nine Recommendations in the report in summary are :
1. A panel should decide whether the BLM can be the lead federal agency.
2. The FGDC should consider the parcel as a basic resource for various OMB A-16 mandated data themes.
3. A Federal Land Parcel Coordinator should be empowered to develop and maintain a single database of land parcels owned or managed by the federal government.
4. A National Land Parcel Coordinator should be established to develop and oversee a land parcel data business plan for the nation including federal, local, state, and tribal partners.
Action - Subcommittee develops business plan template; continues to support and encourage.
5. An Indian Lands Parcel Coordinator should be established by Office of Special Trustee for Tribal Lands.
6. Congress and the Census Bureau should explore modifying Title 13 so that building addresses and coordinates can be made public. [BSI NOTE: Because modifying Title 13 requires ledgislative remedy, FGDC Cadastral Subcommittee can not do the needed lobbying, being part of the agency being lobbied. However, that does not mean that NACO, URISA, IAAO and and The Conference of Mayors can. Don't forget to tell your congressman to tell the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee to release enough data to add competent situs to every parcel GIS in America with no further invasion of privacy.]
7. State Coordinators should be established in each state to develop plans and relationships with local government. The goal of these efforts is to achieve border-to-border parcel coverage for all publicly and privately owned property within the state.
Action - The Subcommittee is identifying key cadastral contacts in each state and is beginning to work with these coordinators
8. The National Land Parcel Coordinator should develop an intergovernmental funding program for the development and maintenance of parcel data, including incentives to participate for those counties with fully-developed systems and financial support for those who do not.
Action - to assist with identifying sources of funding through the state business plans and in cooperation with federal agencies and the private sector that rely on parcel data.
9. Local government is expected to put into the public domain both parcel geometry and a very limited set of attributes. This should become a minimum requirement to receive federal funds directly associated with property, such as disaster relief.
As an overall action we will look to liaison with efforts to follow up on these action items and to add a representative from this panel to the Subcommittee.

FGDC Cadastral Subcommittee State Stewardship for Parcel Data
September 2007

In the Spring and Summer of 2007 the FGDC Cadastral Subcommittee worked in partnership with the wild land fire community to assemble as much parcel information as we could for the western 13 states to support the analysis of response to wild land fires. The purpose of this paper is to describe some potential scenarios and roles for state agencies that would assist in the pre-deployment of parcel data to support the many uses and applications for a trusted source of parcel information.

SUMMARY

    Core Parcel Data:
    The parcel data attributes needed to support emergency response is a subset of the larger data sets most parcel producers collect and maintain. The State is an integrator of information:
  • County or locally managed data is the most current, complete and trusted source:
  • Federal and State Parcel Producers would provide core data for the State to host:
  • Update Cycle is at least annually:
    Provides data for downloading and distribution:
  • County is First Stop Data Source.

National Academies Press
National Land Parcel Data A Vision for the Future
SUMMARY

Private ownership of land is a foundation of the financial, legal, and real estate systems of our society. Furthermore, open access to information about ownership and use of land has always been a cornerstone of our democracy and free enterprise system … Parcel data (also known as cadastral data) constitute the most appropriate level of geographic detail for a host of decisions and actions. Parcel data are also critical to the analysis of natural hazard risk, transportation needs, and even environmental issues. With this understanding, about a third of the counties in the United States have embraced digital parcel data as the core of their state-of-the-art information systems. At the same time, commercial firms in the United States are capitalizing on the public’s interest in parcel data. Many private companies in the utility, insurance, or location-based services industries maintain their own parcel databases. However, a nationally consistent set of parcel data does not exist in the United States.

Sponsors of this study include Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the Census Bureau, the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) assess the current status of a national land parcel data set and the challenges to developing it.

  • Identify the benefits of accurate parcel databases for all stakeholders (public and private.
  • Describe the current status of parcel databases across the nation at all levels of government -
  • Document what has been shown to be possible at a local, regional, and state level.
  • Provide a vision of what could be possible nationwide,
  • Identify a strategy to achieve the vision, including the role of the federal agencies The committee concluded that complete national land parcel data are necessary, timely, technically feasible, and affordable. Although the benefits and needs for nationally consistent parcel data are much more clear and urgent than in 1980, there has been little progress toward the recommendations of the 1980 report. While a great deal of parcel data has been digitized at the local level, 30 percent of individual parcels still need to be converted, and there has been little progress toward an integrated national set. Many of the technical barriers have been overcome, so remaining challenges are primarily organizational.

Sharing Parcel Data To Protect And Rebuild Communities
A Workshop To Explore The Possibilities For Data Sharing.
February 25, 2008 • New Orleans, Louisiana

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