Press Information
For Immediate Release --January 21, 2009
Andrew Koutsoukos
Phone: 415-381-1750
Email: info@boundarysolutions.com
Boundary Solutions, Inc.

BSI LAUNCHES NATIONAL COUNTY ANNUAL REPORT DATABASES (NCARD)

Mill Valley, CA: An Open Records panel facilitated by Boundary Solutions, Inc. at the IAAO ’08 National Conference responded to a question posed by the IAAO conference committee: “Does unconstrained sharing of digital cadastral databases stimulate the economy?” Based on 440 county annual report records, BSI reported that the average total property valuation of all residential and nonresidential parcels in an open record county (sharing their digital parcel map at <$250) grew substantially faster than the average closed record county from 2001 to 2006. These findings caused enough interest that IAAO requested that the proceedings be expanded into an article for IAAO’s organizational magazine, FAIR & Equitable.

To prepare for this article, BSI expanded the annual report records from 440 to 2,784 provided by the individual revenue departments of 46 states; nearly 100% of the total 3,140 USA county records. The resulting National County Annual Reports Database (NCARD) may be downloaded as an Excel spreadsheet, free of charge.

In addition to population and CBSA designation, listed by record count, records include:

• 2,886 - Total Valuation all parcels each year 2001 - 2006 (46 different state revenue departments).
• 3,055 - Total Permits in each county Issued each year from 2001 to 2006.
• 3,036 - Verified Data Availability/Readiness - Open (Data Fee <$250) Closed (Data Fee >$250) No Map
• 2,784 - Total “FULL” Records, each contains tax base, permit, and verified Availability/Readiness.

GIS professionals and any student of urban statistics is encouraged to download the NCARD and see how it can be used to verify that open records does increase the tax base (transparency is self rewarding) and/or examine with greater confidence a wide range of county level economic trends and comparisons. Furthermore, BSI plans on expanding the database to include all counties and to update it to include 2007 and later as such annual report and permit activity data becomes available.

Boundary Solutions Inc. is the custodian of the National Parcel Map Data Portal (NPDP™). As of December 2008, a total of 65 million parcels from 600 jurisdictions are normalized and server-ready for download. Regardless of source format, geodataprocessing softwares subject the content to over 30 software driven modifications and metric recordings to assure universal internal consistency of this geoserver-ready content. NPDP™ content is available as downloads from the NPDP FTP site or internet deployed geoservers including ISC ParcelAtlas. In 2006, Boundary Solutions Inc. was awarded U.S. Patent 7,092,957, entitled “Computerized National Online Parcel-level Map Data Portal.” Claims include multi-state search to locate an address by displaying its corresponding digital parcel map boundary. The original provisional patent application filing date is January 18, 2002. Boundary Solutions, BSI, Boundary Solutions logo, National ParcelMap Data Portal, NPDP, and Rooftop Accuracy are trademarks of BSI. All other trademarks and company names mentioned are the property of their respective owners.