What part of the Quilt are you working on?
There were many sessions devoted at the ESRI Summit to the Parcel Fabric and this is a topic near and dear to any Surveyors heart. The land cadastral framework, fabric parcel or just plain quilt. It matters not what you call it but we all know it's how lots and parcels fit together. It's second nature to us when doing a survey to explore records dating back to the beginning of time it seems.
I particularly enjoyed Dr. Nancy Von Meyers session on the National Land Parcel Database. It seems that the parcel map and those that use these maps have matured to a point where the accuracy is showing the sometimes flaw in the maps.
Near real time imaging and many other emerging technologies are highlighting where problems are with many typical parcel maps. We have all seen a GIS with lot lines that go through houses or that highlight the wrong house based on an address. This is not unique to Surveyors, the GIS Professionals are seeing this also. They want to change all that.
We certainly cannot fix the entire parcel fabric overnight and in fact we may never be able to keep up with the changes that occur daily to the parcel in the courthouse. That does not mean that we cannot begin though to make incremental changes that can be tracked by time and by the user that input the data. It's one thing to view a tax or survey map but it's much more useful when we know who placed a parcel and what information that he had in hand when placing the lines.
So what tools did we see at the Summit that can help us make our maps and the data more accurate.
I attended a session devoted to the Parcel Editor Toolbar. This highlights not only the mood within the GIS industry to make more accurate maps but shows the dedication of ESRI to giving us better tools to build and manage this parcel fabric.
The one thing that I have often heard from Surveyors using ArcEditor is that their are two many ways to accomplish a task and that not all of the ones needed are in one set of toolbars. ESRI has made some major revamps of the parcel editing functions and they have added tools that simplify our inputting of the data.
I saw a great amount of templates designed to speed up the data entry process. Snapping is easier in version 10 as well as great functionality added to the feature templates. You can really automate a lot of data entry in common feature classes. And you do not have to jump in and out of edit to make changes.
Cogo tools, a way to rotate using the Basis of Bearings. Most of the things in the editor are common tasks that we do now in our CAD platforms.
And the new Parcel Remainder Tool. We all find parcels that are from the less and except legals. This tool allows you to easily create the remainder excluding other parts of the legal.
Attachments have changed also for the better. No longer hyperlinked but now you can have multiple attachments to a single feature. And these attachments are stored within the geodatabase.
And we often turn on and off layers in CAD to see the changes over time to blocks of land. There is now a way to visually see and tract these changes using the parcel history. A user can slide the 4D bar and watch as land was subdivided over the years. This makes finding the progression of tracts simple and aids when you find a perceived gap or overlap in the deeds.
The least squares was of interest to me as one who deals with entire subdivisions that often fail to close but where you can fit it together on the ground evidence. With the least squares you can enter control points (field verified and given a coordinate) and then do an adjustment on the rest of the lots/blocks. It does not change the 100' lot line but will update the underlying coordinate. This is used as a seed to re-align the fabric parcel map which means that the other features such as easements will not suddenly be at odds with our graphics.
Much discussion was heard on why a Surveyor is important to all this increased accuracy. Just how do we fit in to the overall picture? Do we supply data digitally or in the cloud are are we going to be working directly with the parcel fabric of some agency that we might be contracted to in the future?
I'm sure that the first question will be. How can I get paid for all my data that the GIS systems now need and want. That is open for discussion.
I particularly enjoyed Dr. Nancy Von Meyers session on the National Land Parcel Database. It seems that the parcel map and those that use these maps have matured to a point where the accuracy is showing the sometimes flaw in the maps.
Near real time imaging and many other emerging technologies are highlighting where problems are with many typical parcel maps. We have all seen a GIS with lot lines that go through houses or that highlight the wrong house based on an address. This is not unique to Surveyors, the GIS Professionals are seeing this also. They want to change all that.
We certainly cannot fix the entire parcel fabric overnight and in fact we may never be able to keep up with the changes that occur daily to the parcel in the courthouse. That does not mean that we cannot begin though to make incremental changes that can be tracked by time and by the user that input the data. It's one thing to view a tax or survey map but it's much more useful when we know who placed a parcel and what information that he had in hand when placing the lines.
So what tools did we see at the Summit that can help us make our maps and the data more accurate.
I attended a session devoted to the Parcel Editor Toolbar. This highlights not only the mood within the GIS industry to make more accurate maps but shows the dedication of ESRI to giving us better tools to build and manage this parcel fabric.
The one thing that I have often heard from Surveyors using ArcEditor is that their are two many ways to accomplish a task and that not all of the ones needed are in one set of toolbars. ESRI has made some major revamps of the parcel editing functions and they have added tools that simplify our inputting of the data.
I saw a great amount of templates designed to speed up the data entry process. Snapping is easier in version 10 as well as great functionality added to the feature templates. You can really automate a lot of data entry in common feature classes. And you do not have to jump in and out of edit to make changes.
Cogo tools, a way to rotate using the Basis of Bearings. Most of the things in the editor are common tasks that we do now in our CAD platforms.
And the new Parcel Remainder Tool. We all find parcels that are from the less and except legals. This tool allows you to easily create the remainder excluding other parts of the legal.
Attachments have changed also for the better. No longer hyperlinked but now you can have multiple attachments to a single feature. And these attachments are stored within the geodatabase.
And we often turn on and off layers in CAD to see the changes over time to blocks of land. There is now a way to visually see and tract these changes using the parcel history. A user can slide the 4D bar and watch as land was subdivided over the years. This makes finding the progression of tracts simple and aids when you find a perceived gap or overlap in the deeds.
The least squares was of interest to me as one who deals with entire subdivisions that often fail to close but where you can fit it together on the ground evidence. With the least squares you can enter control points (field verified and given a coordinate) and then do an adjustment on the rest of the lots/blocks. It does not change the 100' lot line but will update the underlying coordinate. This is used as a seed to re-align the fabric parcel map which means that the other features such as easements will not suddenly be at odds with our graphics.
Much discussion was heard on why a Surveyor is important to all this increased accuracy. Just how do we fit in to the overall picture? Do we supply data digitally or in the cloud are are we going to be working directly with the parcel fabric of some agency that we might be contracted to in the future?
I'm sure that the first question will be. How can I get paid for all my data that the GIS systems now need and want. That is open for discussion.
