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2011_MunicipalWorld_opendata

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an important resource, not only for municipal staff but for the entire community, the district launched GeoWeb in 2001. The web-based portal provides free public access to virtually all of the district's spatial data and maps, as well as over 13,000 engineering drawings and more than 10,000 legal plans. It also features several GIS applications, including one for searching the district's property and parks, construction projects, census data for every neighbourhood, natural hazards (such as floods, wildfires and landslides), and historical events over the past century that have played a significant role in the municipality's development. GeoWeb has increased efficiency, reduced costs, and improved customer satisfaction for the district. Shawn McLeod, GIS Manager for the District of North Vancouver, says, "If the district were to provide this level of service over the counter and in person, it would add up to approximately 283 clerical hours per month. Online access to maps, legal plans, and engineering drawings alone saves the district almost $61,000 per year. GIS has enabled us to become more efficient in our internal operations, and allows us to provide better information services to our citizens." GeoWeb has become an important tool for addressing the district's corporate and community mapping and information needs. The site receives more than 175,000 visits every year. Platform for Communication and Innovation If a picture is worth a thousand words, GIS maps are worth a million. GIS integrates information from various business systems and allows users to easily search for data they need, overlay numerous datasets, and visualize them on a map. The system allows them to conduct deeper and broader analyses, enabling discovery of new insights. It also helps them obtain a complete picture and better understanding of an issue or event, and appropriately plan their actions. The City of Toronto is another municipality that has used GIS effectively to improve how the community accesses and uses city data, and to become better connected with citizens. In 2009, the city launched , an open data catalogue that allows free access to numerous datasets including public transportation routes, priority investment neighbourhoods, municipal boundaries, and utility permits. The bulk of the data is in geospatial context and formats that allow the development of innovative GIS applications. One such application is the online Road Restrictions Map . Built in time for the G20 Summit held in June 2010, the map is an accessible and easy- to-use tool for communicating road restrictions to the public. It helps them find the best routes around the city and avoid disruptions. It took only six weeks to build the application using GIS. The system integrates information from several data sources, including traffic monitoring cameras, and delivers a visually-rich map that displays information on ongoing and emergency road construction, road conditions, traffic flow and special events taking place in the city. Previously, this information was published in tabular format. The map has provided the city with an interactive and effective means of delivering information to the public. It has also contributed to more even traffic distribution throughout the city. Since launching the application, they have received extremely positive feedback from users. The city intends to continue building a more comprehensive and integrated geographic information environment open to municipal users, external organizations, other levels of government, and the public. Dave Wallace, Chief Information Officer for the City of Toronto says, "GIS is a catalyst for innovation. It supports Toronto's vision of becoming an enabled city, where information technology is integrated with city services to provide effective local government anywhere, anytime, for everyone." Making Open Data Make Sense The value of open data is in its usage. It increases its value the more it's used. While open data initiatives are encouraging, there's a cost to municipalities to make this data available. This is why open data is usually in the form of downloadable datasets such as Geography Mark-up Language (GML), Keyhole Mark-up Language (KML), or shapefiles. These formats are easily consumable for professional GIS users, but provide little value for the general public or non-GIS professionals. Increasingly, municipalities are sharing their authoritative data with geodata aggregators or GIS community maps programs. Not only is this data provided freely on their websites for download, but we now see municipalities share their data with the commercial sector, with more resources and skills to add value to a municipality's data content. Benefits include free access to online maps for internal and external applications – things the municipality might not otherwise have the time or budget to develop on its own – as well as the ability to off-load the infrastructure to support online maps to a third party, and the opportunity to engage citizens. Several cities including Toronto, Kamloops, Nanaimo, and Moncton have augmented their open data initiatives by participating in such a global community maps program. The program allows the public to access spatial data from numerous authoritative sources, and provides easy-to-use GIS tools for creating their own maps and applications, even without prior GIS training. It promotes the development of innovative GIS applications, from which governments can benefit. A good example is the Top 100 Canada's 16 Municipal World June 2011

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