| Title: | To Fly or Not To Fly: A Town Decides Where to Put Its Money |
| Authors: | John Savarese, Information Systems Director, Town of Wilton, CT |
| Date/Time: | Tuesday, September 23 ~ 1:30 p.m. - 3:00 p.m. |
| Abstract: | The Town of Wilton, CT, commissioned its own aerial photogrammetry flight in spring, 2008. Like many other municipalities, the Town of Wilton carefully manages its money. So a strong case had to be made to justify a large expenditure on GIS. This presentation will discuss the benefits that the Town decided it needed to get from new aerial data, the conflicting interests in GIS data that had to be reconciled between Town departments, the surprising contributions made by agencies not considered to be prime GIS users, and how the Town's specific needs shaped the specifications that were ultimately given to the mapping company. During this decision process, we learned what kinds of arguments in favor of the flyover were persuasive, and which were not. We also learned what kinds of objections would be raised and developed answers to them. Among the design decisions that had to be made were the scale of the flight, what to include in planimetrics, the resolution of topographic data, and how the new flight data would be integrated with work that had already been done, such as parcel automation, existing tax maps, Town engineering drawings, and third-party data such as a hosted appraisal database. Besides the costs of the aerial mapping itself, the Town had to plan what software and people skills it will need to make use of the new data within the Town departments and agencies, and how it will roll out the information to the public. |
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