Jennifer Petrie
GIS Coordinator
Town of Concord, MA

BRINGING PUBLIC INFORMATION TO THE CITIZENS OF CONCORD USING GIS “FEATURING WEBGIS”

On March 15th, 2001, the Town of Concord, Massachusetts unveiled its latest addition to the town-wide Geographic Information System. This new tool is an interactive mapping application and data viewer that allows users to search for and retrieve property information through the Internet. The appropriately named “WebGIS” has been receiving rave reviews from Town employees, who have been taking advantage of the program through the internal network since early December, and Town residents, who can now access the same information from their homes and offices.

The Geographic Information System in Concord is the culmination of five years of planning and coordination throughout many Town departments to develop a computer based mapping resource. The implementation of two public access Kiosks was intended to allow quick and easy access to parcel and mapping data, but the migration of this information to the Internet was inevitable.

With the launch of ESRI’s ArcIMS software in the Spring of 2000, the Town's consultant, Woodard & Curran of Portland, Maine, began developing “WebGIS”. Users can now access many layers of information from several different sources through a completely user-friendly interface.

The site can be viewed at www.concordnet.org/arcims/default.htm.