Jose Simo
Engineering & Programming Assistant
Massachusetts Highway Department
yout Section, Highway Engineering Division
Boston, MA

Spatial Indexing of Massachusetts State Highways & Property

The Layout Section of the Massachusetts Highway Department (MHD) is the record keeper of plans and documents relating to highway boundaries and other land owned by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Over the past few years, the staff has migrated from hand written records to a computerized database, and from microfilm cards to the creation of a GIS based system.

MHD is still in the process of completing the transition, with over 11,000 records currently entered and 20,000 plans scanned. This new system will focus on public access to records through a user friendly, web based system.

This presentation will outline the former process for storing and retrieving records, the transition to the system currently being used, and the steps being taken for the development of a web-based GIS for accessing these records.