Different Types of GIS Data and their Role in Speeding up a Parcel Mapping Project

It is inevitable for counties or cities to experience rapid growth. People from another state start moving to one another for different reasons. Regardless of their purpose, it is a normal action for real estate developers to take advantage of this opportunity by developing some more subdivisions in a county. It is also this reason that land surveyors and cartographers have to update county maps as often as possible to provide accurate information. Failure to provide up-to-date information in a parcel map might mean serious problems to property buyers and sellers since this kind of map is required by law. Thus, there are rules and regulations that govern the creation of plat maps of a particular place. For instance, wrong information on the size and shape of a lot can be a ground for turning down a loan application not until it is corrected.

It is very challenging for parcel map cartographers and surveyors to keep up with plat edits. This is why there is a great need for better technologies to be used in making such necessary edits on a plat map. This is especially true in some of the fastest-growing counties in the US. Such counties heavily rely on a software program that is designed to increase plat mapping productivity. A prime example of this software is text-to-vector program. By using plat mapping technologies, it can help companies reduce labor costs in doing parcel data entry. Data entry in GIS alone takes up 90 percent of the total budget for a project. Technology can help cartographers and urban planners speed up their GIS data entry process, increasing the level of productivity. This is especially true in the creation and editing of any parcel data.

GIS data have three main sources; field data, electronic data and paper data. Examples of electronic data included aerial and satellite imagery, databases and CAD drawings. Field data is usually gathered by using automated ways like computers, data collectors and other handheld gadgets. Lastly, paper data come from word documents, books, text files, scanned photos and other paper documents relevant to the project. And because of the much information that can be gathered through paper based data, it is this GIS data source that provides the highest conversion cost. Out of using paper based files, rasterization is a method commonly used for the creation of GIS features.  Another method is digitizing where line tracing is also done similar to rasterization. Line tracing is done only by hand on a handheld device like tablet PCs or even through desktop computers.

In creating GIS attributes through paper based documents, keyboard entry is the main tool for doing it so. This kind of method may be slower than other means to creating GIS attributes but the results are pretty much accurate. Besides, the most important objective to be achieved is to gather all necessary data to have a full picture of the parcel mapping project. In this way, corrections are made as well as an up-to-date information is now provided.