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Next Meeting

The next Network meeting will be held April 4, 2008 at the MDC Training Center in Hartford. If you haven't already done so, please take the online survey about what you'd like to see the Network doing.

Current News

* Connecticut State Library Puts Digital Copies of the 1934 Aerials Online 11/16/06

* Connecticut Geospatial Information Systems Council 3/1/06

* New soils data now on the DEP website 2/28/06

* 2004 digital orthos and high-resolution coastal imagery now online 2/23/06

* Governor's Interim Geospatial Council

* 2004 digital orthophotos update

Members in the News

Connecticut State Library Puts Digital Copies of the 1934 Aerials Online Ken Wiggins, Connecticut State Librarian, announced at the November 15th (GIS Day) Geospatial Council meeting that library staff will soon complete an ambitious project to put over 8,700 1934 digital aerial photographs online. Photographs from this dataset, which is the first complete statewide aerial survey in the country, are some of the most frequently used aerial photographs at the library. The library, which has the only known complete set of these photographs, had them scanned in order to insure their preservation. The digital images can be accessed at http://cslib.cdmhost.com/cdm4/aerials.php. Please be sure to read the instructions on how to find and view the individual scanned photos.

Connecticut Geospatial Information Systems Council The CT Geospatial Information Systems Council held a meeting on Feb. 22, 2006 at the Department of Information Technology. Much of the meeting was taken up with a discussion of a structural vision for how the Council would operate and then to discussion of staffing and funding. Relative to funding, the Council has applied in two categories for Cooperative Assistance Grants from the U.S.G.S. and hopes to receive at least one of them. With respect to staffing, the Council approved a motion for Chairperson Diane Wallace to draft a job description and funding information for a project manager that the Council agreed should be a State employee rather than a consultant. We also briefly discussed the ESRI/Applied Geographics report based on the requirements analysis work done in the Fall of 2005. A small group of the Council has seen the report. The entire Council will have a chance to review and discuss that report at the next meeting. The Council now has a Web site where the agenda and minutes of meetings will be published. A list of Council members is also available there.

The Council will meet regularly at DOIT (101 Riverside Dr., East Hartford) at 3 pm on the fourth Wednesdays of the month. The next meeting will be Wednesday, March 22.

New soils data now on the DEP web site The DEP has posted links to new SSURGO certified digital soils data for Connecticut's eight counties. These data, which can be downloaded from the DEP web site, are the official soil maps of the NRCS and replace the published county soil surveys. Also on the site are two single factor statewide soil datasets - wetland soils and farmland soils. 2/28/06

2004 digital orthos and high-resolution coastal imagery now online The Center for Land Use Education and Research (CLEAR) has created a statewide image mosaic of the 2004 orthos. The image is in an ERMapper ECW compressed format and can be viewed in Netscape or Internet Explorer and also can be added as a layer to many desktop GISs, CAD programs and other software applications. Go to http://clear.uconn.edu/data.html to access these data. Also available on the CLEAR site are high resolution mosaics of 2004 true-color RGB and false-color infrared imagery for Connecticut municipalities in the coastal zone. 2/23/06

Governor's Interim Geospatial Council Based on legislation passed July 5, 2005, the Connecticut Geospatial Information Systems Council (GISC) has replaced the Governor's Interim Geospatial Information Systems Council. The GISC will meet next on Feb. 22 at 2 pm. at the Department of Information Technology, 101 East River Drive, East Hartford, 06108. Meetings are open to the public but this meeting will concentrate principally on mission, future objectives and the by-laws so there may be less of general interest than usual. Right now meetings are planned for the fourth Wednesday of each month but that may change at the Feb. 22 meeting.

Presently the Council is reviewing the results from the Homeland Security/Emergency Management Requirements Workshops that took place in October, 2005, which are part of the mid-term goal of a Homeland Security GIS Portal and data set by September, 2006.

2004 digital ortho update The state is almost at the point of formally accepting delivery of the 2004 orthos. They have been sent to all of the Planning Regions. RPO staff have been asked to review the data that covers their regions and to supply the orthos to each of their member towns. If the town level planners / engineers etc. have not received their town's ortho data, they should contact the Executive Director of the Planning Region they are affiliated with. Feedback from RPOs and others so far has been good.

The LiDAR Data is a little further off from being accepted. DOT has sent the files to a few "power users" to help check and validate the data. DOT and DEP are also checking them.

Bob Baron, ConnDOT, has asked that U2U members take a look at the ortho files and report any glitches they may find. He suggests that comments be e-mailed to him as he is anxious to get the files accepted.

As far as wholesale distribution goes, the Department of Information Technology (DOIT) plans to create a web service / portal so the public at large can access the orthos. To date, this has not taken place. In the event that users or potential users would like the statewide data, they should contact the State's vendor, Aero-Metric, Inc. Aero-Metric is authorized to sell the orthos.