UW-Whitewater @ Work: Whitewater City gets high-tech support in mapping project

November 29, 2004

The City of Whitewater is being transformed, at least in how it reveals itself on paper, thanks to a new kind of map-making process being completed at UW-Whitewater.

The official city map is being digitized to aid in updating property and utility references. The map is being created in a special computer program prepared by the UW-Whitewater Geography Department.

UW-Whitewater senior Jeff Olson, a dual major in geography and economics, is primarily creating the map using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology.

GIS is utilized in many government agencies, engineering firms, land use agencies and marketing firms to highlight features within a given area. A major part of GIS capability is not only record keeping, but city planning.

“GIS helps the developer and land owner see the history of the property and the problems it has had, like hazardous waste or if it is a flood plane,” said Bruce Parker, City of Whitewater zoning administrator. “It helps the landowner know what the obstacles are before they buy or sell a lot. The owner or developer can come in and we can punch up the property instead of having to pull a paper map. It also helps to prepare a map for planning commission and common council meetings."

Parker said it will take time before a GIS workstation is in place in city hall. “When we get the GIS map from the geography department, we can show the streets, the utilities and zoning. I hope to have a GIS system up and running in five years. Realistically, I don’t know when that will happen.”

GIS takes geographic features of areas, lines and points and assigns a value to each feature and catalogs each feature. When all the necessary data is entered into the database, the GIS program can display the data in map form, table form or graph form. The data in the map can be property lines, utility services, property values, city zoning, and water bodies.

“Entering the data has been a tedious process,” said Olson. “You have to pay attention to detail. The accuracy has to be within three feet. The road right-of-ways are indicated sidewalk to sidewalk. The roads were done quicker than the parcels, which were the most difficult.”

Olson started with aerial photos and plat maps. He outlined features in an aerial photo. He then created outlines of the streets, neighborhoods and bodies of water in their respective layers.

Because the map is in a vector-based drawing format, most features are outlined in polygon forms, even the streets, which are shown in smaller maps as lines. The main advantage is that the map can be scaled to any size without producing jagged edges common in digital photographs.

“Every piece of land is accounted for,” Olson said. “To make additions, you just have to change some vertices instead of a whole new paper map.”

Most of the work is done, he added, except for making adjustments to Jefferson County GIS maps.

The 2000 Whitewater High School graduate said he started the project in the spring of 2002. He was commissioned by the city and geography Professor John Patterson to do the project. He is working part-time on the project under the geography department’s Fischer Scholarship. He is the son of Karl and Janet Olson.

“I know the street names pretty well,” Olson said. “And I learned how the city works and what it takes to create a project like this.”