City of Oregon

If you live or work in the City of Oregon City, there’s a good chance you’ve used or heard about Internet-based GIS. This is because the city’s recently upgraded and expanded ArcIMS site, known as ‘OCWebMaps’, gives local citizens wide-ranging access to both spatial and non-spatial information related to their 29,000 strong community located in Clackamas County, Oregon.

”City departments are receiving significantly fewer inquiries for land information”, notes City GIS Manager David Knoll, ”and this is saving city employees in the Building and Public Works departments considerable time by reducing the number of phone calls about zoning, parcel information and permits”.

A key benefit to providing the public with as much relevant geographic information as possible—and the tools to work with that information—is the improved quality of recent permit applications. Using the simple search wizard, an applicant can search for a parcel and find out about any limiting factors to development (for example, if their parcel is in a water quality overlay zone). Once an application has been submitted, the OCWebMaps viewer provides a live, dynamic link to the city’s SQL Server database that manages permit applications, and an applicant can check the status of their permit application over the web at any time.

The public isn’t the only group benefiting from OCWebMaps. Internally, the City’s Code Enforcement Unit uses the ‘Street View’ tool to research claims and road conditions before heading out to a location. Chris Dunlop, the lead ArcIMS developer at City of Oregon City, programmed a specialized tool that allows a user to select a street and see pictures or video of either side of the street. This functionality, along with the aerial photos that are updated annually, provides the background information code enforcement officials can use to make the right decisions more efficiently.

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