The information need Existing Land Use was identified
as one of thirteen original priority business
information needs of the MetroGIS community.
Click here to view the Business Object
Framing Model Fragment for this information need.
Click here for further information about
MetroGIS's Business Information Needs initiative.
Activities to address the Existing Land Use Information Need fall into
the following phases:
Spring 2002 to Present
The fourth phase involves endorsement by MetroGIS of desired regional
data specifications, endorsement of custodian roles and responsibilities, and
securing a regional custodian.
On May 23, 2002, as a part of the launch forum for the Regional Planned
Land Use Dataset, the participants concurred that a Peer Review Forum for the
proposed Regional Existing Land Use dataset should not be initiated until the
user community had an opportunity to use the Regional Planned Land Use dataset
for 6-9 months. The Regional Planned Land Use dataset first became available,
via DataFinder, in July 2002. In late fall 2002, work began to prepare for a
spring 2003 Existing Land Use Peer Review Forum.
A letter was mailed in February 2003 to
over 120 prospective participants to invite them to participate in the pending
forum. They were also encouraged to use the newly endorsed regional Planned
Land Use dataset and the Council's 2000 Existing Land Use dataset to
familiarize themselves with both datasets and identify any issues or concerns
that they may have with the Planned Land Use coding scheme for a regional
Existing Land Use solution.
The Peer Review Forum was held on April 17, 2003.
Click here for a summary of the
Forum results and agreed-upon next steps. A workgroup began meeting in Summer
2003 to develop a strategy to implement a regional solution. The workgroup
members represent city, county, school district, watershed district,
metropolitan, and state interests. Workgroup members met with the City of St.
Paul planners in March 2004 to discuss the potential of implementing a solution
that is similar in function to the APA's Land-Based Classification System
(LBCS) for this information need. Overall, St. Paul expressed enough interest
in a LBCS like solution to merit further investigation. A similar presentation
/ discussion was scheduled with Dakota County planners. Efforts have also been
made to meet with Scott County and members of the Association of Metropolitan
Municipalities (AMM).
On April 20, 2005, the MetroGIS Policy Board accepted the Coordinating
Committee's suggestion to host a forum in late fall 2005 (following the
Strategic Directions Workshop) to affirm common existing land use-related
information needs, discuss the pros and cons of the data structure options
previously investigated, and initiate discussion of a host of topics related to
the organizational roles necessary to sustain implementation of a regional
solution, if pursued.
This workgroup is being facilitated by Paul Hanson with Metropolitan
Council GIS staff assigned to support MetroGIS activities.
June 2000 to Spring 2002 - Test Enhanced
Prototype:
The third phase involved testing of the modified prototype coding
scheme recommended by the MetroGIS Land Use Workgroup. In June 2000, the
MetroGIS Coordinating Committee accepted: 1) the modified regional prototype
coding scheme for testing and 2) the Metropolitan Council's offer to test the
modified prototype coding scheme via the development of regional planned and
existing land use datasets that it needed to support its Smart Growth Twin
Cities initiative.
By April 2002, the Metropolitan Council concluded its testing of the
regional coding scheme suggested by the MetroGIS Land Use Workgroup, regarding
its application to the Existing Land Use Information Need. This testing
occurred during the Council's development of its regional 2000 existing land
use dataset. (Click here for
information about the testing that occurred concerning the Planned Land Use
Information Need.)
Spring 1999 to May 2000 - Enhance Prototype
The second phase involved enhancing the prototype coding scheme
developed by the Coalition to accommodate the St. Paul and Minneapolis downtown
areas, active agricultural areas, and land uses, such as gravel mining, that
were not germane to the Coalition's needs. Concepts recommended by the American
Planning Association's (APA) "Land-Based Classification Standards Project" were
also incorporated into the modified scheme, including a color scheme for
mapping of the resulting regional land use designations, and the Metropolitan
Council was identified as a candidate to assume the regional custodian
responsibilities for MetroGIS's Planned Land Use Dataset. This enhancement
process was accomplished by the MetroGIS Land Use Workgroup, which began its
work in the spring of 1999. The Workgroup was comprised of city planners and
other community development officials representative of the diverse MetroGIS
community. The workgroup completed its recommendation in May 2000.
August 1997 to April 1998 - Prototype Development
The first phase of addressing this information need began in August
1997. At that time MetroGIS approached the North
Metro I-35W Corridor Coalition and provided the Coalition with $20,000 in
financial assistance to develop a regional aggregation scheme for planned and
existing land use categories as a pilot project for MetroGIS. The goal of this
pilot project was to create a single coding scheme that could be used to
aggregate community-level existing and planned land use data for like
comparisons with other communities throughout the seven-county, Minneapolis-St.
Paul Metropolitan Area and for direct comparisons between planned and existing
land use. The Coalition completed is work on the prototype in April 1998.
MetroGIS approached the Coalition to conduct this pilot project
because:
- The Coalition was just beginning development of a "backbone GIS" to
support its cluster community development planning effort.
- The Coalition's community development leadership was well respected
in the professional planning community. MetroGIS staff believed the success of
the proposed regional aggregation scheme was highly dependent upon the broad
city planning community "connecting" with the initiative. That is, the process
could not be dominated by any single interest and the resulting product must
have value to local and regional users alike.
- The seven-city area encompassed by the Coalition's partners contained
a diversity of land uses representative of much of the seven-county area. From
the outset of the pilot it was recognized that adjustments would need to be
made to accommodate the two core urban downtown areas and rural areas dominated
by active agricultural activities.
A central part of MetroGIS's work is to identify common information needs of GIS users in the Minneapolis/St. Paul Metropolitan Area and facilitate the policy and data specifications needed to address each of these common information needs.
An investigation to understand these common needs was conducted by MetroGIS from September 1996 to March 1997. The result of this study was the identification of thirteen priority common information needs of the MetroGIS community. Since that time, a priority function of MetroGIS has been to facilitate the development and/or assembly of regional datasets needed to address each of these common information needs.
Each information need is addressed through a replicable process. In general, the process begins by assembling a team of content experts and through a facilitated group process (Peer Review Forum), the team begins with the business object framing model fragment to identify dataset(s) required to meet the information need. In some cases, this process takes place in a forum of content experts and in other cases it is not such a formalized process because the dataset(s) that meet the information need are intuitively recognized.
Once the dataset(s) required to meet an information need is identified, a working group of content experts is created to:
- Refine the desired specifications identified at the Peer Review Forum,
- Identify desired data standards and guidelines,
- Identify desired roles and responsibilities for the custodian organization(s) - organizations responsible for data creation, maintenance, documentation, and distribution; and,
- Identify candidate custodial organizations that have a business need and appropriate expertise to carry out the desired roles and responsibilities.
The process is complete when the Policy Board has adopted, as policy for the MetroGIS community, parameters defined through the stated tasks. The parameters are posted on a Web page for each “MetroGIS endorsed regional dataset”. Once an endorsed dataset is operational, MetroGIS monitors user satisfaction to continually enhance it.
To learn more, please see the About Information Needs page and the pages for each endorsed regional dataset.
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