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COGs Keep Government Wheels Moving

A Texas COG takes an enterprising approach to the development of a regional basemap.

Through a partnership with the region's largest utility, the Houston-Galveston Area Council of Governments (H-GAC) and several member agencies are developing a geocoded address database that will benefit most of the 148 jurisdictions in the region's 13 counties as well as the utility. The council's enterprising approach to development of a regional basemap demonstrates how one council of governments (COG) significantly reduced the cost of data for its member jurisdictions.

Although federal legislation and the Texas Legislature encouraged formation of regional COGs, H-GAC evolved independently in 1966 from initiatives by locally-elected officials. Today, it is governed entirely by elected officials who represent the region's 13 counties, 106 cities, 19 independent school districts and 11 soil and water conservation districts.

In 1995, the organization formed a GIS consortium, initially comprised of six agencies, to discuss sharing resources, technology and costs, and to identify any duplication of effort. "We started the consortium," said H-GAC Data Service Manager Max Samfield, "with the idea that agencies were all buying various geographic information systems and heading off in different directions. We were having trouble talking to each other, much less sharing common data."

INDEPENDENT EFFORTS

At the time, several agencies were independently attempting to maintain geocoded basemaps, but with little success. "Houston had several people working full time on this, just trying to keep up with additions and changes," Samfield recalled. "The appraisal
district had staff members chasing after it full time; there were other agencies working on it as well. And everybody was failing at the task. It was just too big a job. So we said, if we have this many staff people working independently on incompatible projects, think what we could do if we all worked together on the same one." Since geocoding is central to many other GIS operations, the consortium gave priority to the development of a geocoded address base for the entire region.

PUBLIC/PRIVATE SECTOR PARTNERSHIP

Given the cost of building an address database from the ground up, H-GAC turned to the region's largest utility and unofficial addressing authority, Houston Lighting and Power (HL&P). "We had a land base tied to the state plane coordinate system," said HL&P GIS Supervisor Edward Cujko, "but we didn't have street names. When we started this in 1978, our system didn't have the technical capabilities to handle that much information. Now we have ESRI's ArcInfo running on a Sun Unix system, with two different servers, and we've reached a point where we need an intelligent addressing system. The partnership with H-GAC was an opportunity to achieve that."

Although HL&P's legacy system had no street addresses, it did have a single address assigned to each parcel. Samfield believed the parcel base could be transformed into a point-and-polygon address base. Initially, HL&P management was reluctant to let the file out of its hands, because it represented a source of revenue from map sales; there was some concern that it might be lost or given away. Officials were also skeptical that H-GAC could translate the legacy file into a geocoded address base that could be queried. However, H-GAC overcame management's concerns with a demonstration showing it could be done. "So they let us run with it," Samfield said, "with the agreement that, if we would translate all 1.5 million addresses in the HL&P service region, they would enter into a data exchange agreement with us."

AN ENTERPRISING APPROACH

H-GAC's successful demonstration was the result of creative programming by the organization's Data
Services Department Chief Analyst Fardosht Amirpanahi. Samfield and
Amirpanahi discussed the possibility of using the HL&P address number annotation from each parcel and matching that number with the nearest annotated street name to create an actual, tabular address. Other information, such as city name and ZIP code, could then be attached. Since there were 1.5 million addresses in the HL&P coverage area, some type of automated procedure was needed. "Fardosht was considerably more pessimistic than I about our chances of writing an algorithm for such a procedure," recalled Samfield. Transforming the vector parcel base into a point-and-polygon address base seemed like a great idea, but he was the one who had the task of carrying it out. Fortunately, our chief network administrator, Tanya Nguyen, bet Fardosht a lunch he couldn't write the program. I'm not saying the man is competitive, but he labored long and hard for four months to win that lunch."

APPROACH

Before the map could have a practical application, it needed accurate centerlines that represented the region's road network. It also needed complete and accurate, block-level address-range information.


reCOGnize this?

A council of government (COG) is a voluntary or mandated association of cities and counties within a region. Most are classified as political subdivisions of the state but without regulatory powers. There are about 700 COGs in the country, and although they go by a variety of names -- area council, metropolitan planning organization, regional planning commission or association of governments -- they are collectively referred to as COGs.

In addition to a professional staff headed by an executive director, a COG generally has an executive board elected by of member representatives and is supported by policy, research and technical committees. Functions vary widely, depending on the organization, but the primary purpose of a COG is to assist local governments in coordinating and planning regional issues: transportation, growth management, public services, solid waste and hazardous waste management, environmental quality; ensuring fiscal accountability for the expenditure of federal and state funds within the region; providing information services and analysis; facilitating information exchanges and data sharing and eliminating duplication of effort.

In the area of information technology, COGs play a key role in developing and coordinating GIS solutions for member jurisdictions, particularly when shared regional efforts provide the most cost-effective method of meeting the information needs of individual city and county agencies.

Starting with an area TIGER file, programmers used the centers of the rights-of-way on the HL&P map as a reference to correct TIGER centerlines and then overlaid the corrected map onto ortho imagery. The resulting lines matched up with the imagery and parcel topology. Missing street centerlines were digitized manually. In addition to the corrected centerlines, H-GAC retained the demographic attributes of the TIGER file in the new database; census blocks, tracts and traffic analysis zones would be needed to conduct forecasting, modeling and demographic studies

The next step was to add the correct street names -- a task that required adopting all the street-naming conventions used by the different agencies and converting them to a postal standard. Working with each agency in the consortium, H-GAC ensured that all naming conventions were included in a table of equivalents, and that an address parser correctly matched the addresses with the postal standard. "If a street had five names," Samfield said, "we had to make sure the system could locate the right street, whichever of those names was entered."

H-GAC is currently working on the final task of entering the address ranges and using a front-end program that prevents users from entering an address inconsistent with the address range of the preceding or consecutive blocks. The program looks at the parcel addresses and creates the address range. The programmer confirms the parity and directionality, verifies the entry and commits it.

The initial basemap will include all of the HL&P service region (see the graphic on page 14) covering Harris and Fort Bend counties, plus significant portions of several others. Plans have also been made to extend the basemap boundaries to include all of Wharton and Brazoria counties, which are outside the HL&P service area. To facilitate the database's expansion to jurisdictions outside of the HL&P coverage area, H-GAC intends to establish HL&P-type partnerships with other utility districts in the council's region.

INITIAL RESISTANCE

Houston Assistant Director for Management Services Susan Norman said the difficulty in bringing people onboard for this first shared regional project was in overcoming the negativity. "When we first started talking about saving taxpayer money by developing data collectively instead of separately, we ran into a mindset: People said, 'We've tried to talk about projects before, and it never worked. Everyone has their own proprietary ideas. We'll never be able to do anything.' So, initially, a lot of agencies didn't join."

However, as the project produced results, opinions began to change. The first realization a collective effort could yield tangible results came when consortium members saw the savings achieved through collective purchase of orthophotographs. "They could never afford to buy those individually," Norman said. "Having a positive return like that at the beginning of the project brought in people who saw that, by working together, they could save a lot of money." Other factors that attracted support for the project were the idea of working with HL&P and the technical breakthrough created by Fardosht Amirpanahi.

Another factor that helped overcome resistance to the project was the way members set up the consortium. Representatives were only obligated to participate in the committee in good faith; there was no binding commitment. "They didn't have to worry about committing money," Norman said. "That allowed people to join without having to go to city councils to get funding up-front. We just agreed to have a technical committee where people work together on the issues, figure out what does and doesn't work for the different members and how we can compromise to make it work. It's been a long, slow process. Now the thinking is changing in public agencies; there is an understanding that cooperation is the way to go."

BENEFITS

HL&P's Cujko said the new basemap will allow his agency to geographically link to the customer file. "Each point will have an account number, meter number and customer information. All that data will be tied to other information that our marketing and engineering people will be able to use. We'll be able to target and evaluate our customer base more effectively. This is very important, particularly in light of the coming deregulation of the industry."

Nearing completion after a year's work, the geocoded address base will also facilitate a wide range of public-sector applications. It has already been adopted by the Texas Department of Transportation, the city of Houston, the Harris County Flood Control, Appraisal District and county engineer's office. "For the first time," said Samfield, "we have a common basemap and an addressing convention all these agencies can work from, make enhancements to and share with each other." H-GAC is currently working out arrangements with HL&P and the consortium agencies to maintain the database through quarterly updates. Samfield said most of the new database will eventually be in the public domain, probably accessible through libraries, city halls and the Web.

COST SAVINGS

H-GAC has not attached a number to the potential benefits of the new database, but Samfield said savings are expected to run into the millions. "For the Harris County portion of the map, which is about 140,000 arcs, the annual cost per agency for map maintenance will probably be under $10,000. Previously, some local agencies had been paying as much as $100,000 annually to maintain maps that were perpetually out of date, incomplete and almost unusable."

OUTLOOK

Although many agencies were initially interested in having a geocoded database, Samfield pointed out that only a few participated in the technical and policy committee meetings for the project. "At times, we were concerned that maybe this wasn't going to happen, that it would take too long and we wouldn't get the buy-in people needed to participate. Now, these agencies are volunteering to send staff over to train and work on the map. We're very excited about this, if for no other reason than we got this many agencies to cooperate on a project of this magnitude, for this duration and at this level of detail, without killing each other or breaking off from the project. Now, everybody is excited about it and wants to have a hand in it. It's really heartening to see. It's the unique grassroots support and cooperation among so many independent agencies that made this project successful ... that, and a free lunch."

Bill McGarigle is a writer specializing in communication and information technology.

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