The City of Loveland’s (Colorado) award winning GIS has moved into the world of web-based GIS. Loveland’s GIS, known as the Loveland Geographic Information / Cartographic (LOGIC) System now offers on-line web applications for citizens and employees.
Located 50 miles north of Denver, along the front range of the Rocky Mountains, Loveland (estimated population 60,500) has experienced brisk growth for several years. Started in the late 1980’s, Loveland’s GIS has become a tool to map, track and analyze changes in and around Loveland. Traditionally, locating information at the City could be a daunting task. It was not uncommon for a person seeking land-related information to visit many different departments in locales across the city. The on-line capabilities of the LOGIC System have eliminated some of the difficulty in obtaining city information. At this time, data supplied by Loveland’s “Digital Mapping Tour” provides information previously found in seven offices at three different locales.
GIS staff began web-based work in 1999 when Loveland was awarded a Livable Communities Grant from ESRI, Inc. (Redlands, CA). This original implementation was intranet based and made use of the old ArcView/ArcIMS architecture. With the advent of ArcIMS 8.x and the establishment of city-based web serving capabilities, an “out-of-the-box” HTML viewer solution was presented on the City’s web site. While this site provided a variety of LOGIC System data via the web, most non-GIS users found the site difficult to use. While attending an ESRI User Conference in San Diego, CA, it was discovered that ESRI offered an “ActiveX Connector” for ArcIMS upon which light-weight clients could be built. With the exception of some HTE, Inc. (Lake Mary, FL) software running on an IBM iSeries computer, the City of Loveland is a Microsoft-based shop. As such, the City’s web servers are Microsoft IIS servers with inherent Active Server Page (ASP) capabilities. Since Loveland GIS personnel were already adept at programming in VisualBasic and ASP provides for VB script coding, the implementation of the ArcIMS ActiveX Connect was a natural fit for the LOGIC System. Using examples found on ESRI’s web site, the first pages of the “digital tour” were quickly put into place. Training on the ActiveX connector at ESRI’s Denver Regional Office helped put the final pieces together for the current web site.
On http://logic.ci.loveland.co.us/LogicIMS/FindAddress.asp) there are five tabs representing different aspects of the City. They are: Find An Address; What’s This?; Parks; Golf Courses and City Facilities. Parks, Golf Courses and City Facilities show locations and basic information for city-owned properties. They are also the simplest in terms of application development as they represent simple data queries. The “What’s This?” function makes use of point and click capabilities to identify features shown on the map. The “Find An Address” tab allows users to type in address information to find a location in Loveland. Both the “Find An Address” and “What’s This” functions have a “Create Report” button that generates a variety of information about a given address. A typical report contains: links to the county assessor’s office; city council representation; trash pickup and recycling days; subdivision history and scanned plats; zoning districts; school attendance; and other miscellaneous information. The report leverages the power of GIS technology by using “drill downs” to access information. In other words, each item on the report is a presentation of information found within a different layer in the GIS.
The “Find An Address” is the most used item on the digital tour. It has become so popular that it now has “home page” representation on the City’s web site (www.ci.loveland.co.us – “Your Address” hyperlink). As Judy McKnight, Office Support Specialist for the City’s Current Planning Division, puts it, “The ‘Find An Address’ program has reduced repeat calls from individuals such as realtors and appraisers. Being available on the web and easy to use, people can now look up information for themselves.” For example, if you are not sure of an actual address, the interface allows a user to type in a street name. A list of all addresses on that street is presented for the user to select from. Or, if someone knows a street number but doesn’t know the exact spelling of the street name, the street number alone will generate a list of all addresses having that number sorted by street name.
The interface for Loveland's Digital Tour has been simplified to contain a small number of tools for the user to learn. As a result, a variety of information can be obtained with little or no training from City staff.
The Loveland Digital Tour was designed to provide a quick, easy way to obtain information about the City of Loveland. It has been in place for over a year and has shown dividends in providing information to employees and citizens. It has had the added benefit of reducing inquires at customer counters. Since the application was developed in-house, enhancements and new functions can be planned and implemented with existing resources. The City of Loveland’s GIS program is focusing on using the web as its primary information tool in the future.
Author Information: Steven Holmes, PLS, is the Land Records Manager for the City of Loveland. The Land Records Manager coordinates the enterprise GIS and acts in the roll of “city surveyor” for the purposes of reviewing subdivisions and annexation projects. In 1998, the LOGIC System was presented with the Exemplary Systems in Government (ESIG) Award from the Urban and Regional Information Systems Association.
The City of Loveland’s (Colorado) award winning GIS has moved into the world of web-based GIS. Loveland’s GIS, known as the Loveland Geographic Information / Cartographic (LOGIC) System now offers on-line web applications for citizens and employees.
