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Putting Bedford County on the Map Developing a better understanding of GIS
In coordination with GIS Day on Nov. 20, 2024, GIS Manager Ashley Thornton answers a few top questions about this important division in our local government operations:
Ashley, first of all, what is GIS?
GIS stands for Geographic Information System. GIS gives us a way to take written data (i.e., spreadsheets) and turn it into something with a location. For example, we take a parcel’s ownership data and attach it to the drawn parcel on the map.
How has GIS changed our society?
GIS enhances our ability to make data-driven decisions in various industries such as planning, environmental conservation, and disaster management and recovery. GIS has also helped community engagement through public-facing tools such as parcel viewers and data hubs.
How do we use GIS in Bedford County government operations?
GIS is used in Bedford County to share information with citizens. For example, we created the Voting Look-up Tool to help citizens locate their polling places. We also publicly share GIS data for users on our Data Hub. The most notable use of GIS is through our Public GIS Viewer. With GIS, we are able to increase transparency, provide better assis- tance to our citizens, and make better decisions.
What does an average day look like for you and your team?
Since we serve the whole County, no day is ever the same. One day we could be creating maps for the County Fair, and the next day we could be working on creating a new workflow for data collection. The GIS division is always looking for ways to improve our services by keeping up with the latest innovations and collecting/editing our data layers, such as addresses, roads, and parcels.
You all are working to overhaul the Public GIS Viewer. Can you share what kind of improvements we will see?
There are several improvements with the new ArcGIS Public Viewer! From a user’s perspective, the ArcGIS Public Viewer will look and feel like a modern web application that can adapt to different screen sizes such as a mobile phone, tablet, laptop, or desktop. With the new viewer, the goal is to have data and content displayed in a more usable format and updated regularly. The ArcGIS Public Viewer will also be a secure and cloud-hosted application on the County’s ArcGIS Online System.
