| Dear Reader,
Thank you for your continued interest in and support of ICIS. As with our past issues, you are receiving this email because you are a new member or have expressed interest in receiving updates from ICIS. If this is not the case, you can unsubscribe using the links above.
As always, we welcome your feedback about this and any other developments in the Society's services to its members.
Kindest Regards,
Janice, Pete, Ken, Steven and Laura
The ICIS Team |
| CivicSpatial Grants Still Available
The Integrated Cadastral Information Society (ICIS) continues to accept applications for its CivicSpatial Grant program - a funding initiative to help improve the timeliness and accuracy of local government cadastral data. So far projects have been approved for Sunshine Coast Regional District, the City of Merritt, District of Saanich, District of North Saanich and Mt. Waddington Regional District with several other applications on the way. Projects range from assisting in establishing new survey points using GPS, acquisition of new GIS software to updating cadastral mapping.
As we enter the local government budget cycle this Fall, ICIS encourages all members to consider projects in 2008 that could take advantage of the available funding. CivicSpatial funding is limited but available up to and including 2009. Projects that will be considered for funding include:
· Commitment of regular submission of cadastral data
· Adopt the Integrated Cadastral Fabric (ICF) by moving infrastructure data to the new base
· Establish new survey control
· Resolve local government boundary discrepancies
· Updates to base mapping
Consulting resources can also be made available to assist local governments to review the state of their GIS program, offer suggestions on how to proceed and how CivicSpatial funding can help develop GIS in your organization.
For more information contact Steven Garner, CivicSpatial Program Manager, at sgarner@icisociety.ca or 1-866-403-0095 or visit our website at www.icisociety.ca and follow the CivicSpatial link.
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Membership |
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ICIS has formally accepted Translink, the BC Centre for Disease Control, the Port of Prince Rupert and Island Timberlands as associate members. Our current associate membership list is:
BC Centre for Disease Control
Island Timberlands
The Nature Trust of BC
Pacific Northern Gas
Polar Geomatics Solutions
The Port of Prince Rupert
Translink
Vancouver Island Health Authority
Vancouver Port Authority
Associate Membership Disclosure Notice:
Some local governments have special terms in their Data Sharing and Licensing Agreement (DSLA) that prohibits ICIS from sharing their infrastructure data or portions of it with associate members without their prior approval. Administratively, the way ICIS complies with this requirement is to publish periodically the list of associate members in our newsletter. The list is always available on our website as well.
It is incumbent upon the member to let ICIS know if the member wishes to restrict access to their data by any or all of the listed associate members. Please contact us if you want your data access by specific associate members restricted. Failure to contact us in this regard is taken as approval by the member to let associate members have access to its data.
If you have any questions or comments regarding associate members please contact Pete Flagg at pflagg@icisociety.ca |
| New Data Update |
In the past several months we have received updates that have now been loaded to the webmap site. These datasets are all current within the past three months:
BC Assessment Fabric
ICF
Spectra Energy
Terasen Gas
ALR
Local Government Cadastre:
Thompson-Nicola RD
Kelowna
Kootenay Boundary Cadastral
Penticton
Richmond
Victoria
North Cowichan
Fort St John
Surrey
Qualicum Beach (AutoCAD - Portal Only)
New to the webmap site is a point addressing database that is currently being maintained by ICIS. Additionally, look for two new datasets in the coming weeks, BC Centre for Disease Control growing degree days, and a number of feature datasets from Polar Geomatics.
In cooperation with two local governments, Penticton and North Saanich, we are receiving regular updates through an automated extract process. Penticton is now delivering their cadastre daily, and North Saanich are delivering as changes occur. We are working towards automating the data loading at our end so that these datasets are always available to ICIS users in their most current form. The ICF is also now being delivered weekly and will be automatically refreshed weekly on the ICIS webmap site in the coming weeks.
Laura Cassian - Technical Services Coordinator |
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ICIS Data for Post Secondary Research |
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ICIS is working in conjunction with the Provincial Government's Integrated Land Management Bureau (ILMB) and the Ministry of Advanced Education, to provide spatial data to post secondary institutions in BC for research and development purposes. In time, we hope to extend the data provision to also be able to provide some of our members' spatial data for post secondary programs, such as Geomatics programs, urban studies, engineering, public sector administration, etc.
The legal instrument will most likely be an extension to the existing Data Sharing and Licensing Agreement (DSLA) that ICIS already has with the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands. The extension to the DSLA, or addendum, will specifically identify the Ministry of Advanced Education and specific post secondary institutions as being included in the data sharing and licensing agreement. Once again, data sharing will be based on internal use only (in this case for research purposes, eg.) not for broad or wholesale distribution, en masse publication or sale.
The ICIS Board believes this is an ideal win-win scenario for all participants that directly supports the ICIS mission and demonstrates the value of the Society in facilitating data sharing arrangements for the benefit of the economy of BC. Researchers in our post secondary education system will have access to current local government, provincial government and some utility spatial data and students will graduate from programs having had exposure to relevant and current BC data, making them more immediately employable in the provincial economy.
The details of the scope of data and mechanism for data delivery are still being worked out with ILMB and the Ministry of Advanced Education. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact Pete Flagg at ICIS (pflagg@icisociety.ca or Evert Kenk at the ILMB (Evert.Kenk@gov.bc.ca).
Peter Flagg - General Manager
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| Common Address Project |
ICIS is preparing a Business Case for the Common Address Information Solution (CAIS) to support development and funding among several member organizations. Business Case development includes preparation of a preliminary technical scope, environmental scan, and business model. The purpose is to provide sufficient information that enables member organizations to provide funding, or to participate in development and maintenance.
Questionnaires have been sent to CAIS stakeholders to determine requirements and cost thresholds for potential participants. The technical scope and financial models will be presented to key stakeholder representatives during a workshop to be held on September 24th. The results of the Business Case will be presented to the ICIS Board for decision on October 11th.
If you have any questions or comments regarding the CAIS project, please contact Joe Boyd (joeboyd@telus.net) or the ICIS office.
Joe Boyd - Trackside Consulting |
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National Resources Canada & ICIS - Urban Energy Mapping Project |
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National Resources Canada (NR CAN) has asked ICIS to participate in an Urban Energy Mapping Project. The intent of the project is to create energy consumption and emissions profiles for selected neighbourhoods in BC. The project is a further step in an earlier pilot that helped to define methodologies and data collection/validation issues for creating such "energy footprints or profiles" of either entire jurisdictions or of discretely defined neighbourhoods within jurisdictions. ICIS has replied to NR CAN's request with a letter that the Society is willing to participate in principle with the project, with the caveats that potential issues around data ownership, IP, distribution and publication of member's data would be resolved favourably by the Society for its members, over the project's duration.
The project will be seeking GeoConnections funding and would be expecting ICIS to provide some member's spatial data to the project. ICIS may also stand to be a recipient of some of the GeoConnections funding if the funding application is successful.
ICIS will be working with the BC Ministry of the Environment and the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands as members of ICIS on the project. Meanwhile the BC Ministry of the Environment also has an emissions and energy initiative in preliminary stages - the Community Emissions and Energy Inventory Initiative (CEEI). The goals of the initiative are congruent with the NR CAN project, but the provincial initiative will go ahead with or without the federal government project and funding. ICIS again will play a part in providing some spatial data (such as the cadastral layer) for the initiative.
Contact Pete Flagg at ICIS (pflagg@icisociety.ca) with any questions on either the NR CAN project or CEEI Initiative. | |
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First Nations Data Access
Over the past two years and more ICIS has been approached by contacts working with First Nations in BC to obtain access to ICIS data, share data or become members of ICIS. In 2006 the ICIS Board developed a policy that restricted membership access by First Nations to only those who had successfully completed land claims negotiations with the federal and provincial governments. First Nations who had completed all negotiations could apply to ICIS to become associate members.
This summer, the ICIS Executive has amended that policy. The new policy allows all First Nations in BC to apply for membership in ICIS as local government members. If they are in control of their own spatial data, they will supply that data as any local government member, to be shared by all ICIS members. If the spatial data for a specific First Nation is under the control of the Federal Government, ICIS will obtain such data as is available for that First Nation from the Federal Government site holding the data.
First Nations that have not completed provincial and federal land claims negotiations will get access to cadastral data, as a local government member. Those that have completed land claims negotiations will get access to all the ICIS data sets. The terms and conditions that apply to all ICIS members data is to be used for internal purposes only and not shared, traded or sold to third parties - holds for the First Nations as local government members. First Nations wishing to be ICIS members must sign a standard DSLA as a local government member.
We expect to be welcoming new ICIS members from the Treaty 8 First Nations and the Nisga'a, in the near future. If you have any questions or comments on the policy, please contact Steven Garner, Local Government Membership Coodinator - sgarner@icisociety.ca | |
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Prince Rupert/Port Edward Integrated Spatial Data Project
The Prince Rupert /Port Edward Integrated Spatial Data Project is nearing completion. The Cadastral data was completed, put through the Parcel Fabric Sections ICF QA process and has now been published to the Web Map Site. The areas Civic Address Point data is complete and published. The ortho-photos have been purchased and will be published to the Web Map Site this month. The underground infrastructure will be completed and published shortly.
On August 14th a stakeholders meeting was held in Prince Rupert to showcase the data and to bring the stakeholders up to date on the project. The data was well received and to quote Richard Hough the Project Sponsor "It is great to see a project complete where all the stakeholders are smiling from cheek to cheek!!" Also a special thanks to Bill Anderson and his staff for helping to make this project a success.
Ken Rigler - Training Coordinator | |
| Address Points Layer Available
Last year ICIS agreed that there was a need to begin to separate civic addresses as attributes of parcels and begin collecting and displaying them as "points" within a parcel.
Address Point data supplied by Local Governments, is brought into a standard attribute table, projected into BC Albers and published to the Web Map Site.
Datasets vary from complete address data with the point located on the building, addresses taken from the Cadastral polygon centroids (no multi-addresses in the parcels) to just the address numbers taken from the address annotation.
A few regional districts have also delivered their Road Centre Line and driveway data which gives the address and how to get to the building (Bulkley Nechako RD and Peace River RD). At present we have over 384,000 points published.
The address point layer is available on the Member's Sites. Please have a look and get back to us with your comments.
Ken Rigler - Training Coordinator | |
| Full-Time General Manager Opportunity |
ICIS has made excellent progress in the past three years, thanks in large part to the excellent work of our current General Manager, Pete Flagg, who has been under part-time contract with ICIS. Our organization has developed more cohesion between members, gained more focus on core values, and achieved more progress on strategic objectives. In addition we are now operating from funding assurances that extend beyond a year-to-year basis. ICIS has achieved a level of maturity and stability from which we can view the future with more confidence. As such we are now prepared to make a deliberate transition to hiring a full-time General Manager, and have decided to open that position to a competitive bid. The board is excited about what we have achieved with the dedicated effort of our current GM, staff, board and membership, and we look forward to moving to yet another level of achievement in the future.
Dan Shannon
President, ICIS
About The General Manager Opportunity
The General Manager (GM) is responsible for the overall business operations, marketing, communications and administration for the Society. The GM communicates and collaborates with the Society Executive, Board of Directors, partners, members, associate members and other potential data users to raise the Society's profile, increase the number of users, improve data resources and data quality, and otherwise ensure the Society's performance is consistent with Board expectations.
Interested individuals are encouraged to send their resume and covering letter in confidence no later than 4:00pm PST, September 28th, via e-mail or facsimile to:
Eileen Harper
TallSky Consulting Group
E-mail: tallsky@shaw.ca
Facsimile: (250) 383-0020
For more information and a detailed list of duties and qualifications, please see the Posting at the CivicInfo BC website at www.civic.info.bc.ca and/or contact Eileen at: (250) 888-5133 or by e-mail at tallsky@shaw.ca.
Salary: $90,000 - $100,000 plus benefits supplement, commensurate with experience |
| Enter To Win an ipod! |
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ICIS would like to hear member's success stories. Please submit entries - how your organization has successfully used it's spatial data and the data available through ICIS in it's day to day business. We will be making a draw on September 28th and will feature the winner's submission in our next newsletter.
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| Local Government
Member Status
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| Visiting Victoria?
Come visit us
at the ICIS Office: |
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Suite 16
1537 Hillside Ave
Victoria, B.C.
V8T 4Y2
250.381.9295
1.866.403.0095
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