Today, we made the first phone call and started gathering parcel data. Asking for the data over the phone provides the opportunity for us to speak first-hand with the people in charge of producing, maintaining, and/or distributing parcel data. This allows for an open-ended conversation, addresssing privacy and re-distribution concerns, project goals and timeline, and necessary relationship-building.
Snohomish County was our first phone call; we are using Snohomish County data as an example of a method to identify forest landowners for an upcoming Forum on forest land retention strategies in Washington. We will test out our methods and definitions, with help from the project’s advisory team, on Snohomish County’s parcel data.
Sample Data Acquistion Methods
- Call the person(s) responsible for distributing the GIS data.
- Find out as much information as possible about current GIS and parcel data status (e.g., is there data, how to access the data, how to acquire the data, current storage and file, license agreements, and more).
- Download data or request CD.
- Enter attribute information into Attribute Matrix database (more on this in future posts).
- Begin exploring data (more on this in future posts).
Currently, we are working on developing the methods for data storage, importing procedures, and more.