The Maine GIS User Group is in a state of transition. The members of the current Board and the members of the Steering Committee have been exploring ways to help the organization to position itself to serve our members better. We are at a point now where we need the talents and time of more people. We are filling the nomination slots for positions on the Board of Directors and we are looking for members of committees. We are asking that you take a moment to reflect on your ideas and interests with regard to the Maine GIS User Group and become more actively involved, making what contributions you can. The User Group is always interested in learning about GIS projects, so you can contribute information for a newsletter article, or write the article yourself. If you need to learn about something regarding GIS, you can be assured that you are not alone, so you can contribute an idea for a meeting topic, or you can be a presenter at a meeting. The possibilities are endless, and so is our potential if we all participate to the level we are able.
Dues and meeting fees: while no one likes to think about costs going up, the User Group needs to become financially independent. We are not seeking to pay Board members or speakers. We do need to be able to pay for speaker meals, thank you gifts, and the miscellaneous expenses associated with running a group that has over 325 members and spans the entire state of Maine. To advance the education goal of our mission statement, we will offer free meetings for K-12 teachers and students. The Board and Steering Committee feel that this is important as the next generation is growing up more computer and data aware than most of us were until the last fifteen or so years. There was support for a dues and meeting fee system at both the 1995 Annual and 1996 Summer meetings. We, the current Board and Steering Committee, thank you for this. Please contact any of us if you have ideas or concerns regarding dues and meeting fees.
This issue of the Maine Coordinates has been a long time coming. Hopefully they will make their quarterly appearance in your mailbox sooner than they have been. Although it is not a fancy issue with photos and graphics, the editor did his best. This issue is full of articles to help you get connected with and catch up on what's happening in GIS in Maine.
The Third Annual Maine GIS User Group Meeting will be held on December 12, 1996 in the Augusta, Maine area. Look for the registration information and agenda at the end of this newsletter. Call Judy Colby-George or David Carr if you are able to lend your talents and assistance (their numbers can also be found at the end of this newsletter).
Thank you for your continued interest. We wish you continued success in your endeavors into GIS, and look forward to seeing you in December.
Best Regards,Believe it or not, the Maine GIS User Group has been around for three years. We had a humble beginning in the basement of the State Office Building with 30 people attending the December 1993 meeting. From there it has been straight up, with our second annual meeting, with an address by Governor Angus King in the Augusta Civic Center, drawing more than 90 people. We have seen increasing use of GIS, both in sheer numbers and across institutional boundaries.
Therefore, it is necessary for the GIS Users Group to make the move to a more formal organization. Last December we voted to adopt a Board of Incorporators who were charged with moving the group to a more formal status. This is important for a variety of reasons. The first, of course, is money. It has become necessary for the Group to charge dues to continue to have informative meetings, produce a newsletter, and to advance GIS as a tool throughout the state. We will also need money to bring in speakers and develop additional educational forums. Much of this work up till now has been supported by the Maine Office of GIS. Since the Group is growing larger, it is not feasible to rely on OGIS's generosity. That means that we will need to raise the needed funds ourselves through dues and meeting fees.
Another reason for formalizing the group is the need to have defined roles and specific places for people to participate in the organization. Through formalizing the GIS Users Group we have created a nine member Board of Directors, which includes five positions (President, Vice President, Secretary, Treasurer, and Education Coordinator) and four members-at-large. There will also be four standing committees; Sponsorship, Programs, Newsletter, and Membership.From here, the opportunities to explore various aspects of GIS are endless. This is not to say that we are all looking forward to creating a bureaucracy of subcommittees, but it is important that there be a robust resource for people in the state to contact when they have questions and concerns regarding GIS. For instance, we have formed a Transportation Framework Working Group to discuss issues specifically related to these types of data. There are many important issues which will come up in the future that will affect the GIS community, not he least of which will be data sharing and freedom of information (which was one of the breakout sessions at our last Annual Meeting). The Users Group will be a forum for discussion of such issues. These goals can only be accomplished through formalizing our organization and adding volunteer support. We welcome your comments and participation.
The User Group meeting in April of 1996 focused on issues related to the ongoing efforts to develop transportation GIS data for Maine. Discussions in both the general and work sessions resulted in the formation of a subcommittee to further explore the issues and interests raised at that meeting. The subcommittee is modeled after the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) initiative of the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC), and is being called the Maine Transportation Framework Working Group. The intent is to develop a framework, or standard, for transportation data in Maine. This effort will be coordinated with, and will build upon, the Federal definition of transportation framework data.
The Working Group wants to identify what data will make up the geographic and attribute standard for a State of Maine GIS Road layer. The Working Group will also work to develop processes to incorporate the identified data into the Maine Office of GIS (OGIS) standard road base map data layer. There are many issues to work out as part of this effort. Some of the issues to be addressed include getting a good understanding of the data that are most commonly used, as well as understanding the impacts of not including lesser used data. Determining the best sources of data and managing updates to the data are also key issues. The Working Group will hold public meetings around the state to solicit your input and comments on the Working Group's recommendations. Another major issue to be addressed by the Group is working with the U.S. Bureau of Census and the U.S. Geological Survey to promote and develop a single standard Road database for the State of Maine.
The current composition of the Working Group includes representatives from OGIS, Maine Department of Transportation (DOT), City of Portland, Portland Area Comprehensive Transportation Study (PACTS), Bangor-Hydro Electric Company, and the U.S. Bureau of Census. To date, the Working Group has met twice, has laid out a plan for its efforts, and is in the process of determining who collects and maintains what transportation data. If you are interested in participating on this subcommittee or have pertinent information for the group's effort, please call Dan Walters, Director of the Office of GIS, at 207-287-3897.
Notes from the July 1996 MeetingThe User Group's summer meeting was held in Nutting Hall at the University of Maine at Orono. Over 60 members and interested people came to hear about the latest developments in remote sensing, including digital aerial photography, digital orthophotography, and satellite imagery.
Mr. Mark Averill, Pilot at James W. Sewall Company, Old Town, Maine, discussed the use of airborne digital imaging systems. He presented the differences between traditional aerial photography, which collects the data on film, which is then scanned for use in GIS systems, and digital imaging systems which collect the image directly into computer readable formats. Using technology similar to video imaging, these systems are becoming more sophisticated and typically are now linked directly to GPS systems which capture location information for each picture, or image. Mr. Averill also discussed advances in standard aerial photography techniques.
Mrs. Kristina Ivey, Manager of Imaging Services at James W. Sewall Company, Old Town, Maine, discussed the basic differences between digital aerial photography rectification methods. She then provided in-depth information regarding the production of digital orthophotography. An orthophotograph is a picture that has had both the distortions from the camera and platform (e.g., airplane), and the distortion of the ground terrain removed to produce a picture of map quality. Digital orthophotography makes these necessary corrections to a computer file of the scanned picture.
Mr. Andrew (Drew) Fisher, Manager, Eastern U.S. for EOSAT, Orlando, Florida, discussed what is happening with imaging from space. Mr. Fisher discussed the products which are currently available from EOSAT, as well as what each product was suited for. There were several questions regarding resolution, or pixel size. Pixel size is measured as a square, with each leg having a set length. For example, an image with 10 meter resolution means that objects which are roughly 10 meters-by-10 meters square may be identifiable in the image. Mr. Fisher explained that there are a number of new satellites being built for launches over the next few years which will bring resolutions down to the 5-meter, 3-meter, and even 1-meter levels. He discussed new products from a satellite launched by India that will be available from EOSAT.
A brief business meeting was held after the presentation portion of the program. The members present were asked about their willingness to pay meeting fees, and for paying dues to remain as members of the User Group. There was strong support for keeping the User Group active, and for demonstrating this support through paying dues and meeting fees. It is expected that dues will be charged starting with the 1997 program year.
Back to IndexThe City of Portland is beginning a pilot project to demonstrate its proposed base mapping methods. An area of the City has been chosen which has already been mapped to some degree during a recent sewer separation project. This area, known as Coyle's Gully, is roughly bounded by Forest Avenue, Coyle Street, Highland Avenue, Prospect Street, Deering Avenue, and Noyes Street. Most of the work which still needs to be completed to make a working GIS for this area will be done by in-house staff using AutoCAD and ESRI products, namely ArcCAD and ArcView.
The City's proposed technique for creating a digital base map involves locating the right-of-ways for all of Portland's streets, conforming the parcel lines to the accurately located right-of-way lines, reproducing the City's existing street numbering plans, and creating a topographic map to accompany the above cadastral components of the base map. This approach was developed over the last few years by GIS Workgroup members as an ongoing project of the City of Portland's Department of Public Works' Engineering Section. The accuracy which this method of mapping will be able to provide Portland's GIS users is greatly needed in this dense urban setting. The mapping of the streets' right-of-ways will be done to approximately the centimeter level by locating the street's right-of-way markers. Portland is fortunate in that it has been actively monumenting its streets and roads for the better part of the last one hundred and fifty years. Apart from defining the City right-of-ways for day to day uses such as infrastructure maintenance, all of this monumentation will once again pay off by allowing the City to create a more accurate map than it may otherwise have been able to create by using the existing tax maps.
The intent in mapping the right-of-ways to such a level of accuracy is in order to establish with a high degree of certainty where the boundaries of individual city blocks begin and end. Many of these city blocks are in fact record subdivisions which are bounded by the previously mentioned street right-of-ways. With the exterior boundaries of a subdivision accurately located and related to the rest of the City, through the use of geodetic coordinates, the interior of the subdivision can, in turn, be recreated. The interior lot lines of these recreated subdivisions can be reproduced using either coordinate geometry (COGO) and/or scanning. This method of creating the cadastral layer of a GIS has the advantage of being able to isolate errors, inherent in either the original mapping or the conversion process, to individual blocks of land within the City. Said blocks are defined by the located right-of-ways. The cumulative effect of this process will yield a more accurate parcel map of the City than is currently available by piecing together our present tax maps and rubber sheeting them together. Owing to the fact that the monuments are relatively stable over time, it will allow the City to continue to use the streetlines or right-of-way boundaries as a fairly immutable reference system for years to come.
Using the City's right-of-ways has additional benefits in the creation of a digital base map for Portland. The City has had a street addressing system in place for approximately the last one hundred years. Street addresses are based on 25 foot intervals as measured along the centerline of the streets' right-of-ways. Therefore, by mapping the right-of-ways the City will also produce a base map which will serve the City's E-911 needs and allow the present street address system to be incorporated into the E-911 system.
The final piece to the creation of a GIS base map for Portland is the topographic component. Typically topographic themes, layers, or coverages are mapped as lines. An example of this is a topographic map in AutoCAD. It is composed of lines, such as contours, roads, tree lines, rivers, etc., and polygons/shapes, such as map symbols, building footprints, lakes, etc. Such maps are very useful and form the basis of many GIS applications. Often their greatest value is in relating the GIS' information to landmarks (buildings, roads, rivers, lakes, trees, etc.) in the real world. As useful as they are, they also tend to be very expensive to produce. Much of the cost of producing such traditional line maps arise from the methods necessary to produce them. The process of compiling traditional topographic maps is typically done through photogrammetric means and involves manually tracing features found in the aerial photographs with a device known as a stereocompiler. Stereocompilers allow mappers to view aerial photographs in three dimensions and trace the features that they see in the photos onto a map. Detailed maps are compiled in this way by the continual tracing of the topographic features found in aerial photographs. The more topographic features and themes one wants to map, the more tracing there is for the stereocompiler operator. And the more the operator has to trace, the higher the cost of the labor will be.
One can imagine the type of detail which needs to be mapped in an urban/suburban environment. In order for the topographic maps to be useful to the broadest cross-section of users, this might mean a prohibitively costly topographic base map. Subsequently, the City of Portland is looking at a new alternative to traditional line maps - digital orthophotos. While orthophotography is not new, the ability to use digital imagery effectively on even desktop computers has allowed digital orthophotography to become a realistic alternative to traditional photogrammetric mapping of topography. The cost advantage of digital orthophotos as compared to the more traditional photogrammetric line map is because creating digital orthophotos is a much more automated process, involving much less manual labor.
Digital orthophotography is created by geometrically correcting digital versions of aerial photography by using a digital model of the ground shown in the photos. The result is a mosaic of aerial photographs that can be used as a photographic map. Generally, uncorrected aerial photos cannot be used as a map because they are distorted by several factors inherent in the use of aerial cameras. These factors can usually be classified into two groups: those caused by the plane and camera and those caused by the elevation of the topography below the camera. The distortions created by the plane and the camera are relatively easy to correct by the photogrammetrist using ground control (e.g. targeted points) in the photos.
Distortions caused by differences in the elevation of the land can also be easily corrected with the use of a digital elevation model of the ground. However, this terrain model usually must be manually created by the photogrammetrist before it can be applied to the photos. Once the elevation model has been created, the digital photos can be processed by a computer with the appropriate software to remove the distortions created by the undulating ground below the camera. The result is a geometrically correct photo map which depicts all of the topography on the ground that was visible in the original photography. The labor costs involved in this method of mapping are essentially the cost of providing adequate ground control, obtaining the aerial photography, scanning the photography, and manually mapping the ground elevations of the project area or town. The cost savings generated by this method are a result of reducing the amount of manual tracing which needs to be performed to fully map a given area. By creating a corrected photo map, the only manual mapping which really needs to be done is that used to map the elevations of the land. The rest of the land's topographic features are automatically depicted in the corrected imagery.
The City intends to initially use its digital orthophotos as a backdrop to its right-of-way, parcel, and street address map layers. These three layers or themes will create the basis of most of the City's initial GIS applications. The digital orthophoto backdrop will serve primarily as a way of relating the right-of-way, parcels, and street addresses to the real world's topography and features. As time progresses, the digital orthophoto coverage of the city should also allow the City of Portland to map directly from its orthophotos. Features such as manholes, catch basins, trees, buildings, etc. should all be visible enough so their positions can be accurately mapped and linked to various GIS databases that we will be developing over time.
The City of Portland feels that by constructing its GIS base maps in this way, we will be able to build a base map with more longevity than a less accurately produced map. Additionally, Portland has a long history of mapping that tends to support this concept; a map will be useful for a longer period of time if it meets the need of its users and has some room to grow with the users' ever growing demands for greater detail and accuracy. That is not to say a particular map will not become outdated, just because it is super accurate and very detailed the day it was created. For instance, the City still uses its 1"=200' topographic maps from 1901. Over the years this series of maps has provided Portland with an excellent base map that was more accurate than most (not all) of the City's mapping needs. However, as the years have passed, we have found these maps to be increasingly outdated and limited by an inherent horizontal accuracy of about ±5 feet. The issue of these maps' longevity or useful life span has been more of a question of providing ongoing map maintenance than anything else. They are still useful in many instances. But sometimes an area on the 1901 maps has changed so much that the 1901 maps simply do not contain the necessary information needed to support policy decisions. The intrinsic accuracies of the 1901 topographic maps are also a limiting factor when it comes to their usefulness. This is because the original accuracy of ±5 feet cannot be improved upon without remapping the area with a greater degree of precision. In many cases, Portland's mapping needs today require mapping that is better than ±5 feet.
Beyond the issues of map accuracy, the Engineering Section's GIS Workgroup hopes to build the city wide base map using a relatively short list of universally usable map layers which all departments can use in developing their own GIS applications. These map layers or themes form the basis of almost all of the City's methods of referencing something's location. A short list of these common denominators would contain, among other things: roads, street addresses, tax parcels, topography, and political districts. While these base layers won't allow the City to develop every possible application right away, they should be universal and static enough over time to form the building blocks for future GIS application development to build upon.
Once we have finished our pilot project GIS in the Coyle's Gully area of Portland, the City will be able to look at our planned mapping methodology again to make sure it meets our needs. The pilot project will also give us the opportunity to reexamine our initial estimates of project costs, times, and necessary resources, and fine tune our overall approach. Lastly, it will provide us with a tool to demonstrate the power of a GIS to others.
Back to IndexFrank Fiori, the Director of Planning and Code Enforcement, has worked with Maine Mapping (Lucy Craib, Damariscotta, Maine) to create a variety of coverages for the Town of Topsham to use in decision making. He uses ArcView and is the only one in the town who uses the software. Some of the coverages the town has are parcels, soils, wetlands, water and sewer lines, and wildlife and fishery areas. The town acquires additional data as it sees a need for such information and as budgets allow. Future coverages may include zoning, building locations, floodplains, and well locations. The town is also looking to expand the use of the systems to the police and fire departments. Mr. Fiori has found, as he uses the existing coverages, that the town has quite a lot of data which it can attach to these coverages. When asked if he would change anything about the process, Mr. Fiori said he couldn't think of anything. He finds ArcView to have just about the right level of functions and ease of use for him to achieve benefits from the data he has without having to spend excessive amounts of time learning software.
Town of LimestoneTroy Brown, Town Manager of the Town of Limestone, Maine, has developed an appreciation for the uses and benefits that can be derived from GIS technology. The town of Limestone is in the process of effectively handling the major changes required by the closing of Loring Air Force Base. The loss of a major employer, juxtaposed with the exciting possibilities associated with attracting new businesses and industries to the area, make the town a prime candidate for using GIS. Using the services of the Northern Maine Development Commission, Mr. Brown has recently updated Limestone's comprehensive plan. These maps and data were captured digitally so they can be used and updated in the future to provide the base for other applications. In addition, Limestone is the indirect benefactor of the statewide 911-E initiative which draws on the data available from the Maine Office of GIS to assist municipalities with consistent street addressing.
When asked what he would like to do in the future, Mr. Brown replied that with the number of people who come to the town with specific property information requests, "It would be nice to use the technology for tax maps. I also see the demand for zoning ordinance maps." For more information contact Mr. Troy Brown at 207-325-4704.
Town of Carrabassett ValleyIn 1993, during the refinancing of Sugarloaf, a Sanitary District was created to manage the wastewater and treatment facilities. The District quickly saw that better information was needed as they found themselves with no "as built" maps. Led by Larry Warren, Chair of the Carrabassett Valley Sanitary District, a public/private partnership was formed to develop a GIS that would serve the needs of the Town of Carrabassett Valley, the Sanitary District, Sugarloaf Mountain Corporation, Carrabassett Valley Ski Touring Center, and the Water District. The partnership was assisted in their efforts to implement GIS by Woodard and Curran (Bangor, Maine), who was the engineer of record on the wastewater plant acquisition. The Town of Carrabassett Valley's year-round population is about 350, but on any given winter weekend 5,000 people may be in town.
In January of 1994, ArcCAD was purchased, because it was PC based and would be an easy switch for students from the University of Maine in Farmington who have ARC/INFO training. Proximity to UMF was an important part of the GIS plan because it offered affordable resources. A Pentium class PC was purchased with 32 MB of RAM, 1 gigabyte storage space, an E-size digitizer, an HP DesignJet plotter and, in the spring of 1995, a GPS receiver. It took about three months of development, performed by students who were overseen by Woodard and Curran, for the GIS to produce results.
The first focus was to digitize tax maps and attach the assessor's database. The town manager and assessor now regularly use this information in ArcView. The area's cross country ski trails, snowmobile trails, and five-foot contours have been digitized. Water and sanitary facilities were located to sub-meter accuracies so frozen pipes and valves can be located easily, even under snow. Manholes, etc. were located using aerial photography, with ties off building corners, and then checked with GPS. The Sanitary District now has excellent data with which to measure flows, discover inflow infiltration areas, diagnose causes, determine who is affected, and develop solutions.
The partners feel they are getting a lot back for their $40,000 investment in hardware, software and data development. The Sugarloaf Corp. is looking at using the GIS for snowmaking management and ski traffic tracking. The Water District may begin to use the GIS similarly to the Sanitary District to diagnose problems and determine who is affected by those problems. The Town is considering imaging property photos for use in the GIS. An Enhancement to the 911 system has also been developed.
There is an ongoing effort to form a non-profit organization, using the established GIS facility, to provide GIS services to other towns in the region. If this effort progresses then a full time GIS person would be hired. When asked if they had to do it over again what would they do differently, the response was "very little". Larry was amazed that it all went so smoothly the first time. For more information contact Larry Warren at 207-237-2266.
Back to IndexThe geocoding capabilities of GIS greatly enhanced the value of a household travel survey that Portland Area Transportation Study (PACTS) conducted in the Fall of 1994. Geocoding is the process of identifying a coordinate location (usually latitude and longitude) from a location descriptor, such as an address. Deciding to use the technology meant more meaningful and reliable information could be extracted from the survey data, but at increased staff time and cost.
The primary purpose of the travel survey was to provide updated information needed for the travel demand model maintained, and currently being updated, by PACTS. This model is used to analyze the effects of changes in the transportation system, population and employment. Having increased confidence in the complex inputs to the model convinced us that the increased effort would be worth it. The communities covered by the travel model are divided into Transportation Analysis Zones (TAZ). These zones vary in the size depended on the character of the area, including: densities of population, employment, and road network. For instance, the Portland peninsula is divided into 54 TAZ, while the Town of Cumberland is divided into 3 TAZ. PACTS has 241 TAZ in total.
For the geocoding process, Maptitude GIS software from Caliper Corporation was used. It was selected due to its ability to easily import the Census Bureau's TIGER files and reported good geocoding performance. The TIGER 94 road file for Cumberland County was imported and used. This file contains address ranges (starting and ending addresses) for individual roadway links. For the assignment of geocodes to a specific TAZ, PC ARC/INFO was used. PACTS had previously developed this coverage, aggregating census blocks to create TAZ. PC ARC/INFO's point-in polygon command is IDENTITY and would identify within which TAZ a point lies.
Many problems were encountered during this process and workarounds had to be developed. The origin and destination data, as originally recorded, had many errors. Many had missing street numbers, wrong street name spellings, incorrect ZIP codes, or just building names. First attempts at using the information produced low match-rates (the percentage of addresses matched to a location, or geocoded) and many of those that were geocoded were matched to an incorrect location.
There are also problems inherent in using the raw TIGER files. Outside of the more built up areas, the percentage of road segments with address ranges is low. The Maine Mall area of South Portland, where a large number of trips began and ended, has very little address range information. Also, many of the address ranges, when present, were incorrect. For instance, the address for Maine Medical Center, 22 Bramhall Street, was changed to "20" through a search and replace procedure because the address ranges for nearby segments were "2 to 20" and "26 to 40." An address of "22" would not have produced a match using the matching rules as specified.
Workarounds included only performing automated geocoding for the trips to or from Portland, Westbrook and South Portland. These were the areas where the large majority of trips occurred and contained better address range information. Match rates of approximately 80 percent for Portland addresses, 75 percent for Westbrook addresses, and 55 percent for South Portland addresses were achieved. Trips that didn't match, as well as those beginning or ending in Scarborough, which also had poor address range coverage, were manually geocoded to a TAZ. This zone trip information has been supplied to our consultant to derive model input parameters. For the trips to and from the remaining six communities, statistics were developed to describe trip making patterns.
Feel free to contact me at 207-774-9891 for more information on our geocoding experience. I would love to talk to others that have undertaken geocoding projects and learn from your successes, as I have certainly learned things from my very qualified success.
Back to IndexThe Conservation Technology Support Program (CTSP) has announced its geographic information systems granting program for 1997. The CTSP is a partnership between Hewlett-Packard Comp., Apple Computer, Inc., ESRI, Smithsonian Ins. Natl. Zoological Park Conservation and Research Center and the Conservation GIS Consortium.
The intention of the program is to provide a comprehensive package of GIS support to non-profit organizations who address conservation and environmental issues but lack the tools to apply GIS technology to their efforts. The grant program is open to all U.S. based 501(c)(3) organizations. The application deadline is January 17, 1997. More information is available at http://www.desktop.org/ctsp, via email at ctsp@desktop.org, or write to:Conservation Technology Support Program c/o Conservation GIS Consortium 324 Fuller Avenue - Suite C2 Helena, Montana 59601-5029
Job Announcement: Managing the CTSP. If interested send an email message to CTSP@desktop.org with JOB ANNOUNCEMENT as its title.
Back to IndexYou are cordially invited to attend the Third Annual Meeting of the Maine GIS Users Group to be held on Thursday, December 12, 1996, at the Augusta Civic Center. Following is the preliminary agenda. Look for the full agenda and registration materials attached to this newsletter.
11:00 a.m. Business Meeting, including election of Board Members, formation of committees, and discussion of future plans 12:00 p.m. Buffet Lunch 1:00 p.m. Keynote Speech 2:30 p.m. Poster Session and Social 3:00 p.m. Break Out Sessions 4:30 p.m. Wrap-up
Note that K-12 teachers and students are invited to attend the meetings and sessions for no charge. There will be a fee for lunch.
Back to IndexThe Maine GIS User Group needs a logo. We are calling all members with an artistic flair to bring or send their creation to the December 12, 1996 meeting in Augusta. We will offer a free one-year membership to the creator of the winning logo. The design will be used for advertising, letterhead, our upcoming World Wide Web page, and the Maine Coordinates. It can be in color, but we are looking for something which will reproduce in black and white for use in the Maine Coordinates. We hope to vote at the meeting. If you have an idea, but aren't an artist, bring the best sketch you can make. Decision of the judges is final, unless you can convince us otherwise.
Back to IndexThe Maine GIS User Group will be holding its annual election of officers during the business portion of the Annual Meeting on December 12, 1996. Below is the slate of officers which has been prepared by the current Board and Steering Committee. You will notice that there are a couple of positions available. The current draft bylaws contain descriptions of the duties of each Position. Please contact any of the people in the who's who list below for more information on any of these positions. If you are not able to run for an elected position, the group would welcome your assistance as a member of a standing committee, or in whatever way you can help.
´ Chair - Tim White, James W. Sewall CompanyThere have been some changes in who's who in the Maine GIS User Group Board of Directors and Steering Committee. Below are the people who you can contact if you have questions or if you need more information.
| Name | Company | Phone | |
| Timothy White | James W. Sewall Company | 207-827-4456 | twhite@jws.com |
| Nancy Allen Armentrout | Maine DOT | 207-287-8723 | nancy.allen@state.me.us |
| Judy Colby-George | Geo-Systems | 207-846-0507 | 7302.21@compuserve.com |
| David Carr | Portland Water District | 207-774-5961 | pwd@ime.net |
| Jon Giles | City of Portland | 207-874-8842 | |
| Tim Case | Maine Office of GIS | 207-287-8087 | sdtcase@state.me.us |