Baltimore County's Office of Information Technology, Business Applications/GIS manages and maintains the enterprise GIS. This enterprise system has a number of on-going projects associated with the operation and maintenance of the data and applications. These projects are categorized as database development, cooperative database development and database maintenance. Projects current in progress are described below.
The County' s cadastral database ultimately will contain over 285,000 parcels of land. The database development is a multi-year project, scheduled to be completed in April 2003. The project was conducted in four phases. Phases I and II are complete and those maps are in maintenance. Phase III is being completed using in-house resources and should be available by February 2003. Phase IV is being completed using a combination of in-house and contractor resources. Phase IV should be completed by February 2003. Once the entire database is available, county personnel will be responsible for maintenance.
The County's planimetric/topographic map database was originally compiled in three phases. In 2000, the County initiated a maintenance program to update this database. Future maintenance of this database will be based on a three-year cycle. The most recent update was done from orthophotography taken in April of 2005. Planimetrics will also be compiled from a set of orthos captured in 2008. Contours will be captured on a 10 year cycle. The most recent capture was taken from LiDAR captured in April 2005.
The County's orthophotography is updated on a three-year cycle. New orthophotos will be created from photography that was flown in April 2008. These images should be available by September 2008. The County currently has orthophotography available from 1995, 1996, 1997, 2002 and 2005.
The facilities database was developed to support the 911 Center, Police Department and Fire Department with point-based data on facilities in the County. This database contains premise address, usage and owner information for the required themes. The database allows multiple premise addresses and usage types to be assigned to a single location. Additionally, multiple features can be associated to an installation.
Baltimore County and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) have entered into an agreement to modernize the Flood Insurance Rate Maps (FIRM). As a result of this project, FEMA will provide the county with updated FIRM maps in digital format. This product is known as a Digital Flood Insurance Rate Map (DFIRM).
The Natural Resources Conservation Service in cooperation with the Maryland Agricultural Experiment Station and the County Council of Baltimore County and the Baltimore County Soil Conservation District has entered into a National Cooperative Soil Survey Memorandum of Understanding to modernize the Baltimore County Soil Survey. As a result of this project, the County will receive digital soils information including new tabular data generated from the National Soils Information System (NASIS). It is anticipated that this project will be completed and the data available by 2008.
The County maintains the GIS databases using in-house and contract resources. The Office of Information Technology is responsible for maintaining the cadastral and street centerline map. Contract resources maintain the orthophotographs and planimetric/topographic maps.
The thematic maps are maintained as necessary by the responsible agencies.
Revised August 15, 2008
Courthouse 