2018 Big Sky GeoCon

The Montana State Library and the Montana Land Information Advisory Council (MLIAC) prioritized the development of a statewide LiDAR plan in the coming fiscal year. The State Library has already begun participating in national discussions to help coordinate our efforts with the USGS, other states, and the National States Geographic Information Council (NSGIC). Erin Fashoway & Troy Blandford will be participating as Montana’s State Champions in the 3D for the Nation Program. Come to this presentation to learn more about how you can participate in Montana’s statewide LiDAR plan and leverage available federal funding!

The USDA's Farm Service Agency is considering changing the way NAIP is being distributed to a licensed model. Montanans rely heavily on this standardized imagery product. How do we move forward as a state? Join us for an interactive forum on: 

• the use of the NAIP, - local government imagery programs,
• the value of statewide imagery product,
• historic imagery collection efforts,
• potential funding model for statewide imagery moving forward, and
• how to respond to USDA’s proposed licensed model as a state.

The Montana State Library (MSL) manages a statewide database of control points as part of the Montana Spatial Data Infrastructure (MSDI) Mapping Control Data Theme.  This session will focus on tips for storing and visualizing survey and other control point data using the Multi-state Control Point Database (MCPD), which was developed by the FGDC Cadastral subcommittee.  Information on the MCPD can be found at https://nationalcad.org/PLSSWorkgroup/PLSSWorkgroup.html. See the “Control Point Standards” section

In 2016 and 2017 Async GIS completed a MLIA Grant funded project to create a GIS layer of Lewis and Clark County, Montana, Clerk and Recorder Survey Corner Recordation Documents. Async GIS built an ArcGIS Javascript API application that edited a ArcGIS Online feature layer in order to populate the new GIS layer. This presentation will discuss the project, application and results.

ReferenceUSA is a subscription database containing detailed directory information on millions of US, Canadian, and international businesses, as well as residential and consumer data. This powerful resource can be used for location analysis, allowing us to answer important questions. Where are the restaurants, gas stations, grain bins, daycare centers, or liquor stores? Are there patterns that we can observe when business locations are mapped alongside consumer demographic data? How does the presence of a particular type of business impact the surrounding geographic area?

Come learn how this resource, freely available to all State of Montana employees, can be combined with GIS tools to make decisions on topics such as healthcare, commerce, tourism, safety, or simply where to go for lunch.

GIS is a powerful tool for local government agencies to use to help solve spatial problems and make daily tasks much simpler/easier. This presentation is a brief overview of what GIS can be used for in a local government environment. Topics that will be discussed are spatial hot spots, data interpolation, how GIS is used for Dispatch with their Enhanced 911 systems, quality checking your GIS and land records and more.

This presentation demonstrates a summary of Survey and GIS tools used by DJ and A to audit cemeteries for the VA. Many of the tools used have been developed in house and feature cutting edge technology that may be useful in other projects.

In a community that is growing as fast as Bozeman (4.7% growth rate), access to authoritative property information is critical yet extremely time consuming. City of Bozeman staff and residents rely heavily on the Department of Revenue (DOR) Property database (ORION) for daily processes, including developing mailing lists, understanding multi-unit addressing, accessing property owner information, legal descriptions, taxable market values, etc. Yet, in the past, none of this has been tied directly to City of Bozeman parcel or property data without an extensive manual process. Therefore, we have developed an automated process that obtains a fresh cut of the ORION database on a nightly basis, and makes it available within our online web map applications. This process includes downloading the ORION database, attaching the SQL Express Database, summarizing and joining the tables for our internal needs, and finally, relates the results directly to our parcel data. As a result, city staff, partners, and residents have live access to DOR data, including property information, multi-unit or condo information, and taxable market value in our internal data as well as the City of Bozeman web map applications. This has proven to be an excellent resource for providing value-added GIS opportunities for current applications and upcoming solutions and products.