Washington Cadastral Framework

Status Report

November 16, 2000

The Washington Cadastral Framework has closed out the FGDC grant in May with the completion of the final report on Phase 2 development. The Department of Natural Resources (DNR) is able to provide support to partners on existing applications and data distribution services, but additional project applications are not being developed further at this time. Greg Tudor is now also managing the Forest Roads Project at the DNR, so his time on the Washington Cadastral Framework is limited. The Washington Cadastral Framework partners are only meeting as part of the regular agenda in the Framework Management Group (FMG). Project minutes and status updates are on the web site: .

At the last FMG video conference, partners were given training on how to use their identifiers and passwords to directly access the Washington Cadastral Framework database. The presentation is available on the project web site. The Washington Cadastral Framework database includes parcel, legal description, boundary, point, and document data. Partners may have noticed that the ArcView Internet Map Server (IMS) has frequently not been working, but there have been very few calls to the Help Desk. Early next year, the ArcIMS software will be replacing the ArcView IMS. There have been no interruptions of data download service using the Cadastral Data Transfer Standard. (Note that direct database access is less cumbersome since the data does not have to be downloaded or reformatted using the utilities on the web site before use.) The DNR is continuing to revise the data conversion process to fix several known defects in the framework data. After several delays, the DNR is also working on adding GCDB codes, monumentation status, corner types, and qualifiers.

Several Washington Cadastral Framework partners met to put together a biennium request to the legislature which may have a better chance of success. There has been some cooperative effort in Grant County with WA DFW, DNR, DOT, and USBR to develop a cadastral data set for integration into the Washington Cadastral Framework. Carrie Wolfe is working on revised State Base Map legislation to provide more support for data integration, outreach, and support of this and other Framework projects. The WA DNR Forest Practices Division is reviewing support of the Washington Cadastral Framework for the small forest landowner project. The Bureau of Land Management is also seeking funds for the states to support enhanced GCDB collection and maintenance as a result of the Western Governors Association Cadastral Data and Policy Forum last March.

Washington Cadastral Framework participation in the National Integrated Land System (NILS) project has provided an opportunity to promote at a national level the requirements and standards which the Washington partners have developed. The NILS project team has spent the past year developing the GeoCommunicator as part of the Geographic Network, and NILS is now refocusing on rapid application development of survey and parcel management utilities. ESRI is working on the Cadastral Data Model as part of their Industry Data Models initiative featured in the last ArcNews, and has asked the Washington Cadastral Framework to be a contributor to their cadastral case studies.