Current Status

October 9, 2002

This past Friday, October 4, the North Dakota GIS data repository, or "Hub" went live. The Hub is funded by the legislature with additional funding from FEMA through the North Dakota Division of Emergency Management. The Hub has been designed and put into production by the agencies serving on the North Dakota GIS Technical Committee which includes the Information Technology Department, the group responsible for hosting the Hub.

The main purpose of the Hub is cost reduction and efficiency within state government. Costs are reduced because individual agencies are no longer forced to develop their own GIS infrastructure which they use to provide services to the public they serve. The Hub creates a "one-stop-shopping" environment where agency data and agency applications can be hosted. Using free tools provided by the web data delivery system of the Hub, access to state GIS data is now widely available to people within agencies who do not otherwise have GIS software. Other organizations outside of state government will also benefit from having access to the Hub. The Hub now gives North Dakota an infrastructure that can be used to support disaster planning and risk management.

Starting in July of this year, the Hub database has been in use by state agency GIS professionals to directly connect to the database, bringing Hub data onto their computer screen. And now, the web part of the Hub is available. For those who cannot directly access the database because they are not behind the State security firewall, the web part of the Hub can be used to "stream" data to their desktop PC. Although geared towards state agencies, other organizations and the general public also have access to another web part of the Hub, called the "Hub Explorer." More information can be found at www.discovernd.com/gis. To view the interactive maps in the Hub Explorer, please click on the Maps and Data in the upper left corner of the web site, then click on the ND Hub Explorer link.

There is more work to do. One of the first priorities is to complete the data extraction tool which will allow one to download vector data in the format and projection of their choosing. The vendor of that tool is looking into ways of downloading raster data as well. We are still working on gathering in the DOQQ data, with the idea of compiling it into a statewide mosaic. In the near future, we plan on looking into geocoding, to allow address searching, probably starting at the ZIP code level. We plan on organizing informal training seminars, hopefully throughout the state, to assist people in how to use what is in the Hub. We will make these training materials available on the web site when they are complete.

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