Regional GIS Service
The WestCOG Foundation’s Regional GIS project aims to develop a Regional GIS CAMA and Parcel View System (Regional GIS) for municipal governments in Western Connecticut. This project would be the initial phase in a multi-year effort to support regional cooperation and efficiencies. The goal is to provide Western Connecticut with an application that will save municipalities money while improving overall efficiency and functionality.
Targets the communities involved with the Western Connecticut Council of Governments (WestCOG) and Northwest Hills Council of Governments (NHCOG), which are two voluntary association of towns and cities. The municipalities in the Region (henceforth “Western Connecticut”) vary in character from small and rural, such as Bridgewater and Sherman, to more urban communities such as Danbury, Torrington, and Stamford. Home valuations and digital mapping, parcel, and Computer Assisted Mass Appraisal (CAMA) infrastructure vary widely across the region.
The State of Connecticut and the local municipalities are undergoing budgetary stress and impacts because of continued revenue declines and structural changes in the State of Connecticut. New types of cooperation for economic efficiencies are being sought between municipalities across Western Connecticut. Municipalities are looking to realize significant cost savings by optimizing operations and planning, as well as cooperative efforts with adjacent communities.
The components in the Regional GIS would include a GIS visualization web tool with mapped parcels and supporting GIS layers; property card functionality; and integrated CAMA data in a flat file format that allows for basic search and view functionality. This level of integration and functionality has become commonplace for individual municipalities across Connecticut, New England and the US.
The intention is that the project will start with a modest number of communities and grow to include more municipalities as our local communities’ cycle through their revaluation plans.
Please review the Regional GIS Web Report to learn more about this effort. It is a planning document produced by WestCOG in conjunction with the consultant Axiomatic to determine the viability for regional cooperation on Property Appraisal, and a regionalized Real Property Computer Assisted Mass Appraisal (CAMA) system. The deliverables for this RFP include a Regional GIS platform, a common schema, and an ETL migration plan for participating communities.