GIS in Calcasieu Parish was
started by the cities of Sulphur and Westlake between 1987 through 1989
with the help of a grant from the Department of Commerce. This grant,
called the Louisiana Land Information System, enabled these two cities
to complete all the graphic layers of their system. These graphic layers
included the parcels, water and sewer system, contours, streets, and
various other topographic and planimetric layers. The various graphic
layers were created from aerial photography and COGO (Coordinate
Geometry) procedures. The layers were tied to the Louisiana NAD83 State
Plane Coordinate System by a GPS network of monumented sectional and
photo control points.
In 1989, the Parish began taking a large role in the Louisiana Land
Information System Project. The need for a land parcel base map of the
entire Parish was seen as the Parish's first need. The base map was
created using 367 GPS mapping points, tied to the Sulphur and Westlake
networks, to setup the 13 townships and 1100 sections contained in
Calcasieu Parish. Once, this section line skeleton was created, the
165,000 land parcels were added with COGO using the existing 2200
subdivisions plats, hundreds of recorded land surveys, and the plat
books of the Parish Tax Assessor. The land parcel base map was completed
in 1992 and the Tax Assessor began tagging each land parcel with its
existing assessment attribute record. With this base map in place, the
Parish has created such additional graphic layers as a FEMA Flood layer;
a Land Zoning layer; various political district boundaries, such as
voting, police jury, fire protection, waterworks, and recreational; and
Parish wide street centerline address map to name few. All these layers
have basic attribute information tied to them and can be viewed and
queried either by themselves or in conjunction with any other layers.
In 1994, The Parish switched to ESRI's GIS software Arc/Info. After
more than a year of data conversion, the Parish is now ready to make the
system available to all its Departments. The Planning Department will
have an automated permitting application, which will work with the
various graphic layers. This will be run using ESRI's ArcView3 software.
An automated address-assigning application using the Street Centerline
map and a rezoning application are in the works for 1997. The GIS/MIS
Department is working with both the Public Works and Engineering
Divisions to create applications to help with such tasks as: road sign
inventory, road rating and maintenance, and bridge maintenance. The
GIS/MIS Department is also working with LSU in creating a Hurricane
Storm Surge application which will enable the Department of Emergency
Management to track actual storms and study different storm scenarios in
order to better plan for evacuation and flooding. LSU is also working on
a Hazardous Materials Response application for the Parish which will be
used by Emergency Management in conjunction with the existing
computer-aided callout system.
After much hard work, energy, and money, Calcasieu Parish is now
exploring this new tool called GIS. The uses of GIS are limited
primarily by our own imagination. Even with all of the benefits that we
can foresee for this program, we know that new applications and uses
will continue to be realized as time goes on and our understanding of
this technology broadens.
by J. O'Neil Hebert, III, PLS
GIS Manager
Send email to: abear@cppj.net
(adapted from its first publication in Louisiana Parish Government
Official Publication of the Police Jury Association, December 1995)
