Session 16 -- Moving Information: Sharing data across agency lines

Moderator, Mr. Gordon Morgan, Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT), Transportation Statistics Office
Mr. Paul O’Rourke, FDOT Transportation Statistics Office -- Presentation
Mr. Al Hill, Volusia County's GIS Section Manager
Mr. George Martin, FDOT District 1 -- Presentation
Mr. Rodney Floyd, FDOT Transportation Statistics Office -- Presentation
Ms. Tina Hatcher, FDOT Transportation Statistics Office -- Presentation

We all have data, and want and need more of it. Someone else may already have the data we need, and even be willing to share it, but doing so isn’t always easy. This panel discussed current and upcoming technology that can make data sharing easier—including Geographic Information Systems and the Internet.

Paul O’Rourke discussed the FDOT base map that supplies Florida’s official road layer. The base map is a geographic representation of the Roadway Characteristics Inventory (RCI). FDOT uses this base map to create GIS shapefiles for things like average annual daily traffic (AADT), Federal Aid eligible roads, and functional classification.

Al Hill discussed what Volusia County is doing with GIS. Volusia centralizes their GIS staff, and they provide services to the other county departments under a hub and spoke set-up. One can download 120 layers of GIS data from Volusia’s webpage in shapefile format. The information is updated weekly. Every quarter GIS data from the property appraiser is made available on a CD. All of the county’s aerial photos are available on DVD. The CD and DVD can be checked out from the Volusia data library.

George Martin discussed using GIS to link to several databases like traffic counts, straight line diagrams, signal locations, min/max speed limits into what is called the Visual Relational Database (VRDB).

Rodney Floyd and Tina Hatcher discussed several data sources that are available from FDOT: the Highway Data CD, Traffic Data DVD, RCI Field Handbook, Digital Video Log, and the Form TM. The video log will soon be available on the Internet. Cities and Counties report their mileage to FDOT using what’s called the Form TM. Among other things, this information is used to determine the distribution of certain types of transportation funds.

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