Welcome to the new GIO Newsletter!

This is the new look of our newsletter, using ArcGIS Experience Builder.

This allows the GIO office to deliver relevant news and content to our followers using GIS technology and in an entirely new way.

Make sure to subscribe if you haven’t already and we look forward to continuing our delivery of quality GIS content.

5-Year Strategic Plan Webinar Recording

The Indiana Geographic Information Office (GIO) has been working with AppGeo to develop a strategic plan that sets the priorities for the office’s work over the next 3 - 5 years.  At the onset of the project, you may have participated in a survey, workshop, or interview, collecting your thoughts on the current and future needs of the state’s geospatial community and the GIO’s role therein.   

The GIO Strategic Plan project is now complete! We want to thank all who participated for their invaluable input. And we have also developed two business plans resulting from two of the strategic goals. 

Meet our newest team member, Matt Evans!

We are happy to announce the newest addition to the GIO team, Matt Evans. Matt will be a GIS Program Specialist for the GIO focusing on the IndianaMap and Data Harvest programs. Help us welcome Matt to the team and learn more about him below!

Matt moved to Indiana from Denver, CO to attend Earlham College, graduating in 2018. He gained a passion for local government and GIS work while interning with Wayne County GIS as a student. After graduating, he has worked in city planning and as GIS Coordinator for the City of Richmond, and more recently as GIS Coordinator for the Wayne County Surveyor's Office. He has also volunteered in local government on Richmond's Board of Public Works, Environmental Sustainability Commission, and Richmond Employees Credit Union board. Matt lives in Richmond with his partner Kristen of 6 years, their dog, and 3 cats.

LiDAR data portal highlighted by Joseph Kerski

I recently met with the developer of one of the finest imagery data portals I have ever seen, the LiDAR data portal for Indiana. With support from the state’s excellent IndianaView initiative and Purdue University’s Digital Forestry Initiatives, the LiDAR data portal is open to public and currently hosting the whole Indiana statewide LiDAR data collected in 2011-2013 and 2016-2020. It serves as a “virtual center” for (1) managing and sharing a massive volume of LiDAR data, (2) collaborating and interacting with other researchers and public via the portal without geographic limitations, and (3) communicating research findings to the public (see sample below). Also, since the creator of this portal serves as a GIS and civil engineering professor, this is an excellent example of the great results of collaboration, in this case, between government and academia.

Recent advancements in sensor technologies make it possible to collect fine spatial and high temporal resolution remote sensing data and automatically extract information in a high throughput mode. The state of Indiana USA has identified the need to have ubiquitous access to statewide topographic LiDAR covering all of Indiana, and Indiana recently finished 2^nd statewide LiDAR data collection (1^st statewide LiDAR data collection between 2011 – 2013 and 2^nd statewide LiDAR data collection between 2016 – 2020). Topographic LiDAR is a surveying method that measures the distance to objects using a laser scanner to illuminate objects on or above the ground surface. Time of flights of the reflected light in combination with Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) and Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) observations are used to make a highly accurate 3D digital representation of the earth’s surface. The resulting LiDAR 3D point cloud data can be further processed to generate accurate and reliable topographic information over large areas. Although Indiana statewide LiDAR data acquisition program collected valuable information, the massive data volume acquired over multiple years and lack of software packages customized for processing these data make it challenging to utilize its maximum potential use.

The LiDAR data portal was built up from scratch using Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) such as standard HTML/CSS and custom-developed JavaScript codes on top of other JavaScript libraries such as Leaflet and Potree for front-end development. The LiDAR data portal also provides TMS as a web service for Digital Terrain Model (DTM) and Normalized Digital Height Model (NDHM) so that users can display these layers in any GIS software packages. I encourage the reader to also investigate the UAV/Drone data hosted on the university’s Digital Forestry site for many areas of the state (see sample below).

The portal also includes the NDHM (Normalized Digital Height Model) data (see statewide example below).

RGB orthomosaic over Davis Forest: https://hub.digitalforestry.org/outbox/210604_p1_davis_PAC_120m_85_80_ortho_v2_clipped_se_corner_web.jpg [hub.digitalforestry.org]

Color Infrared orthomosaic over Davis Forest: https://hub.digitalforestry.org/outbox/210604_p4m_davis_PAC_140m_80_80_ortho_v2_se_corner_web.jpg [hub.digitalforestry.org]

Digital Surface Model over Davis Forest: https://hub.digitalforestry.org/outbox/210604_p1_davis_PAC_120m_85_80_dsm_v3_se_corner_web.jpg [hub.digitalforestry.org] (sample below).

I found the data portal extremely easy to use, fast and responsive, and rich with data and metadata. It is one of the best portals I have reviewed in the 10 years we have been writing this blog! I recently spent a week with the Indiana GIS community and as we wrote several years back, it (IGIC, or the Indiana Geographic Information Council and the Indiana GIS community) remains one of my favorite communities of practice, where government, academia, nonprofit, and industry work together in a collaborative spirit on mutual goals of enabling sound decision-making based on spatial data and methods. At the IGIC’s state GIS conference is where I learned about this portal–which speaks to the value of the community networking together in events like this for learning and collaboration.

For more about the developer of the Digital Forestry portal, contact Professor Jinha Jung at the Lyles School of Civil Engineering at Purdue University, and see the Geospatial Data Science Laboratory, here.