The City purchased its first GIS software, Graphic Data System (GDS), in 1987. The software, developed in England, was eventually marketed through McDonnell Douglas, then Electronic Data Systems in the United States.
The first GIS data to be developed was a demonstration project limited to the former Norton Air Force Base area. This project incorporated a number of different layers including: parcels, streets, electrical distribution, storm drain, aviation fuel, cable TV, compressed air, gas distribution, water supply, street lighting, solid waste, sanitary sewer and land use. The project was completed in 1990. This data was donated to the Inland Valley Development Agency in the mid 1990's to serve as the basis for their GIS, when the base was deactivated.
Based on the success of the Norton project the City contracted in 1989 to have the fifty-five 300 scale Public Works Detail City Maps scanned and converted for use in GDS. The resulting layers: street center-lines (useable for geo-coding), parcels, freeways, highways and associated labeling served as the basis for a city-wide GIS.
The City employed Ruth Parish, graduate of California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, as GIS Coordinator in July 1990. Using a number of programs and utilities the original 55 scanned documents were merged into one overall database. Additional layers were added as priorities required starting with the council wards.
The first analysis project was the council ward redistricting project, required by federal statute and the recently available 1990 census data. Other analysis projects have pertained to crime, schools, census, fire, paramedics, planning, and emergency operations.
Matt Torrence, graduate of California State University at San Bernardino, started with the City as a student intern in 1991 and has worked for both the IT and Water departments. In 1998 he came on board as a GIS Analyst. In addition to GIS, Matt and Ruth are also responsible for managing the windows domain, anti-virus, and anti-spam and email systems.
The City has been fortunate to also have the services of a number of student interns to supplement the work of the GIS staff. Interns have come from a number of the regional universities including: California State University at San Bernardino, University of California at Riverside, the University of Redlands and California State Polytechnic University at Pomona.
The City's GIS used GDS through the mid 1990's. Both GDS and Environmental Research Institute's (ESRI) ArcView (starting with version 2.1) software were used through the mid to late 90's. The GIS was migrated completely to ESRI's ArcGIS when it became available in 2000. The GIS layers while initially in the GDS format were over time converted to shapefiles, coverages and are currently in ESRI's geo-database format.
The GIS is now composed of over 80 layers of graphic and attribute data ranging from the Animal Control Beats to the City's storm drain system. A Partial Listing can be found here
Basic layers were available for viewing through ESRI's web interface software, MapObjects. The interactive GIS site was upgraded to ArcIMS in 2003. A number of services are available. One service provides general information with access to many of the basic layers. Another written for the city by students in the Graduate Masters Program at the University of Redlands allows the user to look at data based on the parcel number. A third service illustrates the redevelopment areas within the City and for Inland Valley Development Agency. Additional services will be added in the future.
