The more insightful planning activities and productivity enhancements of the various independent departments within any given County or Municipality are justification enough for deploying this technology. However, as stated previously, this is often very difficult to quantitatively justify. Unfortunately quantifiable justification is often given extraordinary weight in the funding, decision-making process. Therefore given a few elementary assumptions, and some documentable observations an economic and quantifiable justification is nonetheless presentable that demonstrates the extreme advantage or benefit potential achievable through the balanced, regional coordination of the typical locally independent deployment of GIS. Recent examples of Aerial Photography in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania provide concrete example.
Justification must be sought on two levels. First the savings must be significant enough (each time – every time) to provide the required incentive for each of the perspective partners to not only come together, but to stay together. Second, the savings must be significant enough to warrant someone or a group to make the investment necessary to finance, staff, and maintain the regional coordination effort. Generally speaking the participating county and municipal partners are unable and or uninterested in doing the work required for effective regional coordination. This is a result of their deceptively simple need or mission to focus the vast majority of their attention and resources on their constituency.
Quantifiable justification can be found for both levels through economic analysis of the reduction in cost impacts at the local level. The justification comes from the cost avoidance and quality enhancements potential resulting from regional coordination. Typically, these impacts will be the result of:
Mistake Avoidance - Good judgment results in more efficient allocation of precious resources. Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from overcoming errors in judgment or “the lessons learned in the past.” In this case the lessons learned from past experiences of everyone in the group form a knowledge pool from which each individual can withdraw good judgment.
Improved Data Management - Including design, development and implementation of tabular and spatial data elements.
Cost-sharing Activities – Including the cost of: specific action(s); omission of action, and; action(s) taken in error.
Elimination of Duplication – Including training and education activities and production processing overlap.
As early as 1990 Studies funded by the Appalachian Regional Commission began to emerge alluding to savings that ranged from 5% to over 50% as a result of a regionally coordinated approach to GIS deployment. Other studies commissioned by various councils of governments alluded to similar savings figures based on a wide variety of successful mechanics.
If we assume that a total of $250,000 will be budgeted and spent by each of six independent counties, in either their Planning, Tax Assessment, or Emergency Management Services departments for activities that contribute to the deployment of a local and independent GIS system, then a savings of at least $75,000 would have to be generated by the mechanics of success, to meet the minimum 5% hypothesized savings resulting from balanced regional coordination of the deployment of locally independent Geographic Information Systems. Beginning in 1993 and continuing to this day this hypothesis was tested and quantitative proof of the concept can be obtained. In 1993 eleven contiguous counties in central Pennsylvania were at various initial stages of independently investigating the deployment of this technology, working towards initially independent data acquisition projects. In this environment activities began that ultimately gave rise to the formulation of two distinctly different strategies.
In strategy number one, a single, county independently proceeded on its own to deploy a GIS. Intending to meet the data quantity and data quality demands asserted by the needs of its Tax Assessment and Emergency Services departments this county embarked on its preliminary data acquisition project. In this case a request for proposals, for this multiple phase project, was carefully developed and a spring of 1994 flight was secured from a reputable firm. For comparison purposes “Phase I” of this project is defined as including Aerial Photography, GPS Control and, Analytics. With the deliverables being the control report, flight index and contact prints. It was intended that the data collected in this Aerial Photography data acquisition project would lead to, and support, one inch equals 400 feet mapping in accordance with National Map Accuracy Standards. The cost for Phase I for this, forward, independently thinking and acting county was in excess of $80,000 or approximately $250 per square mile.
In strategy number two, eleven Counties including the aforementioned county, utilizing the staff of a Local Development District (LDD) or Council of Governments began to look for and found its first GIS coordination grant. With it secured, (slightly less than $10,000), an inventory and inspection of successful GIS deployments on the east coast was conducted, a regional GIS task force was established, that included all that would come and, a current copy of ESRI’s ARC view was purchased and distributed to each of the eleven counties to facilitate application specific focused GIS training and education components. This training/educational component specifically targeted Emergency Service, Tax Assessment, and planning applications in addition to generic efforts designed to teach proper tool usage and system planning. Simultaneously, regular observations of the GIS deployment project taking place in one of the member counties were made and reported by LDD staff to the GIS taskforce. The training and education components were then supplemented with educational and training activities focusing on immerging issues such as scale, accuracy, photogrametry, GPS, parcel conversion, addressing, and data distribution. Through out the first year planning continued in anticipation of a spring 1996 Aerial Photography mission. The specifications developed for the first single, independent, county flight were made more demanding to support 1-inch equals 200 feet mapping and the target area was increased to cover the entire eleven county region, over 7000 square miles. The same firm was utilized to conduct the data acquisition project planning. The Phase I quoted cost of completing this project, while increasing to in excess of $500,000, represented a 70% savings to participating counties and municipalities at $77 per square mile. The savings achieved were in effect larger than the residual cost of completing Phase I, while simultaneously increasing the mapping specifications by 100%.
In reality, in 1995 and for a variety of reasons only six of the eleven Counties ultimately proceeded together to begin, simultaneously and independently, their GIS deployments. Through regional coordination a spring of 1995 Aerial Photography Mission was secured from the same private sector contractor. Its final cost was just over $300,000 for an area in excess of 3700 square miles. The actual per square mile cost for Phase I was $82. A 67% savings had been secured for each participating county, by each participating county, with the mapping specifications still increased by 100% to support 1-inch equals 200 feet.
©2001 PAGIS