GIS technology is increasingly being used by local governments across the United States, but each community captures different information and at different scales. The National Recreation and Parks Association (NRPA), a non-profit organization dedicated to the advancement of public parks and recreation opportunities, is developing a GIS data model for parks, trails and recreation facilities in an effort to standardize these types of GIS data. The purpose of this project is to have local governments collect consistent information in their GIS systems allowing for better local, regional and statewide management and planning of park and recreation resources.
Assisting the project is a consulting team consisting of Applied Geographics and the non-profit GreenInfo Network. Both consultants have extensive experience in GIS and its application to park and open space databases.
What has been done so far? >>The project began in early 2008. An advisory committee comprised of NRPA members, allied organizations and stakeholders was selected to guide this project and facilitate a broad national review. A task force developed the criteria, attributes and values that would be the basis for the proposed standard. Once the task force finalized the list of attributes and values, this information was put into a GIS data model.
This data model was then made available for testing. Using an online survey and email, we collected feedback and comments which have been incorporated into the standard.
An updated version of the data model was made available for download with changes and fixes which included addition of metadata, domains applied to all subtypes in the Facility_Point feature class and the addition of "School" as a domain value to "Landowner Agency Type" domain.
We are now developing the GIS portion of PRORAGIS – a web based application for benchmarking and GIS. You can login to PRORAGIS via your NRPA login information and once on the GIS tab you can search, create, upload and perform analysis.
For uploading to PRORAGIS you will need to convert your existing data (which should be in the NRPA data model) from a personal geodatabase to a file geodatabase – please go to the Download page to access the new file geodatabase GIS data models and how-to documents. We have included a document which will walk you through the conversion.
Beta testing of PRORAGIS – NRPA's web based application for benchmarking and GIS. Sign up for updates on PRORAGIS.
| Home | About | Download | Contact Us |
|