California Surveyors Forums

At the County of Humboldt we are in the process of updating our map index and looking at ways to bring it live to the web. Much thought is being given to the future and how to deliver the map data to surveyors and the public. Please take the poll and in addition please comment as to which county in California you think has the best map index system or application.

It is really nice to be able to do all three of the electronic choices.
Geographically on GIS base with ability to look up a whole section or volume of maps.

I don't think it is hard to set it up that way.

LA County, for me, is the best/easiest system to use. Purple dots on the map are Field Book pages, Red Triangles are Corner Records, Green shapes are RS maps, Purple shapes are Final Maps (Tract Maps) and Blue shapes are Parcel Maps. Benchmarks are also shown graphically. You can turn any of the layers on or off. The option to drive and explore the records should always be available though.

Our records are compiled in MS ACCESS and indexed by parcel numbers. As soon as the data is created the GIS map populates.

The attached is an example. If you hit the job number, everything can be retrieved. I use different colors as needed. The data is stored and compiled in ACCESS.

Ron,

I agree with Ryan. Both the County and City of Los Angeles, together with Orange County and San Francisco have excellent websites for research, as befits agencies with many resources.

We are transitioning from an older database to one with a more robust engine for searches - LaserFiche. I believe Contra Costa County is using this as well. The current data is being transferred and is designed to be used with various parcel underlays, such as ESRI. Our survey layers will work with the other departments' by means of the checkbox option as required.

San Mateo County's research GIS is great:
http://gis.co.sanmateo.ca.us/CountyMap/

you can view coverage of CR, ROS, Subdivision maps, graphically, or type in an address or APN and zoom there, or see a list of records.

I think Contra Costa County PW indexes using Acrobat to mark map & CR as "comments" on Assessor's Maps. Works, but not automated.

Alameda County uses the stone age system. Something about the evil web or some such thing.

form previous post by Christopher:

http://publicworks.smcgov.org/surveying ... p-checking

I really like the San Mateo survey marker index since we are talking GIS services but I realize it is not necessarily in the same thread as a Survey Map index . Dave Ryan had mentioned that survey marker GIS database a few times as an idea and we had discussed it with Jerry Von Dohlen but I guess no funding ever materialized. It's exciting to hear this is in development Ron, thank you for your efforts!!

Ron,
I applaud you for getting input from the surveying community prior to revising your system. I like the GIS interface for this type of data. I also like having a non-graphical means of querying the data base for some cases. If you can do both, it would be ideal.

Check out Riverside County's "My Survey Research"

I already shared this with Ron, but I also want to share this with the people performing research in the County of Riverside.

Here is our story on how we developed a web mapping application using Esri technology. I also just recently had an article published in the Fall issue of ArcUser titled “Land Records Search Simplified”. We are using a combination of Laserfiche, ArcGIS, ArcGIS for server, and ArcGIS Online to share our web mapping applications to the public.

Take a look at the article and I would be happy to answer any questions that you may have.

Article Link

http://www.esri.com/~/media/Files/Pdfs/ ... ll-2015.pd

My Survey Research Web Mapping Application

http://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id ... 65378c6544


Thanks,
Dave

Warren,

Are filed maps available online for San Joaquin County? Thanks.

- Anthony Maffia, LSIT

Anthony,

Yes they are. Corner records as well (you will have to expand the layers box to the left).

http://arcg.is/1JRMoNF

{edit - I should point out that the outline of the maps are highlighted as you cycle through the popup list after zooming to your area of interest and clicking. When you want to view a map, click on the "Questys" logo, then click on the red "book" in the next dialogue box. We are transitioning to LaserFiche, so that logo will change soon.}

Los Angeles County's Land Records website is worth a look as well.

http://dpw.lacounty.gov/sur/landrecords ... docType=TM

Mike

Thanks for your post. I am new to GIS and am starting to build a GIS interface to my project files. I am using qGIS, but your ArcMap/AecView screen shot is beneficial in achieving my desired outcome.

We have a very good system for organizing everything. In addition to job indexing, we have internal links as well as many layers to see what is happening around the property.

Here is another snapshot. You click the parcel and the job data shows up. You need to enter the data first and then GIS does the magic. The trick is to load as much information as you can into the database. As soon as we get a job in, the first thing that is done is it is entered in ACCESS. We can instantly see if we have a nearby project, control, research, etc. It saves a lot of time and we don't end up with conflicting procedures hopefully.

I brought this to the top because I believe that this poll is important. Spreadsheets make terrible tools for searching an area for existing survey info. The graphical indices are so much better. Please respond to the poll. I didn't start it, but I believe that it might help a county surveyor decide when they have to make a choice as to which way they want to index the record maps of their county.

GIS works if it's complete and reasonably intuitive. The L.A. site is really good. I think some of the very old stuff is not in there although the maps are available on their site via book/page type link.

The San Joaquin site is very good too. It requires the latest version of Internet Explorer and Java. Once I updated those, it worked great. The only downside of that is it doesn't work on my iPad. The L.A. site works on my iPad.

San Francisco is mostly link based, there is some search capability on the newer maps. The old materials are not indexed so you have to know what the citation is to get it or just browse which would take a long time. But there may be a better way, I'm just not very familiar with their system. It's unique, unlike the rest of the State. My iPad doesn't like their multi page tiff files.

I have Mendocino on disk and their Access table which is okay. They also have index cards at the CS research room.

Kern has Index maps online so stuff is findable that way.

I like L.A. best, it's friendly to my iPad.

Most of my searching is connected to reading case law, looking for maps that might be connected to the litigation.

Except Mendocino, I'm actually doing work there. Other Counties I work in don't have online capability, actually Mendocino doesn't either, I have their maps on disk.

Being based in a county (Yolo) with *no* maps online, I'm appreciative of any county that offers maps on its website. Since Dave didn't mention it: Solano County has all of its maps available online at no charge. Although there's no graphical interface of which I'm aware, at least you can get the maps you need without having to drive to the Recorder's office. I often have to do that because while the commercial sites ($$$) have copies of most Yolo County maps, only the newer ones are reliably legible.

Thank you everyone for you input!