In the News

GeoMap 2012 Has Largest LIDAR Project in Years

Thursday, January 19, 2012

The Geospatial Base Mapping (GeoMap) Project coordinates cooperative purchasing of geospatial products, garnering discounts based on volume, splitting costs among entities with overlapping areas of interest, and reducing duplicative efforts across the region.  GeoMap has seen great growth for the 2012 cycle, with nineteen participants cooperatively purchasing aerial imagery and LiDAR (Light Distance and Ranging).

Regional participants have come together for the acquisition of six-inch and twelve-inch aerial imagery for Williamson, Travis, Hays, and Caldwell counties, and the cities of Marble Falls and La Grange.  Travis County garnered deep savings with the cooperation of Travis Central Appraisal District, reducing the cost for participants within Travis County by fifty percent or more.  

We look forward to more cooperation among our regions appraisal districts in the future to better leverage tax payers’ dollars, and reduce the duplicative efforts that often occur.  The total cost of the aerial imagery portion of GeoMap 2012 is $415,410.  The cooperative effort has brought about an estimated savings of $1,402,500 to participating entities and tax payers.  This imagery has numerous applications such as maintaining local and regional base maps, disaster preparedness, 9-1-1 addressing and dispatch, growth assessments, and infrastructure management.

GeoMap 2012 has embarked on the largest LiDAR project in years.  The cities of Austin and Round Rock, and Travis County, have a combined LiDAR area of 1,200 square miles of high density LiDAR.  This product, which is a point cloud of data with horizontal and elevation attributes, is used for a myriad of analyses such as floodplain modeling, creating building footprints, taking inventory of bridges and culverts, generating engineering-grade two-foot contours for surveying, and measuring tree canopy area and heights.  The LiDAR project has benefitted from the GeoMap cost savings by reducing the number of airplane mobilization fees, flight planning and control costs. The total project value is $510,000.

As of January 19th, 85% of the aerial imagery and 27% of the LiDAR have been acquired.  Once the acquisitions are complete, the data will be processed and regional GIS analysts will review the data for quality control.  The final product will be available in the summer of 2012.  For questions regarding GeoMap please contact Eddie O’Connor.