Minutes of the 53rd Quarterly Salt Lake GIS Users Group (SLUG) meeting, held on March 15, 2023, from 10:30 am to 12:30 pm at the Utah Geospatial Resource Center (UGRC) - Taylorsville State Office Building (4315 S 2700 W, Taylorsville, UT 84129). There were about 45 people in attendance today.
Business
Zlatko Grebenar, SLUG Board
Welcome to SLUG’s 53rd meeting! We would like to thank the UGRC for hosting us and for providing lunch.
Greg Bunce, UGRC
We’re at a new location, welcome! The food options should come around 11:00 AM including gluten-free options. Thanks to the State of Utah Government Ops for ordering the food. We have to be out of this room at 12:30 sharp! The UGIC Conference registration is open – conference is May 8-12. UGIC is looking for presentations and vendors. The pre-conference trainings are good this year.
Presentations
Erik Neemann and Greg Bunce – Utah Geospatial Resource Center (UGRC)
Collaborative Trailheads – Maintaining SGID Data in OpenStreetMap
The AGRC changed to the UGRC as most of us know and they moved from the Capitol building to the Taylorsville State Office Building. A building by the Capitol was demolished and by 2026, the North Capitol Project should be completed. SGID (State Geographic Information Datasource) is authoritative data. These data help the framework of the State of Utah with over 100 layers. It’s not just that but there are also open datasets like OpenStreetMap (OSM). The Trailheads Project is a collaborative venture to help catalog all trailheads in Utah. It's a high-profile dataset (trails) and they’re looking for collaborators to put in point data. This dataset moved from the SGID to OSM so open collaboration could happen. To participate, you need an OSM account (free). Do the tutorial to get familiar with it. Map roulette can help with leveraging the trailheads project. When you put in a point from map roulette, you can choose to have someone review your edits if you want. After trailheads, if successful, they want to move to other resources. UGRC doesn’t have the resources to update all these open datasets every year so they hope to rely on outside participation.
Q: Does OSM data become the source for other data providers?
A. Some companies do use this and integrate into their datasets. Martijn van Exel said yes. Companies like Meta, Microsoft, TomTom, etc
Q. After trailheads, what else would be mapped?
A. Golf courses, fire stations, libraries, open spaces, and ski lifts.
Q. Is there a process within the UGRC for people to report issues and resolve them?
A. Reach out to them. But short answer is no. App called chalk dust works but they're looking at other avenues to approach this.
Q. How to participate in map roulette if not a local expert?
A. Pull up trail guides of places like a national park or local imagery. But it is highly encouraged to be a local expert.
Ben Teran and Ryan Tiu - Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT), Right of Way Division
UDOT buys land to put in roads. They are using GIS to track this. They have a property inventory system that uses UPlan. A new thing is property rights and water rights together. There are 48k parcels in inventory. UDOT gets about 400 to 600 parcels each year. Around 50 to 100 parcels sold each year as surplus. They add parcels by using COGO (coordinate geometry), georeferencing plan sheets, and digital delivery (which is how all new projects will be handled). Some consultants help draw in referenced files. This web app builder map for ROW has many layers that help with decision making and referencing. Ryan Tiu went through a demonstration of COGO. PLSS is the public land survey system and breaks land down into townships, ranges, sections, etc. We got to see, step by step, in how to COGO one deed in Utah County.
Q. How many total plan sheets are in the right-of-way mosaic?
A. Not sure.
Q. What happens with the water rights UDOT has?
A. Often times they come with the property. They keep track of them all, so they don't lose them (especially since they're worth money).
GIS Humor
Zlatko Grebenar - SLUG Board
Thank you to our presenters, host, and sponsor and for joining us in person. If you have any ideas for a presentation or any other matter, please contact a SLUG board member. We welcome short or long presentations on any projects that you might be working on that might benefit others. We appreciate your interest and support!
Check out our website for updates, contact info, or to sign up for our newsletter to get job announcements and SLUG meeting announcement emails. We are hoping to have our next meeting in May, after the UGIC Conference.