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FirmhandKY -> RE: Advice needed street address (12/21/2006 5:58:02 PM)
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GIS stands for Geographical Information Systems.
What they are likely doing is not only assigning different street addresses, they are taking GPS reading of all the street, fire hydrants, and other public service things for combination into a single county or city wide computer database.
A full GIS system can be a database of any information related to locations: tax records, water and electric facilities locations (including individual poles and transformers, water switches and mains), real estate and sub-division plats, economic activity (where all business are located by type), population overlays, radio system locations and coverage, terrain contours, stream locations, water type and depth, locations of crimes, and the value of property ... the list is endless ... all tied down and located with precise GPS locations.
While some cities, counties and states have complete systems, many do not, and there has been a Federal Government program to encourage and implement such systems for about 10 years.
Often the E911 center, as it upgrades, especially for geo-location of cell phones, usually has to pay to have consultants go out and do physical GPS location reading of all the roads and such, and that becomes the core of the database.
Another interesting thing is that there is no "standard" to assign an "official" address for a house in most places, although it is becoming more common as 911 systems have been implemented throughout the US.
Because of legal issues, the US Postal Service has refused to be the entity to assign an address (which is why, when a E911 center is implemented, they often change Rural Route addresses to something else). The phone company won't assign an address, and if you've ever tried to get phone service somewhere, they'll often refuse to install it until you've received and "official E911" address from the city, county or other designated government agency. The phone company's official database, relating addresses to phone numbers, is the one that gets displayed at a 911 center, but the phone company doesn't want to be responsible for any legal issues of a "wrong address", either.
In the past, a private contractor would build a road in a sub-division or a house along a road, and just give the road a name, and a house a number, and the city would accept that. The result was a lot of duplicative street names, and house numbers that didn't make any sense, and emergency services personnel would get confused, or lost.
If it was a life or death situation, and the ambulance, for example, took an extra half hour to get across town to the "correct" Smith Avenue from the Smith Street that they actually went to - and someone died - lawsuit.
There's some pretty neat stuff you can do with a GIS system. If you ever get a chance to see, or play with one, I'd highly recommend it.
FirmKY
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