Rural Communities Receive GIS Support

Thursday, 23 June 2011 07:22

Buckeye Hills-Hocking Valley Regional Development District has announced that the communities of Pomeroy and Middleport ( Meigs County), Albany ( Athens County) and Somerset ( Perry County) have each been selected to participate in the bhgis data collection program for small communities in 2011.

The new community-based Geographic Information Systems (GIS) program from Buckeye Hills will offer basic data collection and GIS mapping services to communities of less than 5,000 in its region. Buckeye Hills has been providing digital mapping (GIS) services to its eight-county region since the mid-1990s. Customized maps and data created by Buckeye Hills have been used to complete funding applications, studies and countless other projects. In this program, each community's municipal water, sewer and storm sewer resources will be mapped.

"This program grant will provide smaller communities across the region access to critical GIS services," said Buckeye Hills Executive Director Misty Casto. "Many smaller towns have to rely on antique maps stored in tubes or the memories of key municipal or county staff as the resource for critical details of water, sewer, storm sewer, or other local utility data. We want to assist them with a technology-based, user-friendly system for future use and prosperity."

This high accuracy local data is becoming increasingly critical to a community's ability to secure grant funding from most state and federal programs. Potential business and industry site selectors are seeking this type of data as well.

Supporting the bhgis program are GIS Program Manager Bret Allphin and Jason Pyles. Pyles recently joined Buckeye Hills following graduation from The Ohio State University with a degree in Geography and a specialization in Geographic Information Systems.

Learn more at www.bhgis.org or call 740-374-9436.