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Oklahoma County Deploys GIS Flood Map

Tulsa County citizens check for flood plains using new Web tool.

Viewing flood plain data no longer requires a car ride downtown for residents and businesses in Tulsa County, Okla., thanks to the municipality's GIS Flood Map. Tulsa County CIO Tom Trimble partially credits the project for the award his county won at the Center for Digital Government's Digital Counties Survey awards ceremony in July 2009.

"We have layers and layers of data -- roads, railroads, traffic patterns, and then the flood plains are overlaid onto that. If a property owner or business owner wants to know if his or her business could be located in a possible flood area, or if a lending institution wants to know if an area is in a flooding area, they can check online and very quickly turn on and off the layers they want to see to view exactly what they want to find," explained Trimble.

He said the application was simple to operate.

"It's a simple checkbox that pretty much anybody could operate. My grandmother could operate it," Trimble said.

Before the tool's deployment, citizens had to meet with county inspectors and view maps at the assessor's office located in the Tulsa County Courthouse.

"Most people can't do it in a day. It's a several hours to even a half-day visit, so being able to do it online gets them to the information almost immediately," Trimble said.

The GIS Flood Map proved especially popular among local businesses that relied on flood plain data. Companies that paid employees to spend most of their time traveling downtown for property research have redeployed those workers to more useful tasks, said Trimble.

Tulsa County Courthouse employees showed productivity increases as well with fewer citizens arriving in-person for services.

"We're seeing a reduction in the turnaround for productivity in other areas we hadn't even considered prior to the project," Trimble said.

 

Andy Opsahl is a former staff writer and features editor for Government Technology magazine.