Residents invited to learn how public data portal can benefit them
(Seguin) – The city of Seguin is giving its residents the chance to learn how to personally benefit from one of its newest online tools designed to make living in Seguin that much easier. The city on Wednesday will be celebrating GIS Day. Anyone in the community is invited to stop by the library in the early afternoon to learn more.
Jennifer Sourdellia, the public information officer for the city of Seguin, says GIS is one of the newest portals available on the city’s website that puts interactive mapping information into the hands of residents, developers and others.
“GIS stands for Geographic Information Systems and more specifically, it is essentially a software program that functions as a specialized tool for managing, visualizing and analyzing geospatial or location-based data on the earth’s surface. It has a very close relationship to photography or mapping,” said Sourdellia.
In its launching of the GIS department, the city described the public portal as a way to expand the transparency and public access to a wide range of data – data that is beneficial to each citizen.
Leading the GIS Day celebration at the library will be the city’s GIS Manager Travis Acklin. Sourdellia says Acklin will illustrate how citizens can quickly retrieve key information about their area or specific residence such as their council member, zoning area, garbage day, recycling day, brush days and much much more.
“We are going to be celebrating it right here in Seguin at our Seguin Public Library. Our own GIS manager is going to be hosting this event from 1 to 3 p.m. for the public and those attending will be able to learn all about how GIS is important to our city and to our residents and he will also be doing a demonstration of the GIS open data portal that is available on our website so essentially, this is just an educational event and it’s totally free and it’s open to anyone to come and learn all about GIS and how it benefits our citizens,” said Sourdellia.
Maps currently featured on this one application include the City Limits Map, Zoning District Map, Council Districts Map, Floodplain Map, Thoroughfare Map, City Parks’ Trail Maps plus more.
Following the demonstration, a Q & A session will be held to wrap up the event.