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GIS/Survey/Mapping/Floodplain
Mission
To maintain, perpetuate, and interpret land information for the citizens of Rio Blanco County in order to promote public welfare, provide mapping services, and house public spatial data.
Services
The Geographic Information System (GIS) Department provides support services to Rio Blanco County Departments in the following areas:- Application Development
- Data Acquisition
- Dataset development
- Geographic Analysis
- Map Production
What Is GIS?
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a map produced from the Rio Blanco County Geographic Information System (GIS) is worth a library of text. The best way to describe a GIS is to compare it to a multi-layered cake. Each layer of a multi-layered cake represents a specific flavor. In the same way, each layer of data in a GIS, often referred to as a dataset, represents a specific type of information. As the layers of a cake get stacked up, the cake becomes more flavorful. Likewise, as the layers in a GIS are stacked up, the GIS becomes more informative.For example, let’s build a GIS containing 3 layers of information; soil type data, parcel data and road data. Our bottom layer of data will be soil type data, the second, or middle layer is the parcel data and the top or third layer is the road data. We “cut” out a slice of our GIS to reveal the information contained within each layer and how the layers are related to one another. If you study the “slice” you see all the layers, and that a specific parcel has a specific road on top of it, and the parcel and road together are built upon a specific soil type. With that, our library has been built.