counties

Making the GIS case to county registries is a fascinating exercise, to be sure. Given the facts on paper, it should be a slam dunk: reams of location-specific data in the form of deeds and registered surveys and easements and all manner of other documents; much of this content already scanned to high quality digital formats; and no existing geospatial linkages permitting this content to be queried and accessed from the GIS context.

So what to do? Obvious! Geotag these scanned documents with an x,y reference that makes it easy to expose them to geographic searches.

And yet... Maybe not so obvious. The registers themselves are admirably dedicated to the serioiusness of the job, which is protecting and maintaining the integrity of vital documents. Any technology or procedural change that threatens this process is rightfully suspect. So the concept of potentially contaminating documents with shoddy geographic referencing is no easy sell to make.

It warrants serious consideration though. As information technology increases access to public records, whole new categories of opportunites tend to arise. It would be rewarding to see the County Registries benefit from these opportunities.

enforced inefficiency

Even if plenty of resources are available to implement a statewide digital land records system; even if a seamless, fault tolerant, all inclusive technical plan is created and implemented; even if all data from all registries and municipalities throughout Maine could be marshalled into a database that allowed querying on any aspect of any parcel and its attributes - even then, the privacy issue would stand in the way.

As I spent some time this week on dirt camp roads and woods paths I wondered a lot about the benefits of not always having access to the straightest line or the widest road to get where one is going. If I do not need to spend time in a town office or deeds registry, to show my face or get to know local officials in the process of prospecting for property or investigating land, I free up resources that I and others would spend searching. So there is an efficiency gain. But is some interaction that may be beneficial from the local perspective, some check and balance of personal introduction and exposure to those keeping the records - is some element of this necessary to protect the land?

mma tech + land records

The planning team presented the project to a large and engaged crowd at the Maine Municipal Association Technology Conference on March 18. The Integrated Land Records System slides from that presentation are avaialble below:

| View |

public + accessible, circa 1980

In 1980 the National Research Council published a study titled "Need for a Multipurpose Cadastre." Many important studies on the topic have been produced since this one, but it stands as a kind of ur-document for multijurisdictional, large area cadastral planning in this country. From this study, a critical quote:

“The land-transfer process in North America is founded on the principle of publicity, the concept that all information relating to the nature and extent of interests vesting in a legal parcel of land must be available for public inspection” (NRC, 1980, p. 9).

This is by no means universally understood to be true here in America and Maine.

business drivers: STATE AGENCIES

A quick review of state agencies reveals many potential beneficiaries of an accessible, uniform statewide parcels resource. Here are the obvious ones:

Department of Agriculture | Atlantic Salmon Commission | Coastal Program | Department of Conservation | Drinking Water Program | Department of Economic + Community Development | Department of Education | Emergency Management Agency | Energy Resources Council | Department of Environmental Protection | Maine Forest Service | Maine Geological Survey | Governor's Office | Maine Center for Disease Control | Health + Human Services Department | Historic Preservation Commission | Homeland Security | Infectious Diseases Division | Department of Inland Fisheries + Wildlife | Bureau of Insurance | Bureau of Land + Water Quality | Land Use Regulation Commission | Department of Marine Resources | Natural Areas Program | Bureau of Parks and Lands | State Planning Office | State Police | Office of Policy and Legal Analysis | Public Utilities Commission | Maine Revenue Services | State Treasurer | Surplus Property | Department of Transportation | Unorganized Territory, Fiscal Administrator | Warden Services | Waste Management + Recycling

Click through the slides below for agency-specific examples:

ILRIS: name change?

The Integrated Land Records Information System (ILRIS) is one of the two components of the Maine Strategic Plan. It has been suggested that this acronym may not be the best way to represent the project as discussions unfold around the state.

Since a large part of this initiative will involve developing organizational and political support, perhaps it would be a good idea to attach a more pleasant and (and memorable ) name. Something that suggests geographic collaboration maybe.

It's easy to waste a lot of time pondering the perfect acronym, but what about the MAP Collaborative?

The acronym part of this, MAP, could be Maine (A*) Parcel Collaborative, where the A* could stand for any or all of:

Active | Addressable | Administrative | Advanced | Affiliated | Aggregated | Analyzable | Annexed | Allied | Applied | Assessing | Associated | Automated

For this undertaking to succeed, there will need to be genuine collaboration. The objective is a map, and all of the other A* stuff can just get bundled in there.

Thoughts?

project kickoff

The project: A Strategic and Business Plan Development in Support of the NSDI Future Directions Fifty States Initiative & Property Boundary Data Capture and Integration Framework was awarded on January 16 and kicked off in Augusta last week.

The Sewall Team (Bruce Oswald, Rich Sutton) presented an overview to the Board and solicited some high level input regarding schedule, strategy and tactics. Most discussion revolved around the land records component (presently ILRIS, but anticipating a possible name change shortly).

Some other, smaller meetings were held as well, including one with the State CIO, Dick Thompson, and with a subset of the GeoLibrary Board's project team, including Greg Copeland, Bill Hanson, Marilyn Lutz and Dan Walters.

mapping events + activities: MMA

The Maine Municipal Association provides a wide array of services for promoting and strengthening local government. Every week MMA gathers up pertinent news items and posts them in their Municipalities and People in the News list. Since these items range far and wide across the state (and in the interest of geo-enabling valuable, current data, these can be viewed on a map here. That map is a big version of this:



go here for more user friendly version

registries according to law

Title 33, Chapter 11, Sections 601-752: What the Maine Legislature has decreed about Registries of Deeds in the State.

county registry records through a browser

This is a map of the vendors currently serving Maine county deeds registries to deliver documents via the internet:

A larger (printable PDF) version is available here.
Access individual Registry sites here.

ILRIS: benefits to current intiatives

Some of the most dramatic land-centric planning processes in Maine today - the Brunswick Naval Air Station realignment, Gateway1, the LURC Moosehead Lake Concept Plan - are proceeding without a current, public and accessible parcel basemap to guide them. In planning exercises where significant land issues are at stake, future scenarios can't seriously be considered in the absence of an accurate common operating picture of existing conditions. Built features, hydrography, transportation, demographics - all of these are certain to be considered. But public consideration of future division and fragmentation of property ownership should also be part of these discussions.

Increase, reduction and changing configuration of Maine's 720,000 property parcels are vital metrics for metering and modulating the future character of this State. It is important that we understand them properly.

ILRIS: surveyor benefits

Land surveyors are the last word in accuracy where geospatial geometry is concerned. Metes and bounds information - dimensions of property boundaries measured to sub-inch increments - is essential for conveyance of property. But most GIS applications do not require data of this accuracy.

Much of the benefit of a statewide, dynamic cadastral datalayer will accrue at planning scales, where land can be quantified, symbolized and characterized at the parcel level.

But this shouldn't be taken to mean that surveyors do not have a role in a statewide integrated land records information system. The composite of surveys should be available as a kind of reference frame for orienting the far inferior quality of planning level parcel data. The coverage of this layer would be extremely spotty to be sure, but over time it would begin to fill itself in and help to sew the overall fabric together.

If only this simple improvement were made - if all registered surveys were anchored to Maine's UTM Zone 19 NAD83 meters coordinate system and made readily available as a public, transparent and accessible resoource - the ILRIS exercise could be considered successful.

ILRIS: introduction and goals

An Integrated Land Records Information System (ILRIS) is anticipated to provide accurate and current data describing the pattern of land ownership across the State of Maine. Imagine this as a huge map showing parcel lines as they currently exist and changes that have recently occurred.

In a perfect world, with perfect information, it would be possible to scroll backward and forward through time and observe the changes over this map. Such an animation might begin by showing the entire area of Maine (in the 1600's) with only the original grant lines imposed on it. As the timeline moved forward, these original tracts would fracture into the increasingly complex and intricate pattern of the more than 700,000 parcels comprising the state today.

Of course, information is not perfect. Not even close. And even if a statewide composite existed for current parcel status it would require enormous time and resources to reconstruct the past 400 years of changes.

The thing is, while the 400-year animation is an unrealistic goal given present data and resources, the current statewide composite is well within the realm of the attainable. The technology for producing, storing and delivering such a system has become almost unimaginably cheaper and more accessible than it was even a decade ago. Many municipalities throughout the state have grown their own parcel composites from the ground up. All that is really necessary is a will to proceed and a willingness to collaborate.

some maine parcel history (2)

In the interest of tracing a deed, some more on the early parcelization of land along the Kennebec River:

On January 13, 1629, the Kennebec or Plymouth Patent was granted to new Plymouth. It was from the old Plymouth colony to William Bradford and his associates as follows;

The said Council further granted and assigned unto the said William Bradford, his Heirs, Associates and Assigns, All that Track of Land or part of New England in America, aforesaid, which lyeth within or between and extendeth itself between the utmost limits of Cobbiseconte, alias Comaseconte, which adjoineth to the river of Kennebeck, alias Kennebekike, towards the western ocean, and a place called the Falls at Neguamkike, in America aforesaid, and the space of fifteen English miles on each side of the said river commonly called the Kennebeck river, and all the said river called Kennebeck, that lies within the said limits."
(Deed. Statement of Kennebec Claim, etc.)

There's another map at the Maine Historical Commission that describes this huge parcel grant. It looks like this (area in the green parallel lines (centered on the Kennebec) on the map's right side)):


If you want to see how some of these data fit on a current satellite/road map, click here.

some maine parcel history (1)

The complex history of Maine's property mosaic reaches back almost 400 years. Of course there are no lines on the map before French and English settlement in the early 1600s, but a lot of interesting stuff happened quickly after that. From Dividing the Land:

Important parts of Maine were covered by a number of early land grants. One of the most comprehensive of these was the royal grant to Ferdinando Gorges in 1639, finally sold by his heirs to the Massachusetts Bay colony in 1677. Maine remained under the jurisdiction of Massachusetts until 1820. Before the Gorges grant, however, the Council for New England had made more than two dozen grants that together embraced the whole coast of Maine as far east as the Penobscot River and extended varying distances inland.

One of these two dozen grants was to the Kennebeck Company in 1630 by the Plymouth Colony, extending along both sides of the Kennebec River upstream to the falls at Skowhegan. The original strategy of the grant was as a base for trade in furs and other commodities with Indians. When the grant was revived and the proprietors incorporated in 1749, they began promoting settlement. One hundred acres were offered each settler as underpinning for the efforts to recruit groups in Europe, and land was broken out in longlots with frontage on the river and extending east or west in perpendicular parcels. By the early 1760s the company had settled at least eleven townships.

An overview of this original grant area (1719):


A great collection of associated maps is available at the Maine Historical Society Memory Network.