Online mapping of road home properties

Community mapping advocates provide ‘free’ online mapping tool to view New Orleans Road Home properties. The New Orleans Neighborhood Analysis Project (NONAP) volunteer technology team has created an online database of Road Home properties using the Flickr image repository and MapBuilder for online mapping.

“NONAP” was created to provide tools, resources and training for community collaboration and to support the active recovery of New Orleans, LA. Current and former residents have requested a freely accessible website that allows the community to view the location and obtain the grant funding level of Road Home properties. The Louisiana Recovery Authority publishes the location of grants approved at the zip code level, the City of New Orleans website provides street and parcel data but these cannot readily be tied to the Orleans Assessing Office single address downloadable FY’07 property values. The New Orleans Community Information System (NOcis) information portal integrates this information within geo-referenced websites along with current images of the properties.

With the help of student, community and university volunteers, many Road Home Option 2 and 3 property images were obtained during the ‘Alternative Fall Break’ October 19-21, 2007 neighbourhood survey. While each property address was verified using hand-held GPS units, the current property valuation assessment was downloaded manually and integrated within the virtual shared data management system. After participating in the UNOP recovery planning process, Dr. Michelle M. Thompson, Visiting Scholar in the Department of City & Regional Planning at Cornell University, created ‘NONAP’ in December 2006. Since then, local and national volunteers have provided GIS resources and many pro bono hours to bring NOcis to life. NONAP Technology interns Darin Acosta (University of New Orleans) and Yang Gu (Cornell University) have been instrumental in creating both the MapBuilder and Platial websites while developing and maintaining the virtual database.

Hands-on practice creating a similar online mapping resource will be available at the ‘NONAP NeoGeography Workshop’ that will be held at the University of New Orleans on February 22, 2008. The community-university data collection image project for the 1,700 City of New Orleans’ tear down’ properties will be previewed at this workshop. Additional Road Home and ‘Project 1700’ images will be collected during the ‘Alternative Spring Break’ slated for March 17-20, 2008.

Source : http://courses.cit.cornell.edu/nonap/