Bob Wills, Senior GIS Project Coordinator, Dutchess County Department of Planning and Development has been a mainstay with the Dutchess County GIS program for over twenty years and involved in many Lower Hudson River Valley geospatial projects. Widely recognized across the state, Dutchess County GIS exemplifies a federated style of GIS development across the enterprise by supporting and building GIS capacity in different program areas. While the geospatial concepts are very similar, though very different, Bob came into the GIS space with an architectural background. He is a Registered Architect in the State of New York and board Certified by the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB). I recently caught up with him to talk about the Dutchess County GIS program, it”s history, and current efforts.
eSpatiallyNewYork: You came into GIS at the County from a much different angle than most of us. Tell us how you got here doing GIS for Dutchess County
Wills: I came to the area in 1985 from Chicago. As a licensed architect in New York and Illinois, I began teaching architecture at Dutchess Community College (DCC) in 1989, while maintaining a small private practice. Part of my responsibilities at DCC was running the computer-aided design laboratories. It was at DCC that Dean of Academic Affairs Mary Louise Van Winkle suggested I look into “something called GIS” – a conversation which ended up changing my life.
Having had some experience with land development and planning, the idea of drawing polygons on the computer, and having all this information attached to the polygons was absolutely inspirational. Ian McHarg came to mind. I taught a couple of GIS classes at DCC and also at SUNY New Paltz. I thought the environment and student body at the community college level was the perfect place to develop budding GIS technologists. It was through teaching that I got to go to my first ESRI user conference in 1995, as well as an appointment on the Dutchess County GIS Executive Committee (now the GIS Project Workgroup), which I still hold to this day.
Sadly, our enrollment dropped precipitously due to the massive IBM layoffs in the early 90s, and I was out of a job. Luckily however, I found out about a grant that the New York City Department of Environmental Protection was giving to Dutchess County Real Property Tax to establish a GIS for tax parcels within the Croton watershed. That began my career at Dutchess County in 1996.
Having said all that, I consider myself firmly in the analysis/promotion/aesthetics side of things; I am not a programmer. At the time I started, there was a place for someone to be an internal “consultant” to get the ball rolling in as many ways as possible, and I took on that role.
So, let me thank upfront our GIS program office (at our Office of Central and Information Services), and the many people here who have (and do) make our GIS what it is.
eSpatiallyNewYork: What’s GIS development been like in Dutchess County outside of County government i.e., local/municipal, nonprofit, business?
Wills: For the public, having a map in front of them at all times, on any device that they might be looking at, is just the way things are done these days. This familiarity has generated more interest in what we do, although not in a bottom-up fashion. We still are the ones that put out the tools we figure are needed. Municipal development has happened piecemeal in a couple of towns, but most rely on our web-based tools and the interface town assessors have with the RPS system and our ParcelAccess tool. What we have seen is many surveyors and engineers requesting custom clips of data which they are using in their proposals. We have also seen similar requests from our land trusts (which have all embraced GIS). This has led me to propose that the high quality and objectively defined data we have created become the standard by which municipalities can review development proposals in a more rational and objective (and speedy!) fashion.
Municipalities at times need more robust connectivity to the County GIS infrastructure. Through specialized software and agreements with the County, municipalities have the ability to connect via a Virtual Private Network (VPN) and have access to GIS data and other resources.
eSpatiallyNewYork: You’re responsible for covering some broad program areas within County Government: Behavioral & Community Health and Planning & Development. What are some of the priorities in these areas in 2018 and beyond?
Wills: It was because of a study funded by a New York State Archives and Records Administration Grant in 1999 that set the direction of GIS in Dutchess County. This direction was to keep a distributed focus where specialized knowledge existed and then to have overarching programmatic assistance from our computer folks. Collaboration and breaking down silos was another emphasis. It was because of this that I proposed combined management of GIS for both the planning and health departments. It was the first time in County government that an arrangement like this was formulated. It is been a resounding success as illustrated in our work on Lyme disease, water and wastewater, public health and emergency preparedness, and our Healthy Communities Trails Website. Further, it has influenced our Centers and Greenspaces Planning Principles, which emphasizes walkable transit-oriented hamlets and crossroad communities, while preserving green space.
eSpatiallyNewYork: You mentioned the The Cary Institute is discussing with the County to study on water quality (specifically impacts of pharmaceuticals) in Hudson River watersheds including those in Dutchess County. What’s this about?
Wills: Our work with the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies is an outgrowth of our blended efforts of planning and health. We have been working with Dr. Richard Ostfeld at Cary since 2003, on the relationship between Lyme disease, forests, and land development practices, and Dr. Stuart Findlay on our Natural Resources Inventory, and water issues. Currently, scientists at Cary are considering a watershed-based approach to analysis, inspired by Dr. Emma Rosi, whose focus is pharmaceuticals and personal care products in our streams and water bodies. The small stream catchment areas that we developed from our 5-foot terrain model allows focus of analysis and study in very specific areas instead of large watersheds in their entirety.
eSpatiallyNewYork: Dutchess County is well into 20+ years of GIS development. What areas of County government have been the toughest to build geospatial capacity in?
It seems that most everyone here at the County that comes into our “candy shop” marvels at all the delicious treats we have available. Some people, however, are on a diet! One area that I have not been able to get any traction is the integration of my two primary professional interests: architecture and GIS. Along this line I’ve proposed incorporating GIS in our public works efforts through Building Information Modeling (BIM) – without any success.
eSpatiallyNewYork: Dutchess County sells some geospatial datasets while making others free of charge through both CUGIR and NYS Clearinghouse. How does all this work?
Wills: We post a few datasets at the NYS Clearinghouse, but most are available right from us. Although we don’t actively use their data or services, we share our road and address data with the state to assist in the SAM project. The reason for using our “blended” approach to data availability is because we distribute the frequently updated data locally so the clients always get the latest and greatest data available in the fastest/easiest way, while we host our mainly static data on the State’s site. This might change as we implement more services. Our data distribution follows our management model, where countywide datasets are available from our GIS office, as opposed to department specific data available from each department. Custodians of GIS data at individual departments use guidelines set by our Office of Central and Information Services for pricing of data and custom dataset creation.
We do a lot of custom assembly of data for engineering firms, based on a project specific need. This is fed into Autodesk products. I see this changing as the level of comfort increases with GIS at the consultant level. Then I think there will be demand for service-based data delivery.
eSpatiallyNewYork: What NYS GIS program office products (data, systems, applications) does the County use?
Wills: Short of the interaction between our real property tax office and ORPS, there is no institutional use of New York State GIS products. However an individual basis we to utilize some of the services provided, and do recommend clearinghouse products to our customers when needed.
eSpatiallyNewYork: New York State County GIS programs are ramping up for the 2020 Census. What are your efforts in this regard?
Wills: We are in the thick of the US Census LUCA (Local Update of Census Addresses) process, whether we like it or not! We are trying a little different approach by first resolving the differences in the many address databases that cover the Dutchess County footprint. We will then use this cleaned dataset to hopefully provide the U.S. Census with perfectly clean addresses!
eSpatiallyNewYork: For a myriad of reasons, NYS local (municipal and county) governments are struggling with broad deployment of mobile GIS applications. How is Dutchess County doing in this regard?
Wills: Aside from informal experimentation, we are still looking for the “question” that mobile GIS applications “answers” – at least for us. With regard to all of our web applications, new development is being built with responsive design so they work on mobile devices, with integration with mobile’s GPS, allowing our users to ‘find’ themselves on our maps. One place where we are hoping mobile will assist us is with the documentation of our water and wastewater systems, a project that has a lot of people interested, but that is also extremely expensive.
eSpatiallyNewYork: What’s the one Dutchess County GIS program/product you are most proud of? The one you made happen.
Wills: Well, if this is the place to give advice to budding young GIS professionals, I would say always pay attention to what’s in your peripheral vision, namely, look beyond your immediate job description and context to your relationship with everything else that’s going on in your organization. Never hesitate to use what you gather to make your puzzle piece fit a little better in the big picture, and make the whole organization better. GIS is all about connections and communication – that is its true value.
I remember when we had just finished converting all our tax maps and purchased our first orthophotography and terrain back in 2000. I had the idea that we should make poster-sized “portraits” for each of our municipalities. Well, the late great Philippe Thibault (head of GIS programming at the time) and his team used their amazing skills and knowledge to develop this idea into the ParcelAccess application. So we had both the analog and the digital at a huge presentation which marked a significant milestone in Dutchess County GIS.
Other things happen by chance. Like the big box of trail maps that I used as a foot rest for years. The Department of Planning and Development catalogued all of the trail systems within the County years before I came to the department. Realizing what I had (literally) under my feet, I said it would be great if we could make maps of these trails for people to use to go for a hike. The Department of Behavioral and Community Health loved this idea, and it became the Healthy Communities Trails Webpage. Due to its popularity (the site had 80,000 hits last year) we are now turning this website, which is currently a collection of static maps, into an interactive mapping site inclusive of all recreational opportunities the County has to offer – where someone can decide what they want and are able to do, and eventually including how “accessible” each facility is.
eSpatiallyNewYork: The Hudson River environs is the subject of many geospatial/mapping activities (sea level rise, lidar mapping, climate change, etc). How is the County involved in this?
Wills: We certainly use the contour and terrain data created by federal and state sources working in this space as part of our planning efforts. Those are also popular datasets with our engineering community, and community planners. It’s very heartening to see that high resolution terrain data is now inexpensively available to so many. As with our small stream catchment area data, other communities can now create similar analysis with a relatively minor financial outlay.
I head up our Water Resources Programs Committee, which gathers all departments and the Cornell Cooperative Extension and the Soil and Water Conservation District to discuss any and all water related activities going on in the County. We’ve used the awareness of issues outside of our realms to adjust what we may be working on. But with regard to sea level rise and climate change mapping efforts efforts along the Hudson we rely on the good work being done by the Hudson River Estuary Program, Scenic Hudson, and others
eSpatiallyNewYork: How is the County progressing with MS4 mapping compliance?
Wills: Dutchess County Soil & Water Conservation District Executive Director Brian Scoralick has been using interns past couple years to map infrastructure in our MS4 communities. In addition, recently the Town of Poughkeepsie engineering department has been using an ArcGIS service that we set up to feed an ESRI collector app they are using to collect MS4 data.
eSpatiallyNewYork: What’s the next big geospatial initiative or program for the County?
I think what were all wondering and worrying about is how our business model is going to change with the change in ESRI software, namely ArcGIS Pro and the enterprise GIS changes. Other than that, with our distributed management model it’s really up to individual departments to come up with initiatives they want to execute. To that end, we are planning education for departments that may not have a full grasp of what GIS can do for them, as well as how to best use our tools already in place. (We always get a good turnout for our spring Geospatial Ed sessions for folks from the municipalities, organized by Dutchess County Cooperative Extension, Hudson River Estuary Program, Dutchess Land Conservancy, and Dutchess County Planning.)
eSpatiallyNewYork: 20+ years of County service and you can see the end line. What’s next?
Wills: I’m just too interested too many things! But one thing that needs my attention are the historic Ice Yachts of the Hudson Valley. These beautiful craft were in their prime from the 1800s till the early 1990s, now lovingly restored and still sailed by the members of the Hudson River Ice Yacht Club. I realized that their preservation is of utmost importance, especially recently with the dearth of opportunities to sail, given our lack of Hudson River ice… So maybe I’ll end up being a museum director!
eSpatiallyNewYork: Finally, I just have to ask, as an old college radio DJ myself spinning country swing vinyl, how often do you get dragged into the question about your relation to Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys?
Wills: It’s nice having a name that brings a smile to people’s faces! I do hear this reference often and am very glad that I like Western Swing music. My father never admitted to where the name “Robert” came from (it’s not a family name), but he was stationed Texas during World War II……