When the city began in February to register the landlords of rental homes in single-family areas, officials made a printout of the more than 1,000 homes that had received a license.

And when officials wanted to figure out what that information meant, they turned to the city’s Geographical Information Systems department. Bryce Hirschman, the city’s GIS coordinator, created a map that showed the location of each registered rental home.

It showed officials that most of the rentals were concentrated in the city’s core  East Lawrence, North Lawrence and south of Kansas University.

That map helped officials better understand their task, City Manager Mike Wildgen said.

“Ten pages of a (registration) list is hard to visualize,” Wildgen said. “When you have a map like that, it’s very helpful.”

Like cities across the country, Lawrence has made increasing use of GIS technology over the past decade to help officials, developers and private citizens understand precisely where and how the city is growing.

Ask Hirschman to describe GIS, and he’ll start talking about the “spatial grouping of data sets” and use other phrases that can leave your head spinning.

Planning Director Linda Finger described it this way: “It makes long-range planning visual for people who relate to maps and drawings and who rely on that information. It makes it less of an esoteric relationship.”

Or, as Hirschman said, “It’s a ‘picture-is-worth-a-thousand-words’ kind of deal.”

But, he said, GIS is more than just a really cool map maker. It is also a powerful analysis tool.

“Mapping is just a small component of GIS,” he said. “The potential for use is unlimited.”

Allowing comparisons

The city and county started using GIS systems in the mid-1990s. They had to start by collecting and entering reams of precise data about the placement of buildings, sewers, streets and so on.

“We’ve got property ownership, we’ve got neighborhood maps. We’ve got zoning maps for the county,” said Dennis Albers, GIS administrator for Douglas County.

The usefulness lies in comparing the different types of data to each other. During the debate over proposed floodplain regulations this winter, for instance, planners put together maps showing where floodplains were in relation to nearby buildings and properties. That helped planning commissioners see how their decisions would affect some areas.

The technology also allows the comparison of traffic flow in the city versus the kinds of roads those vehicles are driving. That helps city and state officials decide where road improvement funds will be aimed.

Such maps were possible before GIS technology, officials said. But they took much longer to create and they weren’t nearly so precise.

“It allows us to have a quick response and be much more accurate,” Finger said.

Maps that incorporate property locations, for instance, are based on the legal descriptions of the property and not just a rough “eyeballing” of where the property lines go.

“You would have some very basic drawings, back in the older days,” said Renee Stains, a GIS analyst for the Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Department.

A clearer understanding

Stains uses GIS to show people the location and implications of zoning changes, annexations and more. Finger said that work  and the ability to put it online  has helped regular citizens gain a clearer understanding of the planning process in Lawrence and Douglas County.

“It’s made us a lot more accessible,” she said. “When we talk about ideas in maps, it’s a lot easier for people to understand.”

It also occasionally saves people money on their tax bills.

Albers uses the technology to identify when appraisers have given a much higher valuation to one property than to its neighbors.

“It helps us pinpoint hot spots,” Albers said. “It’s easy to visually see if we have a value that’s way too high compared to the rest of the neighborhood. We can go out and recheck it.”

If the valuation proves too high, Albers said, appraisers can adjust the estimate  and the resulting property tax bill  before it ever goes to the property owner. That saves the county time and money spent on defending appeals from property owners.

“I think it saves the public a lot of time, too,” he said. “They don’t have to be pulled in unnecessarily if we catch it up front.”

Helps people understand

There are other, more mundane uses of the technology. It helps the city do targeted mailings to specific groups. And it helps planners know exactly who to notify about rezonings or who should be taxed when “benefit districts” used to pay for new sewers and streets are created.

“The mapping will support that, because based on the shape of the land, the geometry, we can say who would be affected by what’s going on,” Hirschman said.

Officials praise GIS mainly as a tool for public understanding of government actions.

“It’s made the development process more readily accessible to the average citizen,” Finger said. “You don’t have to spend money to purchase these things  it’s right there and available maps.”

Wildgen agreed. The rental registration maps were made available to neighborhood associations to help them understand the levels of renting in their areas, he said.

“It can only help educate people and make them more aware of distinctions and information,” he said.

Hirschman said GIS will only grow as a tool for public use.

“The further we develop data sets, the more important it becomes,” Hirschman said. “It’s very easy for people to look at the maps we’ve created and draw deductions.”