Being there, online

<p>If information is power, then the Finley Center in Santa Rosa was a virtual king's court on Wednesday.</p><p>The department heads in charge of managing public data -- from crime reports to property information for various cities and the county -- were gathered to show off just how much digital information they controlled, and their innovative ways of presenting it.</p><p>Shelly Bianchi-Williamson presented the county's GIS Web site, which provides public access to everything from city limits to aerial photos, zoning and flood plain maps.</p><p>Users can overlay all that information onto one digital map on the county Web site.</p><p>"Our goal is to bring land development use to the public," Bianchi-Williamson said.</p><p>The county, along with the city of Santa Rosa and private companies such as Sonoma-based MoosePoint Technology, showed off their advancements at Sonoma County GIS Day 2008. The event was part of a nationwide effort to raise awareness of the technology.</p><p>GIS stands for geographic information system and is a rapidly growing field in nearly every industry as people look for better ways to visualize vast amounts of data associated with a location.</p><p>It is particularly popular in vineyard management. Workers can easily view different soil types, elevation and slope changes and annual rainfall across a property.</p><p>The technology also holds vast potential for public access to government information.</p><p>Municipalities have long stockpiled huge amounts of information about their communities, such as how much water a house uses.</p><p>For decades, that information was stored on paper, stacked high, and often confined to the depths of a dusty room.</p><p>But starting in about the 1970s, that information began migrating into a computerized format. The trend has only accelerated, and now much of the historic and current information regarding Sonoma County and its nine cities is in the hands of digital technocrats.</p><p>It is now easy for a city to determine how much water a house uses -- or wastes -- annually. Two decades ago, a person might have had to gather a tall stack of monthly water bills to find out the same information.</p><p>As the process towards digitization has occurred, the county and some cities have worked to make some information available online.</p><p>"We wanted to reduce foot traffic in the planning office," said Bianchi-Williamson, a senior GIS specialist for the county. "It's especially useful for people who had to drive a long way to the county offices just for some basic information."</p><p>Lately, she has been spending a lot of time trying to show real estate professionals how to use the county's GIS site.</p><p>It's not always an easy task, she admits. People born long before Web sites were conceived don't have the intuitive knack of the younger generations. Younger people are increasingly savvy about map layering and visualizing information.</p><p>Annelise Ely, a 22-year-old Santa Rosa Junior College student, attended the GIS conference and said she'd played around with Google Earth, a free GIS program.</p><p>"A friend told me about it," she said. "I'm trying to figure it out."</p><p>Another SRJC student, Sarah Allegra, won a contest for the best GIS map. She is getting a GIS certificate from the junior college, and had developed the map as part of her curriculum. It identified the various watershed districts of Maui using different colors, and pinpointed all the water collection facilities. Initially the project had intimidated her.</p><p>"But I had so much fun messing around with this stuff," she said.</p><p>The Santa Rosa school district launched a GIS curriculum at Piner High School this fall. "Students with these skills will be highly employable," said Nancy Miller, director of career pathways. "It's an up-and-coming industry."</p><p>A slew of savvy, innovative GIS workers can be a benefit to the whole community, said Mike Hargreaves, GIS coordinator for the city of Santa Rosa.</p><p>For instance, GIS has given first responders -- firefighters, ambulance drivers and law enforcement -- better access to information in their vehicles, such as exact addresses, that can shorten response times.</p><p>"That one or two minutes can make the difference in saving a heart attack victim or preventing a fire from growing out of control," Hargreaves said.</p><p>You can reach Staff Writer Nathan Halverson at 521-5494 or nathan.halverson@pressdemocrat.com.</p>