A recent Star Tribute article highlighted the fantastic community GIS that St. Paul’s District 7 “Frogtown” neighborhood has created.
Over the years Tait Danielson Castillo, executive director of the Frogtown Neighborhood Association has used many student interns to create simple maps for the neighborhood using ESRI desktop software. However, as is often the case there was no continuity from student to student. Each new student required new training and a great deal of knowledge was lost each time a student left.
Realizing their need for some professional GIS help, Tait hired Flat Rock Geographics to assess their existing GIS and to develop a new sustainable model. The result was a clean, concise structure and procedures for map templates, mobile data collection and an easy to use GeoMoose mapping tool.
Flat Rock Geographics is continuing to enhance these mapping and database tools, which we hope will serve as a model for other neighborhood groups to implement.