Parcel Data – Who Aggregates and Distributes It?

Generally state agencies, some regional agencies, and for a fee, a plethora of data vendors. 

The first step is aggregation, which is the process of taking many locally developed parcel data sets and standardizing each to a common format and in some rare cases providing quality control and/or spatially reconciling at the boundaries.  A national standard for parcel attributes exists, (http://nationalcad.org/CadStandards/CadStand.html) but as with locally produced data, each state has its own standards to meet its state business needs.  A recent review of state parcel standards found over 20 states had developed state parcel publication standards with many common attributes but no commonality of field names, types, or lengths.  In all states reviewed the state aggregated data did have data definitions and was easier to understand and interpret than individual producer data sets.

The tools used to build aggregated data sets range from brute force to Safe Software’s FME, Esri’s Community Parcel tools, and customized state specific tools.  Most states are either using or moving to web based processing for aggregation. 

Update frequency is typically annually, some are twice a year, and a few are daily or continuous updates. 

Some of the nuances and challenges for data aggregation are described in this article (http://www.esri.com/esri-news/arcnews/winter16articles/making-local-parcel-data-open-at-state-national-levels). 

Distribution has typically been zip file download and a web based viewer.  Files may be a single statewide file but often is individual files for each data provider, such as each town or each county.  A noticeable trend for aggregated and distributed parcel data is the use of feature services. Many national parcel data in federal agencies require a data download to incorporate information into agency systems, but even federal agency applications are increasingly using feature services.

Paul Ramsey presented an intriguing twist to data aggregation and distribution in 2015.  (http://s3.cleverelephant.ca.s3.amazonaws.com/2015-ccog.pdf).  Mr. Ramsey discusses relevancy in terms of frequency of use.  If data are not used it is less relevant than data that are used.  Let’s go with the parcel data are important and has many uses, and the parcel data must be relevant.  It must be available to be used and recognized as a useable source to be relevant.

The Moment of Opportunity, as described by Mr. Ramsey, is that small window when data (parcel data) can be provided in a way that developers can easily harvest and embed it in applications that can be seen and used by many on mobile devices.  An interesting implication is that data needs to be distributed in a way that the data can be used and accessed by developers, rather than focusing on end user consumption. 

This is an interesting perspective and important to consider.  As Mr. Ramsey states “it just means that governments need to accept the way that the technology ecosystem is going to want to consume their data, and change their behavior to fit. The first step is to recommit to the idea of data as a public good. If this data (parcel data) is critical infrastructure, as we believe it to be, making it available to all members of civil society, without restriction, is a basic requirement.  … Commit to simplicity in distribution. Follow the lead of NASA and publish raw data, with computer readable manifests, with stable URLs, close to the point of consumption on public cloud infrastructure”

Who distributes parcel data? Generally data aggregators, but we should all keep an eye on distributing our data in ways that will keep it relevant.

Parcel Data – Who Shares It?

Some local, some state, some not at all.  Remember when Google first started and the one liner about them was “if you have it, we want it”.  That’s the story for parcel data too.

There are lots and lots of cities and counties that share parcel data with attribution on a regular or periodic basis.  Some update continuously others provide quarterly or annual updates.  A recent survey of parcel producers found there are approximately 6,500 parcel producers (cities, towns and counties) in the US (see Parcel Data - Who Builds it) and of these nearly 70% provided at least viewer or REST Service access to their data and a smaller percentage (around 50%) provided free download and/or open data access. Those that do provide open and/or downloadable access cover almost 80% of the US population and parcel count.

As awesome as digital parcel data are there are certainly understandable reasons why all parcel data is not shared for everyone to have.

The vendor made me do it or proprietary formats - It’s not the mapping formats, it’s the attributes.  Many local governments are tied into real estate tax system (or CAMA) software that has the attributes locked up in either a difficult to extract or expensive to extract data structure.  In a few rare cases the mapping and attribution is managed by outsourcing and the local government doesn’t even own it’s own maps or data.

Once bitten, twice shy - Many local governments have experienced sharing their data with an application or a customer only to be criticized because the supplied parcel data did not meet expectations.   As examples “Why doesn’t this data indicate which homes are owner occupied and which are rented?” “I wanted to see a recent inspection on condition of the structures, where is that information?” I checked this data against my iPhone and the coordinates you have are wrong, I am calling my councilman.” “Where is the mortgage amount in this data set?”  Many of the concerns downstream users have can be explained if the data producer has a chance and if the recipient wants to understand.  Unfortunately, there are too many instances where the criticism gets widely distributed and the explanation (metadata) not so much. 

Show me the money - This has several variants including - We paid good money for this; we are not going to give it away and I need this revenue to fund my office.  These are all, well mostly all, good reasons.  There are many jurisdictions that run short of allocations and automation is not enough to make up the shortfall.  In the Parcel Dial Tone, I mentioned the need for more rural counties and under budgeted offices in particular to charge for data.  Sadly data sales are not likely to be a sustainable revenue stream.  It’s just the way it is.  Consider the path imagery and addresses and elevation and building footprints and so many other data sets have taken.  As technology advances the data becomes more widely and more freely available.  This is not ridicule or undervalue the resource needs of local assessors and parcel mappers.  The needs are real; we just need to find more sustainable and effective funding sources.

It’s mine - Much like parenting sometimes it just comes down to you can’t go to the movies because I say so. Period.  Sometimes this rational is clothed in privacy concerns or “what are you going to do with it?” concerns (see once bitten, twice shy).  Sometimes it’s just that so much personal dedication and commitment has been put into the data, it’s hard to let it go. It’s hard to not take ownership of it.  I have always thought that parcel data is personal.  It’s the most personal of all locally maintained data sets.  The data producer’s fingerprints are all over this data set and having a sense of ownership is certainly understandable.

Who shares parcel data? The most recent detectable trend is more and more parcel producers are sharing, especially cities, lots of cities.  

The Parcel Dial Tone

As a bit of background, I come by the telephone/communication analogies historically or maybe genetically.  The man on the left in the picture is my dad.

He didn’t invent the dial tone. He was a pioneer in implementing it for long distance dialing.  Before direct distance dial (DDD) all long distance calls were placed through an operator.  The innovation was not the dial tone; it was the toll center.  This was the ability to identify the call line that placed the call, the target, the time of day, and the length of the call so that billing could be correctly assigned.  It was all about the toll center, even if the dial tone made it all possible.

The parcel dial tone technology and data sets are already here.  It should be possible to pick up any map product and add the parcels.  We shouldn't have to go through an operator.  Granted there are still availability, access, content, source, and liability topics to be resolved, but technologically all is possible.  

The toll center is something we may not have addressed adequately.  I was struck by a presentation by Louisville Kentucky (Jefferson County KY) that one third of the revenue necessary to support the core services of their assessment department is reliant on data sales. Even further we see rural and less endowed jurisdictions that do not have sufficient resources to collect, maintain, and provide web access to their parcel data.  It is not just economics. Some of the more endowed counties are reluctant to add their parcels to the national dial tone.  

After 30 plus years the technology has advanced nicely, but the institutional data sharing and acquisition funding issues that were identified many years ago are still with us.

A little follow up.  Note from Jack Dangermond's keynote at the Esru UC 2016  http://video.esri.com/watch/5149/enabling-a-smarter-world

He had a parcel map behind it. I said, "Well, that's interesting. Where is that parcel map coming from? Is that on your desktop?" He said, "No, no, no, it's coming as a service." It turns out that the parcel map is coming as a service from L.A. County, who does about 150 updates and transactions on parcels every day. He was no longer copying the data, having to update it. He was reading in like dial tone behind his map a basemap of parcel data from the county. The city and the county are working together. They're sharing their data. As services, they're leveraging each other's transactional work in real time. 

Aereo, ABC and Parcel Data

-->

In late April the Supreme Court heard arguments on if Aereo, a company with thousands of small (tiny actually) digital antennas, could collect programs broadcasted over the air, package them and distribute the freely collected information over the internet, for a price.  The data is compiled onto cloud storage and can be consumed for a price on any screen. 

Several news articles called this a disruptive business model  (http://freakonomics.com/2014/04/28/whats-at-stake-in-the-aereo-case-maybe-the-future-of-the-cloud/). The issue at hand was could Aereo take the freely broadcasted signals and sell them through cloud services.  The problem being that ABC and other broadcasters sell those same signals to cable and dish networks for a fairly significant amount.

In my opinion there are many elements of this case that are similar to parcel data, of course.  Many states and counties and cities produce parcel data for their internal use and then “broadcast” or provide the data freely.  As we have seen time and time again, commercial vendors assemble that free data, repackage it, and sell it.

Most recently for example, a firm sent out a notice that users could purchase high-resolution aerial photography for southeastern Ohio (www.emap-int.com).  This is the part of Ohio with the Utica Oil Shale fracking activities.  But this very same product is freely available through the State of Ohio OGROP program http://ogrip.oit.ohio.gov/ProjectsInitiatives/OSIPDataDownloads.aspx.

So why is capturing freely broadcast programming and reselling it disruptive and taking freely available GIS data and reselling it not disruptive?  Maybe neither are disruptive, maybe it’s just the American free market. 

Parcel Data Sharing and Ice Cream

The discussions about open data sharing, interoperability, and web services continue to build.  FGDC has published a new portal and there are new open cloud services every day.  What strikes me in these discussions is that at some level we are still resolving data content issues. 

Consider this scenario.  What if parcel data producers, mostly local governments in the U.S. and about 6,000 different local governments, made ice cream instead of parcel data.  Almost everyone loves ice cream but few understand the challenges of making large batches of consistent texture, predictably flavored ice cream.  Locally made ice cream would reflect local tastes and preferences and would evolve with the local needs and demands.

Complicating things is each state would have rules for ice cream packaging, pricing, butter fat content, and maybe even the wafers that could be used for making ice cream cones.  

Vanilla

A consumer might think it is a simple enough question, “I would like some vanilla ice cream.”  The ice cream maker knows there are dozens and dozens of vanilla flavors from plain vanilla to French vanilla with variations including premium churned, fat free, egg free, extra creamy, triple vanilla and many others.  This does not include the branded names for vanilla, which might be New York vanilla, West Coast California vanilla, and Wisconsin true vanilla. 

The mix of the base ice cream, it’s composition, fat content, churning method, and other processing variations plus the vanilla flavoring itself adds much variation and nuance.  For example “natural flavoring” is castoreum, which is a secretion from the castor sacs of adult North American beavers.  “Real vanilla” comes from a Mexican orchid and from subspecies in Madagascar, the West Indies and South America.

Why is it so hard to just get a national vanilla ice cream based on the locally produced ice cream? 

The local ice cream makers who understand the highly nuanced and local needs find it hard to even find the words to explain the variations in vanilla much less the other flavors and types of ice cream cones that are found across the nation.

With over 6,000 producers across the country, it is not unexpected that there are many variations and nuances.  A simple request for a vanilla ice cream cone has many options, so does requesting parcel information. 

The Business Case for a Publication Standard

The purpose of a publication standard is to describe the business uses and needs to support defined applications.  The publication standard is not a random set of features and attributes. In the ice cream example every producer will have variations in vanilla and a host of other flavors but it is unlikely that every producer will have the same combination of flavors.  The publication standard provides a standard data request that each producer completes as best they can.

The publication standard educates the business user as well as the data producer.  It provides a way for the data producer to understand why and how data are used, it limits the number of data elements the data steward has to publish, and it makes the highly variable and highly nuanced operational data easier for the data requester to understand. 

This point was made in the Fair and Equitable article  “Sharing the Data You Have - Getting the Data You Need”, William Craig and Nancy von Meyer, February 2009 p 9.

“Applications that need parcel data but do not understand the finer points of parcel information cannot distinguish between taxable value and market value, much less decipher which value in the local data set contains the necessary value information.”

The National Cadastral Parcel Publication Standard

The Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) Cadastral Subcommittee has a fairly in depth content standard for cadastral data.  It defines the components of land descriptions, cadastral reference systems, legal measurements, corner monumentation, corner coordinate values, rights and interests, and restrictions to rights and interests.  The content standard provides a checklist of information that could be included in a cadastral data system, but it is not an implementation standard and it is not a publication standard. 

Recognizing that the path to implementation required building a publication standard or guideline, the Subcommittee examined several critical national business uses including hurricane and wildland fire response and recovery, economic and mortgage monitoring and response, and energy development and reclamation.  These were business uses that existed across the country and could be used to define a starting national publication guideline.  Each state could add to this base guideline, but a starting base was seen as one path to increased standard implementation.

The resulting guideline includes components for cadastral reference information (Public land Survey System, land Grants, Subdivisions etc.) and parcel information (real estate tax parcels and coming soon federally managed land parcels).   The publication guideline or standard is not intended to be a burden to data stewards, it is intended to enhance communication and encourage the use of this valuable data set in business applications.