The Cook County Cadastral GIS Update Project (CGU) was a redesign of the previous cadastral geodatabase and integrated parcel maintenance application that supported the control and flow of cadastral geospatial information and task coordination between many offices across Cook County. This project updated the technology platform, leveraged new ArcGIS COTS capabilities, and improved capabilities in key areas with respect to the parcel fabric, workflow manager, history management, and topology. It included migrating 1.8 million parcels to ArcGIS Version 10.2.

The County’s key stakeholders in the CGU project are the County Clerk (Clerk), County Assessor (Assessor), Counter Recorder of Deeds (Recorder), County Treasurer (Treasurer), County Department of Transportation and Highways (CCHD), County Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA), and the Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT). Each agency plays a critical role in the management and maintenance of the parcel spatial and tabular data. Increased sharing of information, streamlining processes, and improved coordination of tasks are expected results of the application redesign.

Great Arc was subcontracted to ESRI to design and develop a new web-based parcel management application to replace their legacy application. This application provides users the ability to begin new workflows for: Parcel Divisions, Tax Code Changes, and Assessment By Legal Descriptions. The application also includes tools that allow users to: run database reports, locate parcels and navigate their related data, view and manage parcel lineages, view and manage tax information, view and manage legal descriptions, and review system notifications.

The application was designed to modernize Cook County’s existing parcel maintenance application while maintaining familiarity for its existing user base. The application was also designed to support the workflow of several departments within the County. Access and permission for specific interfaces and tools are restricted by user group membership. A group’s edit permissions on workflow job may also be defined by based on its workflow status.

Great Arc decided to develop a JavaScript control library when we determined that both licensed and open-source libraries at the time could not support the advanced data editing and display requirements. This library includes advanced data capabilities including: data source binding, data validation and custom display formatting. A set of input controls were created to support the variety of data types including: text boxes, drop-down boxes, list boxes, check boxes, radio buttons, calendar control and datagrid. The application was developed using C# in Visual Studio 2013. This MVC project uses Entity Framework model to deliver data to the client via custom API controllers. Great Arc’s JavaScript control library, JQuery and CSS were used to develop the views. SQL Server 2012 was selected as the RDBMS for the new Cook County GIS environment.

The web-centric application was renamed PINMAP at project completion. Great Arc was contracted as the prime contractor for long-term application maintenance, with subcontractors ESRI, Scarfe Consulting, and Pro-West & Associates.