Is there a layer in CAGIS that shows you the traffic circulation? I need to find out what streets are one and two-way in a particular neighborhood. Or if theres any online resource where I can obtain that data it would be just as useful. Thanks!

I would just google earth it and see if you can tell from the photos.  I don't know about the Cagis data.  Also, what about a good old fashioned street map?

He came with the name Cincinnati

A kid with no ace in the hole

On a hot poker pot, Cincinnati

Had staked his heart and soul

 

Only CAGIS I know about is the computer lab that I'm reading/posting on the internet from here at LSU.  :wtf:

I had never heard of CAGIS before, and I use GIS.

When I looked it up I got "Canadian Association for Girls In Science." Seriously!

 

I would think some organization somewhere would have a layer like this. Have you tried your local planning offices?

When you get to the street layer level in Google Maps, it will show you traffic circulation; that is, if you are referring to witch streets are one way and which are not. But that does not help you if you want customizable data.

If you are looking for traffic count data, the county will have it - state law.

I guess I'm not clear in what you are looking for.

For those who don't know, CAGIS stands for Cincinnati Area Geographic Information System.  It is very comprehensive and provides a ton of data.  The Canadian Girls thing sounds intriguing too though,some nerdy girls from the north!

 

Here is the link: http://cagis.hamilton-co.org/map/cagis.htm, I believe there is a lot more info to be accessed if you are a paying member.

Is there a layer in CAGIS that shows you the traffic circulation? I need to find out what streets are one and two-way in a particular neighborhood. Or if theres any online resource where I can obtain that data it would be just as useful. Thanks!

 

From my dealings with CAGIS I have never seen such a file, but if you are looking for a neighborhood in Cincinnati...I would suggest contacting someone in the Community Development and Planning Dept.  The city does have more information for the city, than what CAGIS has.  I would assume the same for any other community that might have their act together.

 

If you mention that you're a student...especially a SOP student, I'm sure they will be more than willing to help.  Also try contacting someone at the CAGIS office down on Court St, they are also very helpful and willing to work with students.

 

  Depending on how big your area is it may be just as easy to go there and map it yourself. Plus, you know that your map is up to date.

 

 

The project that was for has long been done but thanks anyway. I still can't believe theres no shape file for that though.

I had never heard of CAGIS before, and I use GIS.

When I looked it up I got "Canadian Association for Girls In Science." Seriously!

 

You found my homepage.

it's been showing a "the server is busy" message for three days now. Anybody know where else i could get a political map of Lincoln Heights?

its up now....

Nice job 513Mapper!!        :wink:

I'm confused.

^I have a buddy who works for Cagis (513Mapper).    I sent him a link from this morning to see if he knew it was down.

Came out last month!

 

http://cagisonline.hamilton-co.org/cagisonline/index.html

cool thanks for sharing

I'm drooling.

This is fantastic...2 foot contours :D 

Is this map copyrighted? 

I'm being told by Cagis employees that they want the public to know this exists.  As for copyrighting, I'll have to get back with ya.  I'm not sure about that.

To share locations, go to "E-mail" and copy that URL. As for copyright, I just see a standard "CAGIS @ 2009," but no mention of rights of use.

Is this map copyrighted? 

 

Curious Jake, why do you ask?  It's public data, isn't it?

 

 

Welcome to CAGISOnline, the new interactive mapping site of the Cincinnati Area Geographic Information System. The purpose of this site is to assist current and potential residents and property owners in making decisions that will add to the vitality of the Cincinnati area and promote economic development throughout Hamilton County. Mapping and reporting tools on this site make it possible for the user to explore communities and properties in the county, investigate the zoning restrictions and requirements for individual parcels, and track changes in land use over time through aerial photographs.

Additional features and capabilities will be added to the site during the next several months. We invite your comments and recommendations for the continued development of this site. Comments should be sent to:[email protected].

 

We hope that you will find this site useful and will use its resources often.

 

 

 

 

 

My question, explicitly, is can I superimpose stuff over these maps and publish it in a book?

Ahh, gotcha!

She could answer that one for ya.

 

CAGIS Administrator

 

Barbara Quinn (513-352-1641) [email protected]

 

http://cagis.hamilton-co.org/CAGIS/DataDictionary/Contacts.htm

 

 

Things like this can be tricky.  While the information represented might be public, the graphical representation of it appears to be under copyright.  I know that they sell more detailed maps in vector format that you can import into CAD programs and such.  That stuff isn't available through the website obviously.  The public CAGIS map may be little more than a preview of what you can buy, though it's sufficient for most people's needs.  I'll admit it's a HUGE improvement over what it used to be. 

I'll admit it's a HUGE improvement over what it used to be.

 

That's no joke!

I love looking at the big parking lots on the riverfront in old aerial photos.  Good riddance.

Ahh, gotcha!

She could answer that one for ya.

 

CAGIS Administrator

 

Barbara Quinn (513-352-1641) [email protected]

 

http://cagis.hamilton-co.org/CAGIS/DataDictionary/Contacts.htm

 

 

 

I thought i read somewhere that she wasn't in charge any more.

^I found out she's not too.

 

I'd assume some of these other numbers could address questions as well though.

 

http://cagis.hamilton-co.org/CAGIS/DataDictionary/Contacts.htm

 

Somebody's got to be in charge. Paula, the secratery should know! :wink:

Paula.Winkfield (513-352-1656) [email protected]

So in the old cagis you could pretty easily get the boundaries of the different neighborhoods to show up, but i haven't figured out how to do so in the new one.  Anyone been able to do this?

And again!  This year's version appears to have been taken early enough in the year, that the trees didn't yet have many leaves, allowing us to see much more detail than in some of the previous years' images.

 

Here is another site I like to play with:

http://www.historicaerials.com/

 

 

Looking at both the UC & Medical superblocks, you see, between 1996 and 2011, the almost complete eradication of surface lots. Huzzah!  While not everything about their developments is great, it IS great to see the greater use of structures and underground parking and less surface lots.  Perhaps one day we'll be able to see some structures converted into buildings if the full streetcar and other rail projects develop.  2026 maybe (another 15 years)?

And of course, the West End and the construction of City West is VERY interesting to see so quickly.  I really wish they would finish the build out, and get a 50/50 affordable-market balance, instead of the 80/20 balance they currently have.  sigh... could be such a great neighborhood.

I have searched around and cant find what I'm looking for, so figured I'd post a new topic.  I have used CAGIS in the past to get survey data for small areas of the city (they call them facets), however, for a personal project I am working on, I wanted to get the entire CAGIS database for the city of Cincinnati.  I asked for it and they had no issue releasing it to me (no copyright issues or fees) but they cant send it to me.  The guy I talked to said that it can be downloaded from the DAAP GIS network drive.  I dont have access to DAAP at the moment as I' am out of the city for the summer.  I was hoping that someone could download the entire city of Cincinnati shapefile (.shp, i think) and upload it for me.  I have a box.net account to load it to, and it hopefully wouldn't take a huge amount of time, I just need someone to download it while in the lab.  Any takers?

what are you looking for? Parcels? Streets? Just the Cincinnati shape file will give you Cincinnati's boundaries and the neighborhood boundaries, if I recall correctly. The CAGIS database is massive - several GBs.

 

BTW - Welcome to the board

Thanks for the welcome, Wish I had known this website existed before, lots of great info on here!  As for the info, I'd love to have everything.  Streets parcels, buildings, sidewalks, roads etc.  I didn't realize it was so large, though.  The guy at CAGIS that helped me made it sound like it was a reasonable file, although I kind of assumed it would be fairly large.  I just figured the shapefile format was more compressed than .dxf.  Is the CAGIS database separate from the shapefile?  I have to admit, I'm not exactly well informed about what exists, I really just want the whole city in DXF format so I can modify stuff in AutoCAD.

You can find pretty much any shapefile you want online, but not all in the same place. Google around. Neighborhood boundaries you may need to get from the DAAP folder.

 

To get you started, look here:

http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/geo/shapefiles2010/main

I've searched around and haven't found precisely what I'm looking for.  That census website hits some of the things.  I have attached a file that I got from CAGIS in the past that shows basically what I'm looking for.  This is just one "facet" in the city, however, only covering Mt. Auburn.  I'm looking for this information for the whole city.  Streets, parcels, topo, buildings, sidewalks etc. etc.  CAGIS said that it was as simple as just downloading the CAGIS database from DAAP, except that I don't have access at the moment as I'm in Chicago for a little while.  I was just hoping it was a reasonable file size and someone could download the database while working on something else in the lab.  I guess it might just be something that is more difficult than I am thinking..  I'll keep looking around.

 

Thanks for the suggestions.

 

EDIT: I guess the file cannot upload here, I have uploaded it to my box account, it can be downloaded here: https://www.box.com/s/0c13d9ada03ec20146a1

The Cincinnati Area Geographic Information System (CAGIS), for those of you who might not know, is an office jointly funded by the City of Cincinnati and Hamilton County that collects and maintains a huge amount of geospatial data for use by public agencies within Hamilton County.

 

I used to have access to their data as a planning student at DAAP(which apparently pays an annual subscription fee to CAGIS or something like that). It's generally really accurate, complete and useful data, but it's not available to the general public or at least not the general public that doesn't have a few thousand dollars to throw around each year. It's also presumably only available even then under a restrictive agreement that prevents someone who's purchased the data from sharing it or publishing derivative products. I once hosted a copy of a few of their files on my own server and was asked by the director of CAGIS to remove the files lest DAAP lose their access. I complied uneasily at the time but my unease has recently been nagging me.

 

Is it legal for a public agency to keep it's data secret or hidden behind huge fees? This data is publicly funded and put to a clear public administrative purpose. It seems to me from my admittedly quick reading of the overview of Ohio sunshine laws on the attorney general's website:

http://www.ohioattorneygeneral.gov/Legal/Sunshine-Laws

...that the data ought then, with perhaps a few small exceptions for private information, to be in the public domain or available on request for any purpose.

 

Does anyone know a legal reason why the data shouldn't be public or at least available in full at the specific request of the public?

It would not be technically or logistically difficult to share all or some of the data they collect.

 

I'd like to make a formal request for data which I would then share publicly but I want to do my homework first so CAGIS can't give me the run-around.

 

Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

 

In a nutshell, it's an easy way for them to earn revenue. With their city govts budgets being cut, they'll likely keep any revenue sources they can get and charge you. I completely disagree with those actions.

 

What may be more important for you, imho, is the license of what you can do with this data (whether you can modify at all, for personal use, for corporate use i.e. you can incorporate into a map you make for sale, etc) For what it's worth, Cuyahoga (Cleveland's county) is available to the public and free, although their licensing is left to be desired (I thought they had a more liberal use license, but it's been several months since I last checked until minutes ago - http://gis.cuyahogacounty.us/cuyahogaplanning/faces/CuyahogaPlanning.jspx

 

There was also a really important ohio supreme court case regarding access and cost to spatial data, i'll see if i can find it, decision was made in april or may.

Please do find that case if you can! I heard something vague from a friend about a recent court case and that is probably what he was talking about.

 

RE licenses: It would seem like if the data is subject to the sunshine laws then it's in the public domain. A journalist certainly couldn't be held back by a 'license' or 'terms of use' from publishing something incriminating if it was legally obtained...I assume!

Please do find that case if you can! I heard something vague from a friend about a recent court case and that is probably what he was talking about.

 

RE licenses: It would seem like if the data is subject to the sunshine laws then it's in the public domain. A journalist certainly couldn't be held back by a 'license' or 'terms of use' from publishing something incriminating if it was legally obtained...I assume!

 

http://www.courtnewsohio.gov/cases/2013/SCO/0307/121296.asp#.Ue6uaeHAORv

 

Well the data is subject to the sunshine laws (as I interpret the decision), but you have to separate the data from the software for $2,000

Nice commentary on it here: http://spatiallyadjusted.com/2013/03/13/use-esri-gis-and-your-data-becomes-inexorably-entwined/

This makes me hate ESRI even more than I already did.  *sigh*

 

Still, this should be a good sign for the CAGIS data which is mostly stored in shapefiles. That file type, while created by ESRI originally, is (I'm pretty sure) now an open standard with plenty of opensource conversion tools even if it's not.

But where can you actually obtain the data?  Even if it's technically free to use, that doesn't mean there aren't gatekeepers of sorts who charge just for access.  CAGIS is a multi-gigabyte data set after all, especially if the aerial photos are included.  Different departments also have their own layers, like scans of old maps.  I know MSD has some very interesting old utility maps as the bottom layer of their database, which shows not only the historic sewer lines but streetcar tracks and platforms, individual utility poles, and a host of other items. 

 

It's all sort of like the "copyfraud" that many libraries and historical societies engage in.  They have a large collection of photos, maps, postcards, etc., that are old enough to now be in the public domain.  While they have every right to charge you to make copies and such, they also try to restrict usage by making you sign licensing agreements and putting their own watermarks on images trying to pass that off as a copyrightable derivative work.  Very not cool.

But where can you actually obtain the data?...

 

I'd be happy to host a snapshot of everything on my own server. Downloads wouldn't be that huge since the data would be stale enough that municipalities wouldn't use it. Still, even if it was as much as a year out of date it could be enormously useful to the lay user.

 

Gigabytes are sooo easy to move these days ;-)

 

EDIT: As for actually getting it, their offices are a few blocks from my apt. I could walk in and just physically pick up data(which I have actually done before) with a portable drive.

It had to have been very expensive to originally create the shape files, and there’s a small cost to keeping the files up to date and accurate, not to mention the overhead involved with storing and distributing them. Also, Cagis has a viewable version online for free that suffices for 99% of the general population’s needs.  What you’re wanting are the actual base files that compose it.  I think it’s fair there’s a fee for that information, as you can imagine what the cost of gathering it yourself would be. It’s such specialized information that it wouldn’t be fair to pay for it out of the general tax dollar pool, when it is only useful to such a small group of users.  Asking for the files for free would be a de facto method of making every tax payer fund it. 

^ There's an enormous amount of information in the actual data that's not available online.  For instance, underground utilities, including pipe sizes and what treatment plant they go to/from, telephone poles, street lights, and who owns them, what they're made of, etc.  While CAGIS online has zoning information, the "offline" version also has actual land use, whether property is vacant or not, and a bunch of other things I'm sure I don't even know about. 

^During my time on co-op with MSD, we had information about when a sewer was created, the material it's made of, slope, condition, and even had links to videos showing the inside of the particular span to identify breaks in the line, condition, etc visually. Pretty impressive system and I'm sure I didn't have access to a lot that DOTE, Planning, etc have access to.