Coastal Services Center

The first step of a community planning process is creating an inventory of the town's natural, cultural, and economic resources. The problem typically encountered by local planners is not a lack of information for the inventory, but information overload. Factor in limited experience with geographic information systems (GIS), and the planning process can easily get sidetracked or derailed.

Resource managers in Connecticut recently launched a website enabling citizens and land use decision makers to easily access statewide natural resource data and maps.

"We've been giving workshops on resource inventories for years," says John Rozum, director of the Connecticut Nonpoint Education for Municipal Officials (NEMO) program, "but have found that getting access to mapping data is a real stumbling block. With the new website, local land use planners don't need any technical know-how to get started."

The site, the Community Resource Inventory (CRI) Online (http://nemo.uconn.edu/tools/cri/), lets visitors create a series of key resource maps for any of the state's 169 municipalities. The maps include water resources, land cover, protected open space, and wetland and farmland soils, in addition to information such as roads and utility service areas.

"What's innovative about the site," says Rozum, "is that it's meant for people with varying capabilities in terms of geospatial technology and use. You can plug into the site at your level of sophistication."

For instance, nontechnical users can view the map series for their town, while GIS users can link their desktop GIS to the site.

The website was developed by NEMO, which is part of the University of Connecticut's Center for Land Use Education and Research. Data for the website's maps came from the university and the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection, which also provided a $35,000 grant for the site's development.

While the website was only unveiled in January, the University of New Hampshire/National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Cooperative Institute for Coastal and Estuarine Environmental Technology (CICEET) has funded the National NEMO Network to produce a guide to help three states produce similar sites.

Part of the challenge of developing the site, Rozum says, was parsing out the data critical for planning purposes. "We came up with seven or eight map sets that were key to making decisions." The project team also decided to exclude data that were not available for the entire state.

Feedback about the site indicates that, in addition to town planners, members of the public are using the data layers.

"It's democratized the information," Rozum says. "The information is in the hands of the professionals and the people going to public hearings. This way, everyone is looking at the same information, and it informs the debate a little better."

He adds, "We're pretty pleased with it. It's filled a niche that was desperately needed."

To view the Community Resource Inventory (CRI) Online, point your browser to http://nemo.uconn.edu/tools/cri/. For more information, you may contact John Rozum at (860) 345-5225, or john.rozum@uconn.edu.