Drive the roads of rural Maine today and you might notice street signs marking what were once unnamed dirt tracks. Most likely, these new signs are the result of Maine’s adoption of an enhanced emergency response system, known as E-911. In many towns, E-911 raised the ire of residents who were forced to change a street address they may have held for decades. Such inconveniences were generally offset by the perceived benefit of the new addressing system – to route emergency vehicles to a crime or accident scene in the shortest amount of time. In Maine’s smallest towns, however, this need was not as apparent to long-time residents. A typical response may have been: “Why do we need E-911? If I have a heart attack, everyone in town knows where I live.”
The adoption of E-911 is just one of a countless number of mapping efforts around the globe that are now possible, due to new geospatial technologies. Among these are the Global Positioning System (GPS), an array of satellites that provides anyone with a GPS receiver their precise location on the earth’s surface. Another is Geographic Information Systems (GIS), software that allows databases of information to be viewed and manipulated as layers of maps.
Combined, these technologies are used daily by an increasing portion of the population. Take for example the car-based navigation system known as OnStar that uses GPS and GIS to direct drivers to nearby services such as restaurants, hotels or hospitals. In the near future such systems could be as common as today’s car radios. Still, for many small-town residents everyday life doesn’t require such high-end mapping technologies. They can find the local breakfast joint on their own, and the volunteer firemen know exactly where they live.
Conceived more broadly, however, GIS and related technologies can become highly relevant to small towns, especially to island communities. Consider that nearly anything on earth can be referenced by its location, be it a cemetery, historical site, stream, aquifer, sewer line, road, house, shoreline or wharf. Combine these spatially referenced features in a map along with information that describes them, and you have a very powerful tool. Now consider some of the strengths of island communities: deep social networks, a finite geography and a strong sense of place. If the tool of GIS can be integrated into the tightly woven infrastructure of an island community, its citizens will be able to maximize its benefits and minimize its costs. A truly community-integrated GIS could help its residents better visualize their past, educate their children and plan for their future.
At least three island communities are attempting to do just this. Through a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Island Institute and the community of Islesboro have been exploring how GIS can be implemented locally to support education, environmental planning and decision making in a small community. A second NSF grant was recently awarded to expand this effort to Vinalhaven and Peaks Island. Through these and other grants, the three communities are acquiring the skills, tools and technical support to develop mapping and information systems that rival those of much larger places.
These newly funded initiatives have emerged in part from the ongoing work of residents and institutions in these communities. On Islesboro, the school’s science teacher began using GIS as a teaching tool in 1991, and a wealth of map-based information has been collected over the years by the Islesboro Islands Trust and town committees. On Vinalhaven, the comprehensive planning process led to a demand for data collection and management tools. The local land trust funded the development of a comprehensive GIS database in 2001, and worked with members of the planning committee to extend this database to include new information such as land use codes. As a neighborhood of Portland, Peaks Island has benefited from GIS data produced by city government. Data collection and mapping efforts by Peaks Island Land Preserve and Peaks Island Neighborhood Association have ensured that the city’s data is merely the foundation of a more accurate, locally-generated map of island resources.
Identifying these ongoing local efforts is the first step in establishing a community-integrated GIS. Small towns have limited resources, and high-tech solutions often seem out of reach. By emphasizing a new approach to local GIS rather than focusing on the equipment itself, small communities may find themselves in a better position to maximize its benefits.
In each of the three island communities working to establish local GIS capacity, the process has evolved differently. On Islesboro, principal Jon Kerr is an enthusiastic supporter of GIS as a teaching tool. As he says, “GIS expands students’ ability to understand the bigger environmental picture, especially by helping them to visualize data.” As the former science teacher, Kerr taught GIS on two or three computers in his classroom. Through an educational license, the software is now installed on machines throughout the school’s computer lab.
Island Institute Fellow Kathleen Reardon used the lab to teach an adult education GIS course this spring. Reardon also taught GIS to high school students last fall. Her work in support of GIS development on Islesboro has extended to mapping trails, moorings, groundwater data, intertidal habitats, shellfish beds, and maintaining equipment acquired through last year’s NSF grant. Through a number of presentations, she has raised awareness of the project and continues to provide technical support to those learning GIS.
On Peaks, the work began with a database developed by Island Institute Fellow James Essex, and continues to be maintained by two to three islanders. Independently, a neighborhood planning process began earlier this year, and has gained overwhelming support on the island. Those involved are now working to integrate the GIS database into the planning process. Peaks resident Will Mitchell, who happens to manage a small, Portland-based GIS firm, brings a valuable perspective to the process. “In support of the neighborhood planning process underway on Peaks,” he says, “this mapping can provide a valuable toolbox to base decisions on. Maps and GIS bring things together really well, because whether you are talking about zoning or traffic or parking or wetlands or trails or buildings, everything shares geography.”
On Vinalhaven, the process of building local GIS capacity happened the other way around. A successful planning effort led to the demand for information management and mapping tools. In response, the town created the Vinalhaven Geographical Informa-tion System Management Commit-tee, whose members were recently appointed by the board of selectmen. Marjorie Stratton, Vinalhaven’s town manager, was impressed by the response. “We were only asking for six people but we had such a good response from such a variety of backgrounds that we increased the committee to eight members.” The GIS committee will help make critical decisions about the use, access and maintenance of GIS hardware, software and data on Vinalhaven, coordinate local mapping and data creation efforts, and act as a point of contact for outside organizations, including the newly appointed board of the Maine Library of Geographic Information.
Vinalhaven’s GIS committee represents an innovative approach to managing information and technology locally. As one of the newly appointed committee members, John Van Ness, stated, “It’s important to get a broad representation of islanders so that there’s a feeling of ownership of the system from all parts.” It appears they were successful: the members of the committee include the school principal, land trust director, town clerk, postmistress, and the manager of the electric co-operative.
Vinalhaven’s GIS committee is yet untested but it could prove a more effective means for the town to manage its own information. In fact, information management in a small community could be modeled after other types of cooperatively managed resources, such as electricity or water. The major difference is that GIS information can flow both ways between the community and the larger world. Data collected and maintained by federal and state agencies will be more accessible and useful if local GIS capacity is established. More importantly, GIS capacity will allow the community to correct and refine that information to ensure that outside entities have an accurate representation of their community. For places threatened by overwhelming growth or economic hardship, this might be considered a form of community self-defense.
Consider the example of E-911. During the project, new street maps were created for nearly every town in the state. A local “addressing officer” in each community was charged with ensuring that the information on the E-911 maps was accurate. Maps were supposed to be hung in town offices, where residents could add corrections themselves. These edits were returned to the Maine Office of GIS where they were incorporated in the GIS database. With local GIS capacity, a community could continue this information exchange indefinitely, ensuring that the state has the most up-to-date information on a town’s streets and addresses.
Through community GIS efforts, the residents of these three islands are pioneering a new way of implementing technology. By relying on resources that are rarely considered within a traditional cost-benefit analysis, these small towns are adapting technology to their particular situations, rather than adapting themselves to technology. At worst, the result will be a comprehensive map of each place, a baseline of data, and a snapshot of these communities at the turn of the millennium. At best it will become an ongoing process of community model-building that in turn strengthens each community’s sense of identity.