Assessor's Map/Data Conversion

In order to build a GIS for tax assessment purposes, the City of Kalamazoo needed existing paper maps digitized and prepared for a geodatabase. The original records consisted of 1,016 assessor maps of varying scale from city plat books. The maps covered 40 sections and 27,000 parcels.

As part of its parent company KBA, Kinetic Solutions converted the plats into a digital topological map. The digitally represented parcels were linked to an external Oracle relational database to track property tax billing. The resulting maps became the base map for the city, and supported data from public works, fire protection and public safety.

When Kinetic Solutions tied these individual maps together into the completed city database, we found a 'hole' in the plat data where several hundred acres of city property had not been recorded-for decades no property taxes been collected.