Photo Credit: Illustration - © Can Stock Photo / Naschy
Every parks department knows where its facilities are, and most have published maps identifying the location of their parks for the benefit of visitors. However, not all parks agencies maintain a geographic information system (GIS) to capture, store, manipulate, analyze, manage, and present parks and related data. With limited budgets and other resources, GIS may seem like a luxury or a nice-to-have rather than a necessity. But before quickly dismissing it as a tool only for larger or more well-off agencies, one should seriously consider the benefits that GIS offers and how it can advance park planning, development, and management for a city or county.
At The Beginning
Let’s take a look at the Los Angeles County Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR), for example. It was not that long ago that DPR was mostly using GIS just to produce maps to show where its parks, multi-use trails, and other recreational facilities were located. The department did not have any staff members fully dedicated to GIS, but a handful of planners and landscape architects taught themselves to use the system through trial and error.
Help Wanted
Things changed three years ago with the addition of a full-time GIS analyst in DPR’s Planning and Development Agency. For the first time in its history, DPR has a staff person who can represent its interests in countywide efforts concerning spatial analysis and data sharing. There was, however, still a challenge to overcome—the department had a rather limited inventory of parks and trails data.