Yeah, I know. Pretty geeky. I didn't know there was such a thing as National GIS Day until a news release from Roanoke City landed in my in box. It's part of the National Geographic Society's Geography Awareness Week to promote geographic literacy. The city and the Western Virginia Water Authority are offering a GIS seminar with demonstrations today from 10 a.m. until noon today in the Noel C. Taylor Municipal Building. (Sorry for the late notice.)

What's GIS? It stands for geographic information system. Basically, it's a way to access information using a map as the basis for it. What it means for you is, lots of good stuff you need to know about your locality (or one you might move to) is available now on almost every local government website. At least around here.

You can see real estate sales info, tax assessments, where schools are, where fire hydrants are, where the flood plain is, and on and on and on.

So, in honor of National GIS Day, I'm posting links to area government GIS sites in the real estate section of the DataSphere. You'll see some are better than others. Roanoke's has the most to offer. Roanoke County's offers surprisingly little by comparison, but it's still there for you. Others fall in between.

So, dive in, click around the map and see what GIS can do for you.

• Share this entry
  • Digg this entry
  • Mark in Ma.gnolia
  • Tag with del.icio.us
  • Seed Newsvine
  • Post to Google
  • Add to Yahoo!
  • Share on Facebook
  • Submit to Reddit
  • Related at Technorati
• Posted by Matt Chittum in
• :: Comments (0)