GIS Crucial to Milwaukee Sex Offender Legislation

GIS isn't just useful, it is an absolutely essential for Milwaukee to decide whether proposed sex offender legislation will do more harm than good.

Seems simple enough:

Convicted sex offenders could see a city-drawn map of every school, day-care, playground and park in Milwaukee, under a proposed ordinance that would restrict where those offenders could live after they're released. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 9/27/2007

But Milwaukee Alderman are concerned the devil is in the details:

[The] legislation that would prohibit anyone convicted of a sex offense involving children or violence from moving to a new home within 2,000 feet of any school, day care center, park or playground after they are released from prison ... But a similar statewide law in Iowa resulted in many offenders dropping off the state-mandated registry because it was too hard for them to comply with the residency limits ... The same thing could happen here, because Milwaukee has so many schools, day care centers, parks and playgrounds that it would be difficult to find many places in the city where offenders could live, said ... the [Corrections] department's assistant regional chief for Milwaukee County. If the offenders drop off the registry, they'll be more dangerous because they thrive on anonymity, and probation and parole agents can't help them readjust to the community, said ... [the] sex offender registry specialist for the department. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Newswatch 6/28/07

So what do lawmakers do? Make a map, and see the impact:

Ald. Terry Witkowski voiced concern that the ordinance could concentrate sex offenders in a few neighborhoods. At his urging, the panel delayed action on the measure until council staffers can draw up a map showing the impact of the restrictions.

The only way this can be done in any reasonable timeframe is through the use of GIS technology. The map drawn up by "staffers" will need to be very well thought out and detailed.

As we all know, GIS professional are consistently asked to gather information and perform analysis that is essential to effective decision making. Here it is "in action".

GIS Blog of Note

Several of my previous blogs have shown an interest in the various legal aspects that surround the GIS profession. I recently came across the Spatial Law blog. It seems well though out and touches on several issues I have mentioned in the past.

Wis.'s Special Achievement in GIS Winners

Snap-On Tools (Kenosha) and City of West Bend

Congratulations!

See who else made the grade this year.

ESRI wants your Imagery

(To be consistent with my previous post, I haven't heard about this in any of the blogs from the Plenary)

James noted that ESRI now has a ArcGIS Online Content Sharing Program. Basically you give ESRI your high-quality imagery, and they might add it to ArcGIS Online, and thus be easily available via ArcGIS Explorer, ArcMap, and ArcReader.

Why would you do this? To get your imagery as easily accessible as possible. I'm sure many local GIS people have had to explain more than once why their latest aerial photography is not in Google Earth.

Its all not that much different than having a publicly accessible ArcIMS Image Service (which can be viewed via ArcMap and ArcReader). The main difference is that ESRI is hosting the data rather than you. Which, in theory, would be cheaper since you don't have to pay for the hardware, bandwidth or even ArcIMS just to host high-resolution imagery.

Unfortunately, ESRI seems to want only new imagery (less than one year old preferred). I think it would be even more useful to have historical imagery included. I also suspect that many more local governments would be willing to submit their historical imagery, at least at first.

Is state agency or local government going to sign up? Why or why not?

The UC

Many fellow EWUGers at the User Conference. Those of us who are not, are probably getting the latest news via the bloggers who are there. I'll try not to repost any of the major announcements unless there is a specific Wisconsin connection.

Otherwise, feel free to comment about the User Conference.

ESRI Questions & Answers for 2007

The ESRI User Conference Question & Answers from Jack Dangermond has been posted. As blogged about last year, the Q&A lists many of the big topics ESRI wants to highlight at the User Conference and over the next year.

In other words, if it is not in the Q&A, you won't hear about it the first day of the conference, or at any of the big presentations.

If the link to the Q&A page doesn't work, try here.

Milwaukee GPS-GIS Project Highlighted

A City of Milwaukee brownfield redevelopment project is highlighted in ESRI's Best Practices: Using GIS with GPS.

Wis. Sex Offenders to be GPS tracked for Life

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (Will need to scroll).

About 400 child sex offenders would begin lifetime tracking by satellite starting next year ... devices tracked by global positioning satellites would start being used on serious child sex offenders on Jan. 1. The plan would cost $5.8 million through mid-2009 ... The changes announced today would again provide lifetime monitoring.

I wonder what system they are using to store all these locations? Just think about adding and storing GPS coordinates every minute, for 400 persons, 24/7/365 for the next 50+ years. That's 210 million points each year. It gets even more complicated if there are any fence/perimeter alerts.

Update 6/7/2006: There's more in-depth article from the Journal Sentinel today

Wis. Company Involved in GeoSpatial Patent Suit

Learned about this from Very Spatial (post 2). Seems Encyclopedia Britannica is suing TomTom, Magellan for infringement of patents. What's the Wisconsin connection? American TV & Appliance, is named in the suit which was filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin (Madison).

Unfortunately, case information costs $0.08 a page so I haven't downloaded the filing, yet. I am curious to know why American TV was named in the suit. If you do know please leave a comment.