OPM GIS outlines statewide imagery, parcel and address initiatives to support housing planning

Alberto Herrera, Connecticut's geographic information officer at the Office of Policy and Management, told RiverCOG members that OPM's GIS office is expanding statewide datasets to support regional planning and the implementation of the new housing law.

Herrera described recent and upcoming work: two flights of high-resolution imagery and LiDAR (with a second flight planned), 1-foot elevation contours statewide, impervious-cover layers, 2D and 3D building footprints, and a parcel dataset consolidated to about 1.3 million parcels. He said OPM's master address dataset has grown to approximately 1,600,000 addresses after ingesting multiple agency and municipal sources and that the office is coordinating mechanisms to keep addresses current.

The GIS office is building a Connecticut housing data hub that will combine private-sector housing indicators, census and state data down to parcel and site level so municipalities and COGs can identify developable and redevelopable land. "We have to provide the tools in order to make the determination where you have developable and redevelopable land," Herrera said. He noted the statute requires a baseline product by July 1 (statute name not specified); OPM aims to deliver a minimum viable product by that date and continue iterative improvements.

Herrera also described a bridge and culvert inventory tied to hydrography mapping work submitted to USGS, vessel-tracking and parcel data-quality guidelines, and outreach webinars and vendor tools to make the data accessible. He emphasized the office will try to leverage existing municipal data and minimize additional burdens on towns.

What’s next: OPM will provide webinars and outreach materials, push forward the parcel and address consolidation work, and engage municipal partners to validate and maintain datasets. Local planners were invited to coordinate with OPM to make sure municipal data feeds into the housing data hub.