Avery Surrounded

In watching the Netflix series “Making a Murderer,” I became intrigued with the idea that perhaps there was something about the land owned by the Avery family, causing all of their headaches. This evening I set about putting a little bit of a parcel map together and was surprised to discover that the land owned by the Avery family could definitely be a source of contention with his neighbors; the primary one of which appears to a sand and gravel company.

Indeed, Badgerland Aggregates, LLC owns nearly every parcel of land surrounding Avery’s Auto Salvage. It may sound a bit far-fetched, but there could very well be some sort of relationship there, and an effort to finish assembling the land in that area for their ongoing mining operations. After all, sand has become quite the commodity in the last bunch of years.

I drew the parcels in by hand, based on names data displayed through the Manitowoc County Advanced Access GIS Viewer. As GIS viewers go, it is terrible for this sort of an effort, and not user friendly at all. It took several hours to complete the effort, and in the end, I kicked myself for not having added the parcel number as well. It might be interesting to know the property values associated with these parcels, just in case there is some sort of discrepancy.

After going back and adding the parcel numbers to the table, I went through tax roll information on the Manitowoc County Property Tax Records Search web site. On the surface, it does appear that the land value for Avery family is over-assessed. In contrast, Badgerland Aggregates land assessed much lower, in spite of the fact that they are harvesting one particular commodity at a rather furious rate. I suppose that is not particularly shocking, but definitely of interest, and bears closer examination by someone more qualified.

I finally took to the web to discover more about Badgerland Aggregates, and quickly found out that I was not the only one that had this suspicion.

Coincidentally (as if this situation didn’t have enough already), Badgerland Aggregates has a very close relationship with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, one individual of which just happens to have been a mentor for the District Attorney.

Of course, this is all coincidence… if you believe in that many occurring around one particular person, but it is interesting, nonetheless. Feel free to have a look at the data assembled below.

Conscientious Stupidity

I heard a continuation of a very disappointing trend in the upcoming Presidential election on NPR this morning…

“I’m a woman. She’s a woman.”

Apparently, there are quite a few folks supporting Hillary Clinton for no other reason. I have heard this sort of commentary numerous times in interviews and other situations and it is most unsettling. The United States witnessed this this very same mentality during the election of Barack Obama in 2004. I remain genuinely surprised that nobody has noticed the sexist and racist undertones of these sort of comments, or everyone is too afraid to say anything.

Casting your vote in favor of someone should have nothing to do with the sex or race of an individual. It should have everything to do with their policies and beliefs. I cannot imagine casting my vote for someone solely based on physical traits. There is serious danger in this sort of thinking.

Road Comparison in GIS Services

At the request of the GIS group in DC, under the direction and in response to GIS-440, IPUSO created a Roads data layer and associated service for use by the [US Government Agency] in GIS applications. The data is a derivative product of US Census Tigerline data. Along with the associated service, the data will require continuous maintenance, necessitating perpetual funding of technical and business resources. Simply stated, this will have a huge cost impact to ongoing operations and maintenance of GIS systems and services for the [US Government Agency].

In contrast, an alternative solution recommended by [US Government Agency] GIS Subject Matter Experts is available, which holds no associated cost. It is available through the existing contractual arrangement with GIS vendor ESRI, developed and maintained by experts in Street and Road data, and based on US Census Tigerline data. ESRI established the data and associated service under strict usability guidelines, are highly scalable and configurable, and free for use under the existing maintenance contract.

Supporting this recommendation, OCIO mandates along with other architectural guidance from GISO, and CTS OCE Program Team indicate authoritative data and existing configurable cloud services need to be investigated and leveraged prior to development of custom or duplicated solutions for GIS within the [US Government Agency].

The following pages compare and contrast the services primarily from a usability standpoint.

The [US Government Agency] service is not Tiled or Cached, and consequently sluggish. It also lacks appropriate scaling, labeling, and configuration to meet the needs of an enterprise GIS Data. In short, the service and data are mostly incomplete, incoherent, unusable, and already in need of updating.

The ESRI layer is tiled, cached, and serves up fast and with minimal calls to the server. The service is complete, coherent, usable, and requires no updating by [US Government Agency] employees or contractors.

Note about the review platform

An inability to review the  [US Government Agency] service through ESRI ArcMap necessitated review of data services within ArcGISOnline, using a light gray canvas base map to ensure data displayed clearly as intended. Note that the light gray canvas includes roads outlined in white paths, and contain minimal labeling, as shown in the example immediately below; otherwise, roads do not appear, except as designed in the layer.

Entire US View

[US Government Agency] displays no roads at all

[US Government Agency] displays no roads at all

ESRI Layer displays major interstates with orange lines only

Regional View

[US Government Agency] layers shows no roads

ESRI layer shows interstates in orange, along with appropriate and universally understood labeling.

State-level View

[US Government Agency] shows no roads

ESRI layer shows interstates in orange with appropriate and universally understood labeling, along with major highways, also labeled and shown in light orange.

City-level View

[US Government Agency] layer shows red lines for interstates, but no labeling.  Roads also appear disconnected and incomplete.

ESRI layer shows all major roads, highways, and interstates.  Labeling is mostly clear and consistent with understood cartographic design, scaling appropriately.

City-zoom View

[US Government Agency] layers displays hard black lines for all roads, which are not labeled, and red lines for interstates, with incorrect label formatting.

ESRI layer shows all major roads and thoroughfares, interstates, and highways, as well as water-crossing routes; labeling is consistent, readable, and scales appropriately.

City Neighborhood View

[US Government Agency] layer displays hard black lines for roads and hard black typography for road names. It is easy to read on a Gray Canvas background, but impossible to read when overlaying aerial imagery.

ESRI layer at this scale reverts to labeling only, relying upon existing features on the ground. Labeling is only slightly difficult to read on a Light Gray canvas, but easily read when overlaying aerial imagery.

City Neighborhood View with Aerial Imagery

[US Government Agency] showing as indistinguishable overlying imagery

ESRI layer showing readability overlying imagery

Step Scale of [US Government Agency] over imagery, beginning with the entire United States

For the [US Government Agency] Service there is no means of visually identifying road location at any of the following scales.

At the following scale, within the [US Government Agency] Service, a single red line appears requiring further identification of the feature to determine that it is part of the US Interstate system.

For the [US Government Agency] Service there is no means of visually identifying road location at the following scale.

At the following scale, within the [US Government Agency] Service, hard black lines appear, requiring further identification of the features to determine that they represent specific roads.

At the following scale, within the [US Government Agency] Service, hard black lines appear, requiring further identification of the features to determine that they represent specific roads.

At the following scale, within the [US Government Agency] Service, hard black lines appear, requiring further identification of the features to determine that they represent specific roads.

At the following scale, within the [US Government Agency] Service, hard black lines appear along with simple black labeling identifying the roads.

At the following scale, within the [US Government Agency] Service, hard black lines appear along with simple black labeling identifying the roads.

Step Scale of ESRI Service over imagery, beginning with the entire United States

For the ESRI Service, major interstates appear without labeling at the following scale.

For the ESRI Service, major interstates appear without labeling at this scale.

For the ESRI Service, major interstates appear with labeling at this scale.

For the ESRI Service, all interstates appear with labeling, along with major US highways and their labels, at this scale.

For the ESRI Service, all interstates appear with labeling, along with major US highways and their labels, at this scale.

For the ESRI Service, all interstates appear with labeling, along with major US highways and their labels, at this scale.

For the ESRI Service, all interstates appear with labeling, along with major US highways and their labels, at this scale.

For the ESRI Service, all interstates appear with labeling, along with major US highways and their labels, as well as major roadways also labeled, at this scale.

For the ESRI Service, all interstates appear with labeling, along with major US highways and their labels, as well as major roadways also labeled, at this scale.

For the ESRI Service, all interstates appear with labeling, along with major US highways and their labels, as well as major roadways also labeled, at this scale.

For the ESRI Service, all interstates appear with labeling, along with major US highways and their labels, as well as major roadways also labeled, at this scale.

For the ESRI Service, interstates, highways and roads are not represented by lines, but display labeling instead.

For the ESRI Service, interstates, highways and roads are not represented by lines, but display labeling instead.

For the ESRI Service, interstates, highways and roads are not represented by lines, but display labeling instead.