The web Land-Related Information System.

What is it?

The County of Oxford web Land-Related Information System (webLRIS) is a sophisticated, but easy-to-use Geographic Information System (GIS) that combines digital maps of the area with related information, such as:

• Property ownership and registry;
• Assessment and apportionments;
• Demographics;
• Property dimensions;
• Structure location and characteristics;
• Topographic features including flood plains and vegetation;
• Cultural characteristics including zoning and Official Plan information.

The webLRIS is available on-line to each of the eight local municipalities, as well as County of Oxford staff in the Clerk's Office, Community and Strategic Planning Office, Engineering, Health and Emergency Services, and also Woodstock Hydro. The system is housed in the County Offices.

What is it used for?

The webLRIS is used for a variety of municipal tasks, including:

• creation of mailing labels and lists for public notification of planning applications (such as zone change applications) and public works projects;
• issue and printing of Building Permits, inspection tracking, permit status monitoring, and creation of monthly Building Activity reports to local Councils and Statistics Canada;
• verification of property ownership and configuration;
• gathering information about buildings, properties and the local environments to evaluate land development proposals;
• producing maps to illustrate Planning, Engineering and Economic Development reports;
• maintaining inventories of land (eg vacent land, commercial/industrial land, publically-owned land) and evaluating municipal servicing capacities;

Special Projects

The GIS has been used extensively for special projects, including:

• creation of rural civic addresses for implementation of Enhanced 911, notification to property owners of their new address, and mapping of the new address ranges;
• providing data and analysis for policy development for the County Official Plan, and preparation of the Official Plan mapping schedules;
• mapping to support the Emergency Preparedness Plan in the Township of Blandford-Blenheim;
• analysis of revised bus routes in the City of Woodstock;
• siting a new fire station in the City of Woodstock.

Data and Applications

The webLRIS integrates information from four levels of government (local, county, provincial and federal).

Property-related data is tied to the property fabric: a high quality survey database produced by TERANET Land Services. Property-related data includes the POLARIS mapping and tabular databases providing title and registry transactions on properties, and Ontario Ministry of Finance Master Assessment System which includes data related to assessment, apportionments, structures, property use, mailing address, and demographics. Zoning and Official Plan designations mapping have also been related to the property fabric.

Many layers of environmental and natural resource information are integrated into the system, acquired from several Provincial ministries and local agencies such as the Conservation Authorities. Environmental and natural resource data is tied (where possible) to the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resource's NRVIS (OBM) 1:10000 mapping (1:2000 in the City of Woodstock). These layers include sand and gravel resources, bedrock, Areas of Natural and Scientific Interest (ANSI), wetlands, fill restriction zones, flood zones, waste sites, wells, and others. Soils are available with a source scale of 1:50000.

Many of these layers of data are restricted to access by municipal employees and owners of the property concerned. The right to use data from sources outside the County was acquired through partnerships, trade agreements, or under licence.

Oxford's webLRIS operates on an Oracle Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) and Application Server, and ArcGIS Geographic Information System (GIS) software from ESRI. Access to data and applications is available through a series of web-based forms which include both tabular and map information and query capabilities.

Work on the system has continued to the present day, enhancing its capabilities, broadening the types of data that are available for municipal staff to use, and modernizing the technology that is used to provide services. Some milestones of development include:

• the creation of the Land Related Building Permit (LRBP) system to issue municipal permits for activities such as building, demolition, plumbing, and building occupancy reports. The LRBP system provides a robust set of functions, including automation of relevant data (such as owner's, applicant's and contractor's name, address, type of permit), permit fee calculation, building inspection tracking, agency approvals tracking, printing the permit, and creation of reports for local Councils and for Statistics Canada;
• 9-1-1 civic address maintenance which uses network analysis to measure paths and assign addresses in a frontage-interval system;
• registration of nutrient management plans against properties;
• transition to a newly-developed web-based interface (from legacy Oracle forms and ArcInfo AMLs);