THE National Land Agency (NLA) is crafting a Master Map system for individual parishes, a multifunctional map that provides a wide range of geographical information both in intelligent digital form as well as in the conventional paper draft.

Shaw... survey director at the NLA

The map will be able to capture events as they occur in communities.
The NLA has already created a master map for Portmore which it will launch at the end of next month, making it available to the community and the wider public.

According to Trevor Shaw, director of surveys at the NLA, the new technology is the most definitive and up to date map produced of Portmore by his agency.

"We can separate the roads from the (land) parcels, from the drains, from the green areas and from the annotation," Shaw explained.
"We are putting the map user in the kind of position where he can choose the kind of information that he needs."

Additionally, he said, the map is GPS compatible, and allows for precise events mapping which allows the recording of the location of any event that takes place.

"It could be a crime or an accident. The kind of map that we are producing will allow experts in those areas to locate those positions precisely," he said. "The map can also be used to do queries and analysis ... and geo-coding. We could pull down a string of the names of all the persons living on one street."

The map he added could also assist in the planning of natural disasters. For example, to predetermine routes into high ground in preparation for a tsunami. The map is separated into some 10 discrete layers, for example, road, drainage, contour data, parcels, special areas such as shopping centres and industrial facilities, and topography.

"The parcel layer provides the link between the property and the map and the valuation road. If you live ... in Bridgeport we can tap into that parcel, do a link to the land valuation database and come up with important information that could be of interest to people in real estate, surveyor and valuators..." he said.

The layer for roads provide a detailed road network such as major roads and minor roads.
"Street centre line provides vehicle tracking and street identification capabilities," Shaw added.

The map also provides a detailed overview of the location of water bodies such as drains, canals and wells.
The topography layer provides contours, which refers to the height or depth of a location on a map.

"Of special interest to the survey community, we are providing a special layer with survey contour so that when they go out and do their surveys, if they want to tie it into the national grid system, they would find it easier to do so," he said.

The agency relies on imagery from lowflying aircrafts as well as satellites to capture the data for the master map.
"We have a vast reservoir of records dating back a couple of centuries ago. We have information that is being collected in a dynamic mode. As our surveyors go out and collect information, they bring them in," Shaw said.

"We can boast the most comprehensive data set on land in Jamaica and possibly in the Caribbean."
Shaw said future map layers will include building and street fixtures such as hydrants.

"We hope that we will also have a demography layer which will show how the population is distributed across Portmore," he added.
Currently the agency only has a master map of Portmore, however Shaw said that they are currently working on two other areas and will begin a map for Kingston thereafter.

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