| Georgetown County | Horry County | New Methods |
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| Georgetown County | Horry County | New Methods | |
A written request for cadastral data and project description was sent to each of coastal counties on October 22, 1997. This request stated OCRM's need for updated cadastral data from all the developed beachfront in SC and emphasized the important role the counties' data would have in the post-hurricane recovery project. Also, emphasized in the letter was the benefit this project will have to all those involved in a post-storm recovery effort.
The following report documents the methodologies used to integrate each county's data with OCRM's existing cadastral database. This includes both graphical cadastral data (Parcel Maps) where available, and tabular cadastral data (Attribute Data). Where both data types are available, a link will be established between the planimetric data and the tabular data using a common field such as tax map number or property identification number (PIN). Linking the data sets in this way is one of the cornerstone concepts of this project. The parcel maps will serve as a visual tool in which to use as a reference and for plotting damage reports. The tabular data will serve as an easily accessible database from which property ownership information can be extracted in an efficient manor.
Each coastal county will be dealt with in a separate section which will include the types of data available, contact information, and methods.
Colleton County (Edisto Beach)
Graphical Cadastral Data (Parcel Maps): None Available
Tabular Cadastral Data (Attribute Data): Data Interchange Format (*.DIF)
Point of Contact:
Initial contact was made with Thomas Hill in the Colleton County Tax Assessors Office. Mr. Hill informed OCRM that Colleton County did not have any digital graphical cadastral data (i.e. no GIS). At this point OCRM was under the impression that cadastral data for Edisto Beach would have to be updated by copying tax assessors files by hand. Later contact with Thomas Hill regarding the availability of any digital tabular data yielded another avenue to explore. He gave OCRM another person to speak with, Randy McJunkin. Randy McJunkin, Sr. of the Colleton County Computer Department is in charge of managing all tabular cadastral data for the county. Upon discussion with Randy, it was discovered that OCRM could indeed receive digital files, in the form of Data Interchange Files (*.DIF), that could be uploaded into OCRM's existing cadastral database.
On February 18, 1998 OCRM received three 3.5" floppy disks from the Colleton County Computer Department containing the tabular cadastral data for Edisto Beach. The data was written to the floppy disks as three different file types. These types included a *.BSF (Basic Sequential File), *.DAT (Delimited ASCII Text), and *.DIF (Data Interchange File). All three files were relatively of small file size and could have fit onto one floppy disk. Copies were made of the floppy disks and then the disks were sent back to Colleton County with a letter of appreciation for their cooperation. The Edisto Beach cadastral data (1997) update backup copy exists in the GIS file drawer under the Hurricane Project / Colleton County.
After examining the three file types, OCRM staff determined that the *.DIF file was the easiest to convert to a usable format. This file was easily read into Microsoft Excel by simply opening it as a regular excel file. Once the file is opened it becomes apparent that the field headers are not intuitive. At this point changes in the field names were made to the following for easier field identification.
AMTXM = TMS
AMST# = STRNUM
AMSTA = STAN
AMSNME = STRNAME
AMNME = OWNNAME
AMNME2 = OWNNAME2
AMADR = MAILADDRES
AMCTY = MAILCITY
AMST = MAILSTATE
AMZIP = MAILZIP
AMXZIP = MAILZIP4
STRVAL = VALU E
AMSQFT = SQFT
There are a total of 13 fields in this data set. If there are questions about the Edisto Beach data, the metadata that came with this dataset exists in the GIS file under the Hurricane Project / Colleton County. The cadastral data file is linked to the DLG and parcel centroids files by the TMS number. In the 93 Parcel centroid file for Edisto Beach, which exists in the ../data directory as a shapefile called "edisto2", the attribute information associated with the parcel centroids (points) included the Rdb_id number (Relational Database Identification). This is the same as the TMS number from the assessors file. This field will be used to link the planimetric parcel maps to the cadastral data, thus the TMS number and the Rbd_id number have to be identical. In order to do this, the numbers in the TMS field have to be changed in the assessors file. The standard TMS number for Colleton County is a ten digit number. The assessors file comes with three zeros added to the end of the TMS number. In Microsoft Excel, the zeros can be taken out by simply multiplying the TMS column by 0.001. The result is a ten digit TMS number that is compatible with the Rdb_id number in the attribute file. After the fields and the TMS numbers have been changed, save changes as a dBASE IV file in the ../data directory as the following (98edisto.dbf).
The next step is to open an new database file in Microsoft Access. Then import the 98edisto.dbf (dBASE IV) file into it. Go to design, and change the TMS field from "number" to "text". Export this database file as a dBASE IV file with the same name (98edisto.dbf). Say yes to overwrite the existing file. This completes the modification of the cadastral data file and it is now ready to be linked to the planimetric data in ArcView.
In ArcView open the Colleton County project under the Hurricane Project. From the project window, select the tables button. Add the new cadastral table by clicking "add table". Go to the directory where the 98edisto.dbf file that was modified exists (../data) and select the file. ArcView loads the file in as a new table. At this point, it is a good idea to again click on the project window and select the new table, which will be called "98edisto.dbf". Go to edit menu at the top and choose rename "98edisto.dbf" and call it "1998 Edisto Cadastral Data". Then click back on the table itself. Now, to link this table with the 93 parcel centroids shapefile table by clicking on that theme in either of the two views in this project. Select the table button to view the attribute table for the parcels. Select the Rdb_id field in the table and then select the TMS field in the "1998 Edisto Cadastral Data" table. Then go to the edit menu and select "link". Do this process in reverse, by first selecting the cadastral data file and then the Rdb_id field in the attribute data and again select link from the edit menu. Now the tables should be linked together by TMS number so that if a parcel is selected on the map, the cadastral data for that parcel is also selected. Save changes made to the project and the update of the cadastral data for Edisto Beach has been made.
Charleston County (Seabrook, Kiawah, Folly, Sullivans, Isle of Palms, Dewees)
Graphical Cadastral Data (Parcel Maps): Parcel Coverage in Arc/Info export format (*.e00) or ArcView Shapefile.
Tabular Cadastral Data (Attribute Data): FIRST AMERICAN REAL ESTATE SOLUTIONS / EXPERIAN / TRW-REDI cadastral data on CD-ROM. Export data to a dBASE IV format (*.DBF).
Point of Contact:
Parcel Coverages:
Kristina E. Hursey, Senior Staff Appraiser
Charleston County Assessor's Office
khursey@charlestoncounty.org
Phone: 843-958-4125
Fax: 843-958-4140
Parcel Maps
Initial contact was made with Walt Martin, head of GIS and mapping for Charleston County. Mr. Martin informed OCRM that graphic cadastral data in the form of parcel maps would be available for the entire county sometime during summer of 1999. He stated that the county was in the process of completing it's parcel coverages and was working in a counterclockwise fashion. Mr. Martin seemed to think that the beachfront areas would be completed by sometime in the spring to summer of 1999. This graphical parcel data will be made available to OCRM when it is completed, but not before then. The data will be available as Arc/Info coverages that could be exported as *.e00 files and saved to a data tape or CD-ROM. As this data type is consistent with what OCRM is currently able to read, the data transfer should take place with relative ease. The coverages OCRM will receive should contain attribute information that has the TMS number for each parcel. This common field will be used to link this graphical data to the tabular cadastral database, which will also contain a field with TMS number. The *.e00 file will be imported into ArcView using the "import71" program found in the programs list under ESRI/ArcView/Import71. This program will import the *.e00 file and create an ArcInfo coverage of it. The coverage can then be converted to a shapefile. This will solve several problems associated with large datasets. A shapefile will have a much smaller file size, will have less individual files to keep up with, and will cut down on computer draw time. The entire parcel coverage is estimated to be greater than 130,000 parcels. This file may be too large to deal with efficiently, so it may need to broken down in to smaller units i.e.) individual islands.
Attribute Data
Property ownership data for Charleston County is maintained by the county tax assessors office. Fortunately, Charleston County gives their cadastral data to a contractor called First American Real Estate Solutions (formally Experian, formally TRW-REDI). First American takes the counties' cadastral data and puts out both hard copy tax map books and CD-ROMs. OCRM used to receive the tax map books. These books contained tax maps and ownership data, but were difficult to use and impossible to get into a digital format in a reasonable amount of time. In January '98, OCRM started receiving the CD-ROMs with the county tax assessors data from First American. These CD-ROMs have tax data in a digital format that can easily be extracted and appended to the existing cadastral database. The CD-ROMs are updated every month, which eliminates the problem of keeping data current. Following is the methodology used to extract cadastral data from the CD-ROMs and append it to OCRM's existing database.
Open the Win2data for Windows program from the shortcut on the desktop. When the program opens, a search window will appear on the screen. Make sure Charleston County is selected from the county menu. Then build a search by selecting the appropriate city in the city menu. It is suggested that the cadastral data be extracted island by island. This will produce smaller datasets with which to work. For example, if you wanted to extract all the parcels on Folly Beach, select Folly Beach under the city lookup table. Once the city is selected, choose "begin search". The program will search the CD for all parcels on Folly Beach and return a list of them. To make sure all parcels are covered in your search, you may want to include surrounding areas in the search also. In this case, you may want to include James Island as well. To do this, after selecting Folly Beach, choose add to list. Then choose James Island and add it to the list. At the bottom of the window, both cities should be selected. Now a search will return parcels in both areas. Once the search is done, a list of parcels will appear. Only certain fields are displayed in this list, though many fields exist for this data set. To extract all the parcels returned by the search, choose "select all" from the summary menu. Then choose "export to file" from the file menu. This command will bring up a window from which you will build the export function. Then follow the following steps.
The next step is to open Microsoft Access from the icon on the desktop. Open a new database file in Access by choosing the "New Database" from the File pull-down. Click OK and a new file "db1.mdb" will be created. Then import the *.dbf (dBASE IV) file you just created from the above exercise (ex. "98dewees.dbf" from the e:\data directory) by choosing the "Import" option from the File pull-down. This will let you browse the directories to find the file you are looking for and import the new database file, which will be listed in the database dialog box. Go to the design button, and change the APN field, on the next screen, from "number" to "text" by using the pull-down arrow on the right side of that field. Close all the windows except the database dialog box. Now export this database file as a dBASE IV file with the same name, in this case (98dewees.dbf) by choosing "export" from the file menu. Say "yes" to overwrite the existing file. This completes the modification of the cadastral data file and it will automatically be linked to the planimetric data in the ArcView project.
This next paragraph can be skipped unless you need to add a new table to the ArcView Project File. Charleston County cadastral tables already exist in the built project and will be automatically updated when you complete the above procedures.
If a table has to be added to the ArcView project, follow the below steps for adding a new table.
This tabular data can be added to the existing project for Charleston County under the Hurricane Project. From the project window, select tables. Click on "add". This will prompt you to add a new table. Then add the *.dbf file you created as a new table. Once the new table is added, it might be wise to change the field names so they will be more easily recognized. This can be done by making the table active, and selecting table properties from the pull down menu. A list of fields will appear at the bottom with check marks next to each. Here an alias name can be substituted for the field name. Also, fields that do not need to be displayed can be hidden from view by turning off the check mark in front of the field to be hidden. Once this is done the table is ready to be linked or joined to the existing cadastral data. Linking can be done the same way as the Edisto dataset by relating common fields, in this case tax map numbers (TMS or APN). Joining the datasets together is also an option. This is also done by relating a common field (tax map number) and appending one table to the other. The procedure is identical to linking except you choose join instead of link and always have the table you want to append to selected. So in this case, you want to join the 1998 cadastral data to the existing data by the tax map number. This will enable you to access the owner information by performing an identify procedure. Go back to the project window and select rename from the edit menu. Rename the table to the appropriate island database and year the data was updated. For example, "1998 Dewees Cadastral Data".
This procedure should be done for each beachfront community in Charleston County. Performing a search for all the parcels on each island and exporting each to a separate file that can be added to the county project as individual tables is the best way to go about updating the cadastral data for Charleston County.
Beaufort County (Dafuskie, Fripp, Hunting, Harbor, excluding Hilton Head)
Graphical Cadastral Data (Parcel Maps): Parcel Coverage in Arc/Info export format (*.e00) or ArcView Shapefile.
Tabular Cadastral Data (Attribute Data): Tax Assessors Database file in ASCII Text Format.
Property Information Module on the Internet (Parcels): http://maps.co.beaufort.sc.us/isa/parcels/
Point of Contact:
Parcel Coverages:
Parcel Maps
Intital contact was made with Dan Morgan. Mr. Morgan informed OCRM that parcel level data was available and that OCRM could obtain this data at no cost. This parcel data is in an ArcInfo coverage format that could be exported to an exchange file (*.e00) for reproduction. The *.e00 file could then be saved on an 4mm tape and mailed to OCRM. Because the Beaufort SAMP (Special Area Managment Plan) also needed Beaufort County parcel data, a cooperative effort between the Certification staff and the Planning staff resulted to obtain the areas of Beaufort County where parcel data was needed. Fred Phillips had already made contact with the appropriate people in Beaufort and thus facilitated the data exchange. The GIS department simply made an exchange file and wrote it to a 4mm data tape. OCRM was able to read the 4mm tape at the NOAA Coastal Services Center. The files were extracted from the tape and consisted of two (*.e00) files (Roads and Parcels). These files were then imported into ArcInfo using the import command. The coverages were then opened as themes in ArcView and then saved as Shapefiles so they would be more manageable (smaller file size). These shapefiles were then saved to the data directory (../data/bftroads and bftcoprcl). The road data contains all the attribute information needed for identifying road names. The parcel data, however; only contains the PIN (Parcel Identification Number) field in the attribute table. This field is used to link the parcel data to the attribute data that is derived by the tax assessor's office. So the next step is to obtain the attribute data. The parcel and road shapefiles were added to the beaufort county project under the Hurricane Project. Within that project they were added as new themes to each view (island). They were placed as the last theme in the themes list so that everything else draws on top of the lot lines. This parcel data includes all the parcels in Beaufort County, excluding Hilton Head Island. Hilton Head maintains its own parcel data.
Attribute Data
The attribute data consisting of property ownership information for Beaufort County is maintained by the tax assessor's office. The contact person for this data is Marilyn Reid. OCRM produced a map showing the areas where cadastral data was needed. In this case the beachfront areas were included along with the areas needed by the Planning section. All the cadastral data in these areas were written to a 4mm tape and sent to OCRM. All data were read off the tape at the NOAA Coastal Services Center. This was in a comma delimited text format, but had no column header information. A hard copy metadata document was faxed to OCRM describing the various fields (columns) that existed in this database. There were two files (prhill.txt and hrhill.txt) that were read off the tape. They were e-mailed to OCRM and saved into the d:\beaufort co directory on the Dell computer. There the files could be accessed by double-clicking on them from file manager. A text editing program called WordPad opens up the files. These files had no header information with them, so they had to be added in this text editor. This is done by inserting a line at the beginning of the file. This line contained all the column names. The header information needs to be entered in a specific format. For example: "Address", "Name", etc... The name is in quotes and each name is separated by a comma. This was then saved. Next the text file can be added as a table into the ArcView Hurricane project for Beaufort County. This is done by clicking on the table document button. Click the add button. Then under the file type, select text. Then go to the correct directory and select the file. ArcView will read the comma delimited text file and add it as a table to your project. All header information is there also. Now export the entire table by making the table active. Go to the file menu end select export. This will give you the option of exporting this table as a *.dbf file (common dBASE file). Then name the file and specify where it should go and then select ok. A copy of the *.dbf file should be kept in the d:\beaufort directory. An additional copy should be made in the data directory as 98bftprcl.dbf. Next, close the table and delete it from the project. Add the 98bftprcl.dbf table you just created in the same manor and save the project with that table added. Now the process of linking can begin.
The 98bftprcl.dbf table should be renamed from the project window. Select edit and rename the table "1998 Beaufort Cadastral Data". This attribute table will be linked to the parcel data by the tax map number. This is done by opening up the table for the beaufort parcel data theme. With both tables open, select the PIN field. Then with one table active select the link option from the table menu. Then make the other table active and do the same thing. Now the tables are linked and when you select a parcel on the map, the parcel on the cadastral table will be highlighted as well.
Property Information Module on the Internet
Beaufort County has just recently developed a web based query system
for locating parcel and property ownership information. The URL is
http://maps.co.beaufort.sc.us/isa/parcels/
This
application enables the user to enter in the either the tax map number,
the owners name, or street address. The map will then display the
parcel and the attribute data is also displayed. This database can
be used for the OCRM Post-Hurricane Recovery Project for determining property
ownership for parcels in Beaufort County without OCRM having to keep the
database updated annually. This database is maintained and updated
daily and includes the most accurate property data available for Beaufort
County.
Beaufort County (Hilton Head Island)
Graphical Cadastral Data (Parcel Maps): Parcel and Road Coverage in Arc/Info export format (*.e00) or ArcView Shapefile.
Tabular Cadastral Data (Attribute Data): Tax Assessors Database file in ASCII Text Format.
Property Information Module on the Internet (Parcels): http://maps.co.beaufort.sc.us/isa/parcels/
Point of Contact:
Parcel Coverages:
Parcel Maps
Initial contact was made with Rich Hamilton regarding the request for the Hilton Head Parcel data. Hilton Head Island has a separate GIS Department that is responsible for mapping parcels. The platform for their GIS is the same as Beaufort County. There parcel data is an ArcInfo coverage. The attribute data only contains the PIN (Parcel Identification Number) that is used to link to the tax assessors data.
In order for OCRM to receive the parcel data from Hilton Head we had to sign an electronic data distribution and exchange policy. This policy basically states that OCRM will not distribute this data freely or alter it in anyway and provide false data to any party. A copy of this policy is in the Hurricane Project file drawer under Hilton Head. This ArcInfo coverage was exported as an ArcInfo interchange file (*.e00). It was imported into ArcView using the Import71 program. The coverage was then added to the Beaufort County Project under the Hurricane Project as a new theme in the Hilton Head view. Once in there, it was converted to a shapefile and saved in the data directory as hiltprcl.shp. This makes the file size smaller and easier to deal with. A smaller subset of the Hilton Head parcel data was made to only include the parcels along the immediate beachfront. This was done by simply highlighting the parcels along the beach and saving them as a new shapefile called hiltset.shp. This shapefile still contains the PIN (Parcel Identification Number) field that can be linked to the cadastral data.
Tabular Cadastral Data
The corresponding attribute data for the Hilton Head Parcel data is part of the Beaufort County Tax Assessor's files. The same method for adding the assessor's files to the ArcView project was used as the rest of the Beaufort County parcel data. Then a link was established between the Hilton Head parcels and the attribute data by the Tax Map Number or (PIN) field. This link was established using the same method as the Beaufort County Parcel data. A subset of the assessor's file could be made to only include attribute data for Hilton Head Island. This could be done by selecting all the parcels on Hilton Head. With the link established, the corresponding attribute data will be highlighted as well. Then the highlighted rows (individual parcel) could be exported as a new table. This table could then be added to the project. This way a smaller subset of the entire database is available to be used when working with Hilton Head. This smaller dataset will be easier to work with as it will contain fewer number of parcel records.
Property Information Module on the Internet
Beaufort County has just recently developed a web based query system
for locating parcel and property ownership information. The URL is
http://maps.co.beaufort.sc.us/isa/parcels/
This
application enables the user to enter in the either the tax map number,
the owners name, or street address. The map will then display the
parcel and the attribute data is also displayed. This database can
be used for the OCRM Post-Hurricane Recovery Project for determining property
ownership for parcels in Beaufort County without OCRM having to keep the
database updated annually. This database is maintained and updated
daily and includes the most accurate property data available for Beaufort
County.
Georgetown County (Debidue, Pawleys, Litchfield, Huntington, Garden City South)
Graphical Cadastral Data (Parcel Maps): Parcel and Road Coverage in Arc/Info export format (*.e00).
Tabular Cadastral Data (Attribute Data): Tax Assessors Database file included in the parcel coverage attribute table.
Point of Contact:
Parcel Coverages:
Parcel Maps
Initial contact was made with Chip Balthis regarding the request for the most recent parcel data available for Georgetown County. Mr. Balthis informed OCRM that Georgetown County would be willing to give OCRM their parcel data at no cost. The parcel data is in an Arc/Info coverage format (polygon coverage). Each individual parcel represents one polygon. In addition, the Georgetown County parcel coverage also has attribute data attached to it. Therefore, for each parcel there is also property ownership information. This eliminates the problem of having to link the coverage to a separate database by tax map number. The parcel data was exchanged via CD-ROM with both the entire parcel coverage of the county and for the area east of SC-17. In addition, a very accurate roads coverage was included on the CD-ROM. OCRM found that having the entire coverage worked better for translating the data to meet our needs. Arc/Info export formats did not seem to work, probably because the number of polygons in these files exceeded the maximum number allowed by PC-Arc/Info.
The data was copied off the CD-ROM on to the computer hard drive and another copy was written to a recordable CD for archive purposes, which is kept in the Hurricane Project File under Georgetown County. Once the coverages were copied, the parcel coverage east of SC-17 and roads coverage were opened in ArcView as themes, and then converted to shapefiles to decrease to total file size and to make the dataset more manageable. The shapefiles were then saved to the data directory as "georgest" (roads) and "gtwnprcl" (parcels). From this location they were added to the individual views in the Georgetown County project of the Hurricane Project. The parcel data could then be used to link the structural inventory to, as well as the erosion control inventory. The parcel data does not have a building footprint associated with it so it is hard to tell exactly where the building is on each lot in relation to the setback line, but the dataset is up to date and gives property ownership information for each parcel on the beachfront. In addition, at a later date OCRM obtained the entire county parcel file as an Arc/Info export file. This was also converted to a shapefile and added to the Hurricane Project as a layer. This shapefile is called "gtwnwhol" and exists in the data directory.
Attribute Data
All the attribute data for the Georgetown County parcel data is in the same directory as the *.dbf files. This dataset can be used for querying information such as owners name and address, etc.. Converting the original coverages to shapefiles kept all the attribute data intact. The *.dbf files were added to the project as new tables. These tables can be opened in Arc/View and used like normal tables. A link can be established between the parcel attribute table and the parcel polygons. This is done by clicking on a parcel. The parcel polygon will be highlighted and the corresponding attribute data will be highlighted in the table.
Horry County (N. Myrtle, Myrtle, Garden City, Surfside, etc...)
Graphical Cadastral Data (Parcel Maps): Parcel and Road Coverage in Arc/Info Coverage format.
Tabular Cadastral Data (Attribute Data): Tax Assessors Database file in ASCII Text Format.
Point of Contact:
Parcel Coverages:
Mr. Joey Wilson
ESRI-Charlotte
Suite 11
8000 Corporate Center Drive
Charlotte, NC 28226-4462
Phone: (704) 541-9810
Parcel Maps
Initial contact was made with Mr. Eddie Batten of the Horry County Tax Assessors Office. Mr. Batten agreed to give any available graphical and tabular tax data that OCRM requested for the Hurricane Recovery Project. The acquisition of graphical data from Horry County soon became a near impossible task. The GIS software currently being used by Horry County to manage the tax data is an older version of Microstation Intergraph. The only way to write data out to be distributed is on a reel to reel tape. Other avenues to achieving this graphical tax data were sought upon this realization.
Contact was made with Joey Wilson at ESRI in Charlotte, NC. ESRI had received some of the Horry County parcel data from the town of Myrtle Beach. This data originated from Horry County and was first given to the Wacammaw Regional Planning Agency in Georgetown, SC. The Wacammaw Regional Planning Agency contracted out their GIS work to a company that converted the Intergraph data to an ArcInfo coverage. However, some of the attribute data (property ownership data) was lost in this conversion. The Wacammaw Regional Planning Agency was contacted by OCRM but no cooperative data exchange agreement was established. The Wacammaw Regional Planning Agency gave the coverage to the City of Myrtle Beach (David Fuller). Myrtle Beach then worked with ESRI to fix the gaps that were inherent in the data's attribute tables. ESRI gave a copy of this coverage to OCRM via CD-ROM. This data seemed to also have gaps in the coverage as well as the attribute tables and was not a complete data set. Then Joey Wilson informed OCRM of another person that worked with the Wacammaw Regional Planning Agency on the conversion of the Intergraph data. Joe Burch now works with Horry County Schools in Conway, SC. Joe Burch sent OCRM another version of the parcel coverage. This version had no gaps in the graphical part but still have some gaps in the tabular attribute data. It was then decided to get the original tabular data (property ownership data) from the tax assessors office and attempt to establish a link to the parcel data at a later time. The final parcel data used was a series of ArcInfo coverages of different segments of coastal Horry County. The data came to OCRM via a Zip Disk. It was read off the disk and opened in ArcView 3.0a. Each coverage was converted to a shapefile. Then using an Avenue Script, the individual shapefiles were merged together to form one shapefile of the land parcel data for the coastal areas of Horry County. This shapefile was then added to the Horry County project under the Hurricane Project as a theme. This shapefile resides in the data directory as "horprcls". An additional file, Horry County Roads coverage was included on the disk Joe Burch sent OCRM. This file was also converted to a Shapefile and resides in the data directory as "horrys". This roads shapefile seems to be TIGER and is not very accurate at a small scale. It should only be used as a reference.
Attribute Data
The property ownership information associated with the Horry county parcel data coverage had data gaps in it. An attempt was made to obtain the original tabular data directly from the county tax assessor's file. This process was started in December, 1997 with a trip to Conway, SC. Because the county could only write out a limited amount of data to a 5 1/4" floppy disk, only the beachfront parcels were sought after. A buffer was drawn around the beachfront parcels in the county assessors Microstation Intergraph file to select only those parcels. Then the attribute data was extracted for those parcels into a set of delimited text files. These files were then saved on four 5 1/4" floppy disks and sent to OCRM. Only one file will be used in the hurricane project. This file includes all parcel ownership data. This data was copied from the disks and opened in a text editor like Word Pad. Here a line was inserted at the top of the file to indicate header information. The header info. came with a data description printout that was received with the disks. This data description was filed in the Hurricane Recovery Project file under Horry County. The header info was added and the file was saved. The file was then brought in to Microsoft Excel as delimited text. The file was then saved as a *.dbf file format (prclpnts.dbf). This format can be imported into ArcView as a new table. This is the next step. The parcel database was brought into the Hurricane Recovery Project in the Horry County project file (prclpnts.dbf). This was done by adding it as a new table. Then a theme was created from the table by choosing Add Event Theme from the theme menu. ArcView then prompts the user to choose which table to add as an event theme. Two of the fields in the parcel database is the X and Y state plane coordinates of the center of all the parcels in the database. By choosing Add Event Theme and then choosing the parcel database (prclpnts.dbf) ArcView then asks for the fields to use a the coordinate values. The X and Y coordinate fields were used to create a new points theme plotting the locations of all the parcel centroids. This theme was then converted to a shapefile and added as a permanent theme to the Horry County Project.
Later, this parcel database (prclpnts.dbf) proved to be too large and cumbersome, so it was broken up into thirds. The southern section of Horry County beachfront as one file (southprc.dbf), the middle section as another (midprc.dbf), and the northern section as the third (northprc.dbf). These three databases are all located in data directory as shapefiles that were created from each of these files. The shapefiles have the same name but with *.shp extensions. Then each of these shapefiles were added to the appropriate island view and will serve as parcel centroid points to which hot-links and databse links can be made.
The database for these parcel centroids was the most recent file the county tax assessor had as of the beginning of 1998. The fields for this database are as follows, including abbreviations and description.
NEWTMS - New Tax Map Number
OWNNAME - Owners Name
C_OADD - Care Of Address
MAILADD - Mail Address
CITY - City
STATE - State
ZIP - Zip code
AREASQFT - Total Area (Square Feet)
MRKTVAL - Market Value
USECODE - Land Use Code
ST_ - Street Address
ST_SUF - Street Suffix
STDIR - Street District
OLDTMS - Old Tax Map Number
XCOORD - X coordinate (state plane)
YCOORD - Y coordinate (state plane)
LINK - $ Occurrence Linkage for Intergraph
NEW METHODS FOR FUTURE UPDATES
Each of the five beachfront county's tax assessors offices were contacted with a formal letter from OCRM on July 16, 1999 asking if they would cooperate in a data exchange program in the event of a land falling hurricane or other disaster in that particular county. This method involves requesting the most up-to-date tax data following a hurricane for updating OCRM's cadastral information base. Since hurricane strikes are so infrequent, updating OCRM's database is not necessary every year. Instead updates would be made on an as needed basis. For example, if Charleston County were to be hit by a storm, OCRM would immediately request the most recent updates from the Charleston County Tax Assessor. A system will be set up before hand to make this data exchange rapid and without delay. The Charleston County Tax Assessor's office would have set up a program to create a digital file with all the necessary parcels that are in OCRM's jurisdiction and containing the necessary field of information. This program has already been tested and has been successful. All that has to be done is for OCRM to contact the Assessor's Office and make a formal request for the digital data and the data would be sent via e-mail or disk to OCRM. OCRM would then update their database with this information. This process will ultimately save time and effort in keeping the OCRM cadastral database updated and ensures that an accurate cadastral base will be used in a post-hurricane recovery situation.
Contacts thus far for performing this "as needed cadastral update"
Charleston County
Kristina E. Hursey, Senior Staff Appraiser
Charleston County Assessor's Office
khursey@charlestoncounty.org
Phone: 843-958-4125
Fax: 843-958-4140
Beaufort County
Dan Morgan
Beaufort County GIS
100 Ribaut Road
Beaufort, SC 29902
(843) 525-7139
Marilyn M. Reid
Operations Support Tech
Beaufort County Data Processing
100 Ribaut Road
Beaufort, SC 29902
(843) 525-7504
Fax: (843) 525-7324