About the State-Owned Buildings Map
 The
Providence Plan mapped 1,062 of the 1,700 building
records used as a basis for this project. Also mapped
were 109 buildings from the State's Insurance Building
list and 352 buildings suspected of being state owned
but not yet tied to a specific building record.
The use of detailed aerial photography
lends confidence to the precision of building locations.
However, note that if the "Check" field
contains a 1, this building should be rechecked for
proper placement or for contradictions in Accounts
and Controls and Insurance Office data.
During the project, the original
list of building data was supplemented with records
from several state entities. The Department of Administration
provided a separate listing of state buildings used
for insurance purposes. In particular this list had
some smaller, less valuable structures that were below
the initial $100,000 threshold of concern for the
Controller's purposes. The insurance data was matched
to the Accounts and Controls data using the building
number. This matching provided additional information
including the number of floors in the building and
the outside building material. The Insurance data
also included another source of presumably more accurate
information on: building square footage, use, name
and the state entity occupying the building.
Descrepancies which exist between
these two lists are being rectified during the summer
of 2005 to create one unified list for many uses.
Of particular concern are cases where a single building
number may be used to indicate different buildings.
This may have occurred when demolished buildings have
had their number reassigned to another building. While
the data used by the Providence Plan still contains
these errors, identified concerns have been marked
by a "1" in the "Check" field.
In addition to data from the Department
fo Administration, the RI Airport Corporatation, the
RI Economic Development Corporation and the University
of Rhode Island provided land and building records
from CAD files. The Department of Environmental Management
reviewed and edited data records and mapped points
for their buidings, and DEM provided a recent GIS
file of "open space" land that is owned
or managed by the state.
Building were located through 1)
address-matching, 2) through identification of state
land parcels via municipal GIS files, 3) through use
of of the E911 Sites file, 4) through incorporation
of existing shapefiles of municipal facilities, and
5) through consultation with state managers. All methods
utimately required examination of aerial photography.
The best aerial photography available from the 
RI Geographic Information System (RIGIS) catalog was
used.
There are several reasons why the
remaining buildings have not been identified. Some
of the records have insufficient or conflicting property
details- some of which may be clarified by further
communication with representatives of the state agencies.
Some buildings are not visible on the aerials because
they were demolished, not yet built, too small, or
covered by trees. Some building records will require
municipalities to supply digital parcel maps in order
to identify location.
We hope this helps to explain the
process that was used to identify buildings and the
caveats regarding the maps and data. As always it
is a good idea to verify information with its primary
source when absolute accuracy is essential. Comments
welcome |
