West Virginia Goes High Tech in State Maps

Got a boundary dispute with a neighbor or a spat with the tax man?

Log on to the Internet and find out who’s right. A virtual flyover will show the nearest coal seam or mineral deposit and who can lay claim to it.

It may sound farfetched, but it’s only a few years from reality.

The map of the future is already online at West Virginia University’s Geographic Information System Technical Center.

Gov. Cecil Underwood dedicated the technical center in May, praising it as the eventual solution to 40 years of controversy about how coal and other natural resources are mapped and taxed.

“We’re rapidly coming to the place where maps can serve all purposes. And the nice thing about this one is we don’t have to learn how to fold it,” Underwood said.

Geographic Information Systems, or GIS, is a $10-billion industry in the United States, with growing use by the private and public sector, Underwood said.

West Virginia is one of three states converting all of its printed maps to digital online versions. Florida and Ohio are the others.

Trevor Harris, chairman of the university’s Department of Geology and Geography, believes West Virginia’s task is the most daunting because of the contour of the land. There are extreme changes in elevation, and mountains are close to one another. Florida, by contrast, is largely flat with a clearly defined coastline, he said.

The digital maps are far more accurate then their predecessors, making them valuable to both the private and public sectors, Harris said. They also will help the state Department of Tax and Revenue develop more detailed tax maps.

“Traditionally, we depended on verbal descriptions: Go to this nearest tree, find this big stone and follow the stream,” Harris said. “Now those trees and stones are gone.”

The U.S. Geological Survey drills into the ground for samples and helps plot the location of minerals, Harris said. Their findings, including the thickness and quality of deposits, are overlaid onto landscapes and maps that show elevations and all other aspects of the terrain. The result is a three-dimensional, moving map.

The maps also will incorporate economic and census data.

They will change the state tax system because “people will be able to see the area they’re responsible for and what their tax rate is based on,” Harris said.

And the Internet makes them accessible to almost everyone.

“No longer will data sit in one room or in one computer,” he said.

Some private companies are already taking advantage of the center, with one pipeline firm seeking advice on how to minimize the visibility of its line to nearby communities.

Paper maps from the 1960s and 1970s are replete with mistakes, so technical center staff also rely on satellite images, Harris said.

By 2000, complete GIS data will be available for 33 West Virginia counties, and over the next decade tax officials can coordinate that data with their records, he said.

The technical center was created under the administration of former Gov. Gaston Caperton in 1995 and is funded with nearly $3 million in state money through 2000. The university and the federal government also pay for the project.

West Virginia University’s Geographic Information System Technical Center can be found at https://wvgis. wvu.edu/