Frontenacmaps – for resident, municipalities, and tourists alike

Jeff Green | Dec 15, 2010

One of the first official acts of the newly elected warden of Frontenac County was to officially launch the public version Frontenac Maps, marking a coming of age of sorts for the Global Information Systems (GIS) project in Frontenac County.

Now located online at Frontenacmaps.ca is a digital map of the entire county. Using a viewer, people can now get a picture of the county as a whole, and can zoom in to bring up aerial photography in detail of buildings, roads, ball - fields, shorelines, trails and more.

The aerial photography was done two years ago by the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, and along with baseline mapping data it makes up the base level of the new system.

While local municipalities have access to planning and zoning data as well as roll numbers and tax data, the public version of the map is less elaborate, but it does include lot lines, rights of way, and other information.

Over time, the county plans to work with lake associations, the Frontenac Stewardship Council, and tourist organizations to put more and more layers of information on the map, so it will be able to give a visual picture of the county and the local communities.

“There are other Counties that are years ahead of us on this, but at least we have made a real start, and we have something that people can use now,” said Joe Gallivan, the Director of Sustainability Planning for Frontenac County.

A county-wide GIS project has been in the planning stages for several years, but since the different townships were at different stages of development for their own global information projects, it wasn’t until the summer of 2009 that a co-ordinated approach was approved.

With funding coming from a National Gas tax rebate to the county, and approved through the county’s Integrated Sustainability Plan, a GIS intern was hired to oversee the project in 2010. The municipalities have had access to the mapping data for planning purposes since early this fall, and now the public can see the maps as well.

Joe Gallivan said that as part of the project, printable .pdf versions of maps will be easily downloadable from the Frontenacmaps.ca site as well.

The magnification is detailed enough to show large and small bodies of water, even vehicles that happened to be parked at locations on the day the aerial mapping was done.

Frontenacmaps.ca was available to the public as of yesterday, December 15.

Unfortunately for some, a high speed Internet connection is necessary to use the mapping without facing excessive delays.