With 10,000 visitors a week, the public mapping SAGIS website is one of the city’s most heavily frequented, used by appraisers, Realtors, homeowners and a host of other people interested in geographic data for the county.
The Metropolitan Planning Commission has relaunched SAGIS after taking over hosting duties from its former third-party contractor, BinaryBus, late last week. BinaryBus had maintained the site since its inception in 1998.
“Right now, the whole idea is to take it in house with not a lot of change, get control of the code base, get it up and running and then as we move forward, we can make changes,” said Noel Perkins, SAGIS director at the MPC.
SAGIS, which stands for Savannah Area Geographic Information System, is a Web portal to geospatial data on every parcel of land in Chatham County. In fact, Savannah was the first city in the state to introduce public mapping, even beating Atlanta, according to Perkins.
Users can find information on property appraisals, land sales, flood plains, zoning, soil, evacuation routes and 2010 census data, among hundreds of other morsels of public information. The site is compatible on browsers Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer, though the latter is least preferable.
As for its functionality, a basic parcel search is still the same, Perkins said, using either a PIN or physical address. Pictometry is also available, allowing users to zoom in and see high-definition aerial photography of parcels from multiple angles, similar to Google Earth.
BinaryBus was paid about $15,000 a year to run the site until 2006, when they renegotiated an agreement to only take commission from paid subscriptions for an enhanced version of the site.
In May, however, BinaryBus notified the Metropolitan Planning Commission it would no longer offer hosting services for local governments. After a brief review, the MPC decided it would be most cost effective to bring it in house.
Now, under the MPC’s direction, the site is fully free again to the general public.
“Under our previous agreement with BinaryBus, we did updates once, twice a year and that was it,” said Perkins. “Having control over it, we can do updates when we want, and we can make improvements when we want. We have real control over the website.”
Perkins said it’s not just land owners who use the site.
“Appraisers, engineers, surveyors, planners, the fire departments, I know a couple of the other municipalities benefit from it,” said Perkins. “We get hits from all over the world.”
Later in 2015, Perkins said, they hope to expand SAGIS with even more data, such as adding precincts and polling to make it a one-stop-shop for civic wonks.
“The whole idea is to make it a general government ‘Where can I go?’ map,” said Perkins. “Some of the changes that are presented here are a result of newer, better technology and being able to take advantage of that.
To visit SAGIS, go to www.sagis.org.
