Halifax County GIS Coordinator Rob Love has been a one-person department since he took the job almost 11 years ago, but that hasn’t stopped Halifax’s GIS from becoming a leader in GIS design and services. Even financing hasn’t been a limitation.

Love estimates the county has spent less than $100,000 over a decade for a GIS system that displays land parcels, building footprints, voting districts, zoning, and now soils. In fact, Halifax is the first Virginia county to put maps with soil information on the Internet; it was the second Virginia municipality to put up aerial photography of county property, obtained free from the Virginia Base Mapping Program. The GIS team at Anderson & Associates helps by making the information easily available with WebGIS, its customizable application for putting information on line. The county’s GIS now serves the towns of South Boston and Halifax, in addition to numerous businesses and anyone who accesses the Internet. (See http://arcims2.webgis.net/halifax/)

"WebGIS has really created support for our GIS work," Love said. "Once people see how easy it is to access images and information, they understand GIS’s benefits."

But Love’s relationship with Anderson & Associates doesn’t stop there. A year ago, he joined with GIS colleagues in Danville and Pittsylvania County to form Southside GIS Users’ Group (SSGISUG). A&A sponsored the first meeting and was a co-sponsor of SSGISUG’s first annual GIS Expo Nov. 4th. Sixty-six participants from all over Virginia attended workshops, received free GPS training, learned about ArcGIS, and viewed Halifax’s new soil geographic data overlay on WebGIS. Event presentations were broadcast live over the Internet by a Halifax County Schools student group (see www.2gdn.net).

"The Expo opened a lot of eyes about how much GIS activity is going on in Southside – we’re actually doing as much as some Northern Virginia counties. The actions of the users’ group have already resulted in GIS and GPS courses being taught at Danville Community College," Love said.