GIS Case Study
Municipal Parcel & Property GIS — EsriJS GIS Application
A municipal parcel and property information system giving staff and the public a single view of city land records.
Domain
Local Government / Real Estate
Role
GIS Application Developer
At A Glance
What Makes It Work
Interactive parcel mapping built on the ArcGIS Maps SDK for JavaScript
Search by street address, APN or AIN with instant zoom to the parcel
Full parcel attributes: zoning, land use, HOA, assessor map and lot detail
Buffer, measurement and spatial selection tools with CSV export
One view of the city's land records
City land records lived in several places: an assessor's database, a zoning layer maintained by planning, HOA and land-use tables owned by other departments, and an aerial imagery archive. A resident or a staff member asking a simple question, what is the zoning on this parcel, who is the assessor contact, what is within 500 feet of it, had to know which system held which answer. The brief was a single parcel and property information system, usable by staff and by the public, that answered those questions from one map. The constraint was that the authoritative data had to stay where it was: the city was not going to migrate the assessor's records into a new system to make a map work.
Built on the city's existing ArcGIS services
The application is built on the ArcGIS Maps SDK for JavaScript against ArcGIS Server feature services the city already published. That was the decision that made the project practical: the authoritative parcel, zoning and imagery layers are consumed live from their existing services, so the map is always current and no department had to give up ownership of its data. Search is by street address, APN or AIN, with suggestions and instant zoom to the matching parcel. The property locator panel shows the complete attribute record assembled from the underlying layers, zoning, land use, HOA, assessor map reference, in one place. Buffer, distance and area tools work in imperial and metric, and spatial selections export to CSV, which is what staff actually needed for notification mailings and analysis. Layer toggles cover city extent, zoning, aerial imagery and the other operational layers, using the React front end to keep the interface simple despite the number of sources behind it.
Public and staff on the same platform
The same application serves the public counter and the planning department, with the difference handled by which tools and layers are exposed rather than by maintaining two systems. A resident can find their parcel and read its zoning; a planner can buffer it, select every parcel within the radius, and export the list. The outcome for the city was fewer counter enquiries that needed a GIS specialist, and a planning team that stopped requesting one-off maps for routine work. Because it runs on the ArcGIS services the city already licenses and maintains, there was no new data pipeline to operate. This is a common shape for local-government web application development: the hard part is rarely the map, and usually the agreement about which system stays authoritative.
Capabilities
Core Functionality
Address / APN / AIN search with suggestions and result list
Property locator panel showing the complete attribute record
Buffer tool with configurable radius and selected-parcel export
Distance and area measurement across imperial and metric units
Layer toggles for city extent, zoning, aerial imagery and overview map
Building permits, planning approvals and business licence look-ups
Responsive layout usable on desktop and tablet in the field
Technologies
Tools & Stack
Product
From The Working Application
Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
Does this require migrating our parcel data into a new database?
No. The application consumes ArcGIS Server feature services you already publish, so parcel, zoning and imagery layers stay in their authoritative systems and remain owned by the departments that maintain them. The map is always as current as the services behind it.
Can the public and staff use the same application?
Yes, and that is how this one was built. Which tools and layers are exposed is controlled by role, so the public gets search and attribute lookup while staff get buffering, spatial selection and CSV export, all from one codebase.
What search options are supported?
Street address, Assessor's Parcel Number (APN) and Assessor's Identification Number (AIN), each with type-ahead suggestions and instant zoom to the matched parcel. Additional identifiers can be added if your records use them.
Can it export selected parcels for mailings or analysis?
Yes. Spatial selections, from a buffer, a drawn area or a manual pick, export to CSV with the full attribute set, which covers the notification-radius mailings and parcel lists planning departments typically need.
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