Kern County, California’s Planning and Natural Resources Department uses Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology to maintain the County’s general plan and zoning layers. Matrix was hired to migrate these layers into the Esri Local Government Information Model (LGIM) and to reconcile the represented features with the County Assessor’s GIS parcel database.

Reconciliation required that several issues be addressed. The general plan layer comprised land use and other variables from a number of community plans, some of which predated the Department’s use of GIS. Consequently, not all general plan data were complete or accurate. The zoning layer presented similar problems, including missing data and overlapping and/or shifted parcel boundaries.

With over a quarter million parcels, Matrix developed and executed a critical data improvement workflow in an enterprise geodatabase to allow for multiuser editing and to reconcile and post operations. Principal to this workflow was the development of a topology, or set of rules, that ensures data integrity by flagging areas where the geometry of land use features differs from the actual geometry of parcels. Matrix delivered a comprehensive approach, with persistent discrepancies marked for additional review. The work was instrumental in upgrading system accuracy and functionality and, ultimately, in supporting optimized planning endeavors and informed decision-making.