Creation of Land Information System for Milwaukee County, Wisconsin

This paper provides a case study of the creation of a parcel‐based land information system for a large metropolitan county. The paper describes the structure of the system and the technical specifications used in its creation; the attendant costs; the institutional structure created to implement the system utilizing a combination of public and private funding sources; and the work accomplished to date toward completion of the system, including work on the required remonumentation of the U.S. Public Land Survey system, on the required horizontal and vertical control surveys, on the large‐scale topographic and cadastral mapping, and certain related activities. The project provides for the creation over time of a decentralized parcel‐based land information system in which individual participants add their own data to a common automated base map and under which that map becomes the medium through which a broad range of data can be readily exchanged between all of the participants.