• Locations of food pantries that partner with the Greater Boston and Worcester County Food Banks to provide free meals during the crisis.
• More than 1,400 grab and go meal pickup locations in the state coordinated by Project Bread for kids and teens ages 0-18. Project Bread is working with the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and many schools and community partners to provide families with access to school meals while schools are closed. MassGIS is working with MEMA and Project Bread to facilitate continuing updates to the meal site listings.

1. MassGIS receive a Standard compliant annual parcel dataset. If a mapping update is not undertaken in any one year, submitting a current ‘MassGIS standard” extract from the assessing database is required.
2. As new addresses are adopted (or existing ones change or are retired) MassGIS must be notified of the change. Most cities and towns have process for distributing address updates both internally and to outside organizations (post office, utilities); MassGIS simply needs to be added to the distribution list. If no existing notification system exists, whomever is the addressing authority in the community will notify MassGIS about the new address and its location.

As previously announced, the streaming Google orthoimagery service subscription expires May 26th. Google has discontinued the program and diverse imagery needs in Massachusetts are best met, for now, with imagery owned by the state. Most recently these needs were met with a multi-agency funding model in partnership with the US Geological Survey. This resulted in the 2019 orthoimagery.

With funding from the State 911 Department, Google’s orthoimagery was provided by MassGIS to licensed users (everyone else could view for free online). Google contractors flew the planes, captured and processed the photographs, then made them available to MassGIS via Applied Geographics’ GIZA Tile Serving Appliance. Per Google licensing requirements, MassGIS created and managed accounts for eligible users, usually one per municipality or for companies doing work on their behalf. Licensed users consumed the imagery using different types of software clients such as desktop GIS, desktop CAD and web GIS. While the imagery did not always meet everyone’s needs, as documented below, this program was nonetheless successful; it also filled a void at a time when state agency funding was not available.

How successful was this program?

• Over 210 million requests were received by the platform via WMTS or WMS
• These streaming requests represent over 32 terabytes of data
• 311 organizational accounts were created
• 25 flights (each flight was a portion of the state) were license, capturing imagery from 2013-2018

Have you ever noticed a mistake in the roads data we use in our basemaps and distribute for the Massachusetts Department of Transportation? We often hear from users about these errors and then iron things out with the GIS team at MassDOT. From now on these errors can be reported directly to MassDOT staff that do the editing by using the new Roadie (Road Inventory Error Reporter) Tool.

• MassDEP Tier Classified Oil and/or Hazardous Material Sites (MGL c. 21E)
• MassDEP Oil and/or Hazardous Material Sites with Activity and Use Limitations (AUL)