GIS


The New Jersey Meadowlands Commission Now Offering District Municipalities
 New High-Tech Tools for Zoning, Planning & Disaster Management
 
 The New Jersey Meadowlands Commission is offering new management and
 planning tools to District municipalities through access to the
 Commission's Geographic Information System (GIS).
 
 GIS is a mapping and land information tool which can provide visually
 explicit information about a town or selected area. The information that
 the Commission is proposing to share will allow local municipalities to
 interactively access information for the purposes of zoning, planning, and
 community safety.  
 
 "This is about smart growth and smart government," said Susan Bass Levin,
 commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs and
 chairman of the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission.  "The cost of such a
 system would be beyond the reach of any one community. Under our
 partnership, this state-of-the-art tool for land use planning is available
 to all."
 
 Through this system various municipal departments including law
 enforcement and fire fighters, will be able to combine detailed land
 information from images taken by satellite with Census 2000 data and local
 municipal contributions and turn these statistics into visual problem
 solving tools.
 
 "This is a cost-effective approach to regional and strategic planning.
 Extending our facilities to the use of local communities in the
 Meadowlands District, and including their input into our GIS development,
 insures that the Meadowlands District information is accurate and useful,"
 said Robert Ceberio, Acting Executive Director of the New Jersey
 Meadowlands Commission.
 
 The New Jersey Meadowlands Commission plans to offer these services to the
 municipalities through a Memorandum of Cooperation that will be entered
 into by individual municipal governments with the New Jersey Meadowlands
 Commission.  The Memorandum will establish a program to share, transfer
 and promote the exchange of information and expertise among District
 municipalities and their planning, zoning, fire department, police and
 public safety offices. The result of the collaboration will be additional
 data that will be of practical advantage to municipal administrations.
 
 "As a former mayor, I know how invaluable this service will be and
 encourage the Meadowlands officials to enter into this partnership with
 us," said Commissioner Levin.
 
 The Meadowlands Environmental Research Institute (MERI) has developed the
 expanded GIS capabilities, which is a collaboration of the New Jersey
 Meadowlands Commission and Rutgers University's Center for Information
 Management, Integration and Connectivity (CIMIC).