TECHnology
- Collections Policy working group met and is asking for more member participation
- Completed mini-sprint evaluating IIIF resources
September total monthly visits year over year
September 2026 Program Update
Urban Base Layers: From Pilot to Scalable Practice
More than two years ago, BTAA-GIN began developing the workflows and infrastructure needed to archive geospatial data itself. A series of pilots allowed the program to test approaches to acquiring, processing, documenting, and preserving datasets.
In fall 2025, that groundwork led to the launch of Urban Base Layers, an initiative to regularly collect and collect snapshots of foundational municipal datasets such as zoning, roads, address points, buildings, and administrative boundaries. The project began with four cities and has since expanded to 13. Local GIN members help initiate the work by connecting with municipal GIS staff, deepening connections between member universities and local data providers.
BTAA-GIN now captures municipal datasets before routine updates overwrite previous versions. With annual collecting planned, each successive snapshot will add another point to the historical record, building a collection researchers can use to study how cities change over time. The most recent additions were initiated by Matthew Parsons at the University of Washington, Theresa Quill at Indiana University, Mech Frazier at Northwestern University, and Nicole Scholtz at University of Michigan.
Urban Base Layers puts the warning raised in BTAA-GIN’s award-winning Ephemeral Geodata: An Impending Digital Dark Age research into practice, turning an identified preservation problem into a sustainable response.
Read more: Explore the Urban Base Layers Collection »
BTAA-GIN Urban Base Layers Cities as of Oct 2026
Program Activities
Committees
Community Engagement
- Planning and promoting a Nov 2 Live Demo: Geoportal Search Techniques (1pm CT)
- Lightning talk planned for Nov 12th meeting: focused on AI
Knowledge
- Plan to present research survey results at October Program Team meeting
- Discussions continue about an AI Community of Practice
Coordination
- Committee gave feedback on first draft of 2026 Impact Report
- Held discussion on Geoportal Metadata Planning facilitated by Karen Majewicz, Metadata Coordinator
Workgroups
Workgroups
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BTAA Geoportal
This month by the numbers
Top Google searches leading to the Geoportal
- btaa geoportal
- columbus school district map
- school district map columbus ohio
- franklin county lines
- warren county ohio gis
- allegheny county school district map
- Waifinder
- preble county gis
- red lake reservation map
- ohio physiographic regions
Top internal search keywords
- Sanborn
- hunterdon county new jersey
- fire insurance maps
- Chesapeake
- michigan
- pottstown
- minneapolis
- comparative
Collections
Total records as of September 2026: 147,851
Harvesting Activities
View current harvest operations dashboard.
Web Development
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