Mill Valley, CA -- Congress appropriated Community Development Block Grants funds to assist states to develop and implement long-term recovery plans for communities ravaged by Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma. HUD's Office of Policy Development & Research (PD&R) is implementing an exploratory research project to determine the feasibility of spatially correlating, at the neighborhood, block, and individual parcel level, damage extent data with damage recovery data.

This work is leveraging the advanced address matching techniques offered by HUD's Geocoding Service Center (GSC). Any data set that has address information can be geocoded to create new value-added information and enable users to combine their data with other data sets across program areas. To make all this happen, in June, 2006 HUD issued a RFQ to obtain "standardized parcel level geography and normalized core attributes linked to the parcel ID for several counties in AL, LA, FL, MS and TX that were affected by Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma. "

Boundary Solutions, Inc. (www.boundarysolutions.com) and GIS Consultants were retained as the supplier to - - "complete and make publicly accessible a spatially enabled parcel data layer that can be used to support HUD's long-term planning for hurricane affected areas in the Gulf region." Furthermore, "The vendor will ensure, to the extent, possible, that the data structure enables the ability to migrate to a standardized national parcel layer and the geo-services as envisioned by the Federal Geographic Data Committee."

HUD's efforts will be enabled by parcel data acquired from BSI's National ParcelMap Data Portal for Gulf Coast areas. For some problem areas, the data were incomplete and suffered from address and other attribute inconsistencies and shortfalls. BSI / GISC successfully enriched and normalized parcel addresses, making each data model compliant with BSI 's National ParcelMap Data Portal digital parcel map database standard. HUD PD&R is now matching local, state, and federal address-based data with the standardized parcel data. HUD PD&R is optimistic that the experiment will provide a sound basis for improved geocoding and address matching capabilities within HUD and will assist its efforts to meet the objectives laid out by Congress. The address matching capability developed for this project is already being used to create new business and research opportunities within HUD.
                                    
About Boundary Solutions
Boundary Solutions Inc. assembled the most extensive database of parcel map data available from jurisdictions throughout the United States. As of March 2006, a total of 51 million parcels from 405 jurisdictions are normalized and ready for download. Terms and conditions for digital parcel map database acquisition and updates are in place for 450 more jurisdictions, a total of 86 million parcels representing coverage for up to 95% of the nation's land transaction activity. Regardless of source format, all content is subjected to over 25 modifications and metric recordings to assure universal internal consistency makes it possible for an application that works in Seattle also works in St. Pete. Boundary Solutions Inc. was awarded U.S. Patent 7,092,957, entitled "Computerized National Online Parcel-level Map Data Portal. " Claims include multi- jurisdictional search to locate an address by displaying its corresponding digital parcel map boundary. The patent relates back to the original provisional patent application filing date of January 18, 2002. Boundary Solutions, BSI, Boundary Solutions logo, National ParcelMap Data Portal, NPDP, and Rooftop Accuracy are trademarks of BSI. All other trademarks and company names mentioned are the property of their respective owners.