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North Dakota One Call

Mapping

One of the most-often asked questions about North Dakota One Call (NDOC) is “Is there some way of improving the maps used at the call center?” The answer is “Yes!” In 2006, the center undertook a project that resulted in the upgrading of mapping in Cass County.

Here’s some helpful background information: the digital maps used in the call center are obtained from Tele Atlas North America (TANA), one of the largest providers of mapping data in the world. NDOC updates these maps annually with a new statewide set of data. During the update process, we send every facility operator paper maps depicting their notification database in the new base map. That way, the facility operator can make any necessary changes based on new or revised features that appear in the new base map.

The review process occurs on a county-by-county basis. Updated base maps are “turned on” in an individual county after all the facility operators in that county have approved their database. We work through all of North Dakota’s counties in ticket volume order, starting in those counties that have the highest and finishing with those that have the lowest ticket volumes.

Each county’s mapping works independently. As a result, NDOC can use county-wide data sets to replace the TANA layer. Substituting TANA map data with locally-produced data should help improve the center’s base map. This is exactly what was done for Cass County.

Here’s some things to keep in mind if you have a data set you think NDOC might be able to use:

  1. The smallest data set the center can use is a county-wide data set. We do not have the ability to replace city or town sized areas at this time.
  2. The replacement data set should include the following features: interstate, state and local highways, roads, streets, water (rivers, streams, etc.), and railroad tracks. Other features may be helpful. It is essential that address ranges for the roads appear to allow the center to properly search the map.
  3. Features in the data set that you would like us to evaluate should be labeled in a manner consistent with the US Census Bureau’s CFCC codes. More information about these codes can be found at the US Census Bureau’s web site: www.census.gov.
  4. If your organization has a county-wide data set that you would like the center to evaluate, please contact Jim Holzer at 732.394.3001 or via email at jimh@occinc.com.
  5. After talking about your data with you, we may ask for a sample for evaluation. If the data appears usable, we will ask for the entire data set for the county so we can do a “side by side” comparison with existing data.

If you think you have access to usable data, please feel free to contact us so we can explore using it at North Dakota One Call!