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History of GIS
GIS in Rhode Island
Critiquing GIS
Multimedia GIS

The first statewide GIS in Rhode Island was the Environmental Inventory, a project of the Department of Environmental Management that began under Governor Licht in 1972. The Inventory used a crude raster-based method with 200 by 200-meter (ten-acre) cells that made detailed analysis difficult. In addition, the Inventory was plagued with a variety of data collection and coding irregularities that hampered time series analysis. Although development of the Environmental Inventory was finally abandoned in the mid-1980s, the project showed the value of accurate and detailed state-level spatial data. (1)

In 1986, the Department of Environmental Management initiated the Rhode Island Geographic Information System (RIGIS). RIGIS represented a dramatic improvement over the Environmental Inventory. Using vector data encoding, RIGIS coverages are more specific and accurate at a finer scale than the 10-acre raster grid. (2) Funded by the EPA and the state, RIGIS is managed by the Environmental Data Center at the University of Rhode Island and data is made publicly available via the Internet.

While RIGIS is a valuable state-level resource, towns in Rhode Island are rapidly developing GIS capability to guide municipal planning and create more specific town-level data. South Kingstown began a GIS program within its planning department in September 1997 with the hiring of a GIS specialist. In 1996, GIS consulting firm, CDM, digitized the town’s plat lot maps, creating the essential town base map. (3) Since 1997, South Kingstown has integrated data from RIGIS as well as developing its own parcel-level data sets.

At the sub-municipal level, the South Kingstown Land Trust has had GIS capability since 1992. The University of Rhode Island provided extensive support in developing digital data sets of the Land Trust’s holdings. In 1994, ESRI donated ArcView to the Land Trust to make better use of existing local and state spatial data. Currently, the Land Trust uses GIS to assist in evaluating parcels for acquisition, management, and education. (4)

Next section: Developing a critique of GIS

1. The Rhode Island Environmental Inventory: A Working Paper for Land Use 2010 (1989). Providence, RI: Division of Planning: Rhode Island Department of Administration.
2. Ibid.
3. Personal communication with Carol Baker, 12 March 2001; 20 April 2001.
4. Collins, C. and August, P. V. The South Kingstown Land Trust: GIS Supports Grass Roots Conservation. Environmental Systems Research Institute. Accessed 27 April 2001 from the World Wide Web: http://www.esri.com/industries/environment/gis_grass.html