Improving cadastre: Development of a workflow prototype utilizing esri's parcel fabric

The Rapid City/Pennington County, South Dakota, GIS Division has continuously maintained a parcel dataset that was originally created in 1989. Advances in technology and the desire to expand the use of land-based information, requiring highly accurate data, highlighted the need to improve the cadastre. Technical obstacles, such as incorporating and maintaining survey information as well as easily updating related layers, previously hindered this effort. The Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) parcel fabric data model purports to have resolved many of these issues and was the focus of this project. A workflow was developed and an accuracy assessment performed during this study to test these claims. The project successfully addressed the following key factors: (1) conversion of the existing data, (2) maintaining and improving the integrity of the cadastre data over time, and (3) integrating these data with related data layers. Although the workflow was developed for Rapid City, it is scalable and it can be applied by any organization that maintains land records.