The Open Parcel Project is an initiative of the Urban Analytics Lab at Berkeley’s Department of City and Regional Planning. We use parcel data for our research in realms such as land-use projection, accessibility, and visualization. For example, over the past couple of years we worked with regional government agencies here in the Bay Area to put together a parcel-level UrbanSim land-use model for regional planning purposes. We’ve also developed a prototype 3D visualization tool called UrbanVision to visualize parcel data. If you poke around the Internet for references to our director Prof. Paul Waddell you’ll get the idea.
We really want a nationwide consolidated, standard parcel database with limited restrictions on redistribution that can be improved by data users and suffice as a sturdy base layer for parcel-level work. We believe that the demand for parcel data and it’s current level of availability represent an opportunity to form a parcel data community concerned with building and maintaining an open nationwide (global?) consolidated parcel database.
