Welcome to the City of Alexandria's GIS (Geographic Information Systems) site. The site endeavors to educate the public about Alexandria's current and future uses of GIS technology.  The GIS team strives to bring together accurate and up to date geographic information in an easy to use format, while increasing the efficiency of city government.  Please spend a few minutes browsing our excellent new features, tools, and maps.  Feel free to also take a look at the Quick Links on the right, which contain more maps, data, and other information.  For questions, comments, or suggestions regarding this site, please e-mail us at GISHelp@alexandriava.gov.

GIS Mission Statement
Enable the City to improve communication and decision-making to ultimately better serve the public through the efficient use of Geographic Information.

What's New and Coming Soon in the GIS Division?

• Public Safety Information Gathering Project information now available. Please see the Information Verification page for more information.
• 2013 Standard Maps are now available for purchase and/or download!  Please note that the 2013 Street Map will be available soon. For Standard Maps, which include Tax Maps, please see our Standard Maps page.
• Our Spring 2013 GIS Data DVD is currently available for purchase!  Please see our Available Data page for more information.
• A Document Imaging Viewer is now available with our other dynamic maps on the Interactive Maps page.
  

What is GIS?
GIS is a technology that links geographic information (features) with descriptive information (attributes). GIS can be described as having multiple layers of data assembled into a digital map. GIS is a dynamic service, which means that the user can interact with the map rather than just looking at it.  This greatly increases it’s variety of uses – GIS allows the user to visualize, explore, query, edit, and analyze geographic information.  When you look at our Interactive Maps page, you are interacting with maps built with GIS.  Below is an animated image of how a GIS is built.

One of the most valuable aspects of GIS is how data can be analyzed spatially. Spatial querying is the process of selecting features based on location or spatial relationship. The animated image below illustrates how a user can quickly identify all addresses within 500 feet of a Metro stop.

To learn more about GIS please visit www.gis.com/whatisgis/index.html.

Our Role in Alexandria City Government
GIS is a Division of the Department of Planning and Zoning. The GIS Division is responsible for identifying geographic mapping and analysis needs for the City. Coordination with many city departments, such as Real Estate, Police, Fire, and Transportation & Environmental Services, ensures that geographic data is maintained consistently from a single source. Some examples of this successful coordination include the conversion of hard copy tax maps into digital parcels, analyzing population shifts for the redistricting of the Alexandria Public School Board, and development of a snow mapping application that provides the ability to track the City’s snow removal activities.

GIS 5 Year Strategic Plan
The GIS Strategic Plan is a roadmap for making best use of the City’s investment in GIS technology. GIS has enormous potential to help the City better understand the populations we serve, maintain our infrastructure, more effectively share and analyze information to make decisions, and more clearly communicate with each other and the public. The Strategic Plan was developed with guidance from a committee of senior level decision makers along with GIS power users and GIS staff, and informed by GIS stakeholders citywide.

Click here to view the summary of the Strategic Plan, or click here to view or download an Adobe PDF copy of the GIS Strategic Plan.

For more information or any questions you may have, please contact us by email: GISHelp@alexandriava.gov