METROMAPPING
™
1PRODUCTS AND SERVICES
I. Introduction
The MetroMapping Unit of the Baltimore Metropolitan Council (called "MetroMapping" below) operates on a self-supporting basis. MetroMapping supplies commercial desktop mapping software, digital map products, and offers geographic information system support services. MetroMapping continuously updates the Baltimore BaseMap, a widely used digital street map of the Baltimore Region and surrounding areas. The BaseMap is used to create MetroMapping's Products and Services; it is distributed to outside users for use with MapInfo® or ESRI ArcView software and adapted to specific client needs.
II. Digital Map Products
MetroMapping distributes mapping software and digital street map products created from the Baltimore BaseMap. BaseMap licensing fees are determined by the number of users. Nonexclusive, five-year end user licenses are issued for the BaseMap on the basis of one initial fee payment. Once-per-year updates are available for a percentage of the initial amounts. Yearly revision updating includes map feature updates reported by users to MetroMapping. Specialized map products and rapid, comprehensive map updating services are described below in Section V. The Baltimore BaseMap offers high spatial accuracy and realism for geocoding and mapping applications. It complies with national map accuracy standards at scales of U.S. Geological Survey 7.5 minute quadrangle map sheets. MetroMapping map products have additional performance capabilities not available for standard commercial maps. These include rapid map updating and statistical units used in the marketing, human services, planning, and management fields. User-defined geographic boundaries (e.g., fire, police, school areas) are also maintained. Map products for areas outside the Baltimore BaseMap coverage are derived from MapInfo’s high quality StreetPro® files.
1MetroMapping™ and Baltimore BaseMap™ are trademarks of the Baltimore Metropolitan Council. MapInfo®, MapInfo
Dataset Features that appear
Detailed Streets Lines showing:
All roads (Freeways, Arterials, Local streets,
Collectors, Ramps), with names, alter nate names, and address ranges
Walkways with names and possible address
ranges
Railroads
with names
Hydrographic features (shorelines, rives,
streams, lakes, ponds)
Political boundaries (state, county,
corporate limits)
Miscellaneous (power lines, channels,
runways, park/institution boundaries)
Freeways Freeways only, with names
Arterial Arterials only, with names
Collector Collectors only, with names
Area Fill Polygons showing Estuaries, major reservoirs, parks, and institutions, with names
County County polygons, with names and FIPS codes
Regional Planning District polygons with codes and names 2000 Census Tracts polygons with codes
1990 Census Tracts polygons with codes 2000 Block Groups polygons with codes 1990 Block Groups polygons with codes 2000 Transportation Analysis Zones polygons with codes 1998 Transportation Analysis Zones polygons with codes
ZIP codes polygons with codes and names
1990 Neighborhoods and communities Polygons with codes and names
MetroMapping BaseMap Licensing Fees
(Initial fees. Once-per-year revisions are 25% of these amounts)
One Baltimore
Computer Type County Region1
PC or Workstation2 $1,000 $2,500 Multi-User (2-5) $1,300 $3,250 Multi-User (6-15) $2,000 $5,000 Multi-User (16-25)3 $2,500 $7,250 _____________ Notes:
1 The Baltimore Region includes Baltimore City, Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Carroll, Harford, and Howard counties.
2 For example, BaseMap products used with MapInfo or ESRI’s ArcView software. Contact
MetroMapping for use with other software packages.
Organizations that need timely map updates, require comprehensive and precise map coverage, need to track detailed map feature changes, or that must have specialized end products not available from general purpose digital maps can contract with MetroMapping to obtain end products that meet their specifications. Map updating contracts are established to meet the specific needs of "Update Clients." The BaseMap licensing fees shown above are reduced 65% for Update Clients who contract for continuous map updating within the Baltimore Region. Update Clients who obtain BaseMap products for other areas receive 35% discounts. Those organizations can also share the cost of BaseMap updating with other Update Clients. See Section V below for more information.
Individual layers
Layers of the BaseMap will be sold on a region-wide basis only, not by individual jurisdiction. Each of the following layers is available separately; the first layer ordered will be $100, and each additional layer ordered at the same time will be an additional $50.
TAZ boundaries RPD boundaries
Census tract boundaries (1990) Census tract boundaries (2000) Block group boundaries (1990) Block group boundaries (2000) County boundaries
Shorelines
CDP (census designated place) boundaries Freeways
Two packages of layers are also available: Freeways & arterials, for $150
Freeways, arterials & collectors, for $200
(Arterials and collectors are only available as part of one of the packages, or with the entire BaseMap.)
III. Desktop Mapping Software
MapInfo Professional® is desktop mapping software used by the Baltimore Metropolitan Council, local and state governments in the Baltimore Region, by private businesses, and non-profit organizations. It supports data visualization and analysis in mapped, tabular, and graphed forms. When appropriate maps are available, such as MetroMapping's Baltimore BaseMap, MapInfo geographically codes street addresses to specific locations and links them to various geographic boundaries. MapInfo creates shaded maps from databases, produces publication-quality end products, analyzes census data, and performs many other tasks based on spatial analysis.
MapInfo Professional features a broad range of functionality, along with common user interfaces, map editing, task automation, custom-prepared menus, and data interchange that allows users to move between computer platforms.
Current MapInfo pricing is as follows; subject to change:
MapInfo Professional 7.0, single user (Wiindows) ...$1,495
MapInfo is available in network and multi-user configurations. MapInfo offers other software, maps,
geographic boundaries, demographic data, marketing data products. Contact MetroMapping for
further information.
MetroMapping supplies a full range of MapInfo software and data products. Some examples of MapMaker (a high performance geocoding system of both software and data), MapXtreme (a web-based mapping system), and TargetPro (specialized demographic data and software. Further information is available on request.
IV. Geocoding Services
"Geocoding" links user-supplied data files with street addresses to the BaseMap, or some other file containing geographic reference data. The steps involved include:
A. Standardizing user file street address wording, when necessary. B. Ordering into sequences that facilitate further processing.
C. Linking the ordered file to the BaseMap, and extracting geographic data needed by the user. The end products of MetroMapping's Geocoding Operations are machine-readable files with user-supplied data plus geographic information extracted from the BaseMap. Unsuccessfully processed records are returned in separate files or are added to the files of successfully processed records. Costs for this service are determined as follows:
1. Set-up And Project Administration Fee: $500. -- A one-time charge applied to each geocoding project. When there is an ongoing series of coding activities, with no changes to input file characteristics submitted for processing, this fee is applied once each three-month period.
2. Coding Operations. -- Charges are based on the size of input files. Unit costs decline as file sizes increase, based on increased efficiencies of larger scale processing operations. Record counts are rounded up to the next 1,000 and used in the following table to determine coding operation costs.
Number Of Records Coding Operation Costs
Up to 5,000 $300 flat charge
5,001 to 15,000 $300 + $30/1,000 records over 5,000 15,001 to 50,000 $600 + $20/1,000 records over 15,000 50,001 and above $1,300 + $15/1,000 records over 50,000
3. Special Processing. -- Additional manipulations requested by users, or needed to carry out the Coding Operations themselves, are added to the preceding categories. Fees are based on established MetroMapping consulting rates.
For example, geocoding a file of 100,000 addresses that needs no special processing is priced as follows:
Set-up and administration... $500
Coding operations ... $2,050 <<--- ($1,300 + 50 times $15) Special processing ... none
Total: ... ...$2,550
V. BaseMap Updating Services
MetroMapping provides specialized updating services with the Baltimore BaseMap for organizations that need current, comprehensive, accurate street map products with superior geocoding capabilities.
BaseMap updating services include basic street map maintenance, such as adding new streets and highways, tracking street name changes, incorporating new house numbering, maintaining earlier street names and addressing needed for reliable emergency dispatching. Changes are made for other map features, such as institutions, parks, major power lines, and railroads. Geographic boundary changes are followed, such as annexations or detachments by incorporated towns, and Postal Service ZIP code changes, -- and can lead to BaseMap map feature changes. Statistical and administrative boundaries that follow physical map features are updated as changes in those features take place, keeping them synchronized with the physical world.
Baltimore BaseMap products are generated by MetroMapping on a quarterly basis to meet specific user needs and comply with requirements of their application software. Furthermore, those organizations' operating conventions (such as unique street name abbreviations and boundary delineation rules) are followed to customize MetroMapping map products to be of greatest use. General principles followed when negotiating agreements with Update Clients are listed below. Specific arrangements are made to take unique user needs into account, the existence of updating arrangements with other users, and MetroMapping's needs for cost recovery.
• As was discussed in the section on BaseMap product pricing, MetroMapping reduces license fees to Update Clients. License fees are reduced 65% for Update Clients who contract for map updating within the Baltimore Region. Update Clients for other areas receive 35% discounts.
• Secondly, MetroMapping enters into cost-sharing arrangements when more than one Update Client contracts for quarterly BaseMap maintenance in the same geographic area. This further lowers costs to these organizations and encourages broader use of the BaseMap.
• Cost sharing arrangements are determined at the beginning of each fiscal year (July-to-June). Update Clients who contract with MetroMapping after the start of a year become
participants for the same locale -- drop proportionately.
VI. Custom Mapping Services
MetroMapping has skilled cartographers on its staff. Customers who need specialized map products may take advantage of these skills by having MetroMapping create the maps for them. Maps can be produced in black and white or in color, on paper or on slides, or as "image" files suitable for integration with their own documents.
Costs: $50 per hour, specific estimates provided on request.
VII. Custom Programming Services
MapInfo's strength as a mapping toolkit lies in its comprehensiveness. Its "bells and whistles", however, can distract users away from routine mapping tasks that they need to perform. Fortunately, MapInfo provides a solution: the MapBasic programming language.
MetroMapping has a staff of skilled programmers. Customers who must solve repetitive mapping tasks can have MetroMapping create customized "Mapplication" solutions to their problems which automate those tasks without all of MapInfo's complexity.
Development Costs: $75 per hour, specific estimates provided on request.
Prerequisites: MapInfo Professional. In large quantities, MetroMapping can provide "run-time" versions of MapInfo to operate the custom solutions that perform only tasks the application automates, but at lower unit costs than full-blown MapInfo Professional.
