NILS and the Consortium are working with Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI, Inc) in a team environment to develop the data model and related applications based on ARC/INFO 8.X technology. "ESRI is very excited to be part of this effort in working toward a common cadastral data model. This public/private partnership is the embodiment of FGDC’s vision for a National Spatial Data Infrastructure," said Jack Dangermond, President of ESRI, Inc. The project is using an object-oriented analysis and design methodology and Rapid Application Development (RAD) techniques to develop these next-generation technologies. Leslie Cone, Project Manager for NILS, characterized the effort as "an excellent opportunity for the federal government to work with state and local governments and the private sector to develop a common data solution and tool set which will benefit all parties and provide better public access to the country's land records".

The foundation of this effort is the development of an object-oriented data model for cadastral survey and land record (parcel) feature object classes and their properties and behaviors. ESRI and the project participants are also working together to develop new software, in the form of measurement objects for manipulating them. The data model is based on the Cadastral Data Content Standard for the National Spatial Data Infrastructure as prepared by the Cadastral Subcommittee of the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) and plans include the integration and distribution of the data model and tools with the ARC/INFO 8.1 release. The cadastral data model and requirements for the extensions will be provided to the Open GIS Consortium through the FGDC’s Cadastral Subcommittee. According to Scott Morehouse, ESRI’s Director of Research and Development, "We are glad to be working with this group in developing a true measurement-based cadastral data model for ARC/INFO. In the past, the disciplines of GIS and Land Survey have had somewhat different approaches to the definition and management of boundaries. With this project, we hope to combine the database and user interface strengths of GIS with a rigorous data model appropriate to boundary survey management."

Several concurrent application development projects, as initially conceived, are also briefly described below:

• Measurement Management Extension – an ARC/INFO-based component toolset intended to enable users to create a higher-quality, control network database representation of the Public Land Survey System (PLSS) and a more comprehensive parcel fabric. The Measurement Management Extension would be utilized to process a set of new and existing measurement features and to produce a new feature coordinate solution by performing a weighted planimetric-geodetic adjustment according to the qualitative characteristics of individual feature elements in a working set. In designing and building this extension, ESRI will rely upon much of the feature and functionality inherent in the GCDB Measurement Management system (GMM) developed by the BLM and the University of Maine.

• Parcel Management Extension – is a core tool set for managing land records and cadastral feature data stored in the ARCINFO GeoDataset model. Built with ARCINFO, this extension would provide custom feature classes, tools and procedures for editing land records in a transactional history-tracking environment. The Parcel Management Extension will include tools for creating, deleting, splitting and merging parcels using coordinate geometry operations (COGO). Users will be able to customize this extension to accommodate their established workflow and business processes.

• Field Survey Extension- is conceived as a lightweight extension to popular survey software packages that supports the in-field collection of measurement management features and their assorted quality as metadata. This Extension may be thought of as an integrated set of automation objects that are embedded into compatible survey data collection software packages to support the capture of measurement features and metadata into the ARCINFO GeoObject database format.

• GeoCommunicator – an Internet-based subscription service and client application for sharing access to planned and existing Cadastral, PLSS and Parcel related projects. The GeoCommunicator is intended to provide browser-based access to the web clearinghouse where users can track cadastral projects and locate resources of interest.