The site has allowed realtors, appraisers, assessors, surveyors, engineers and the general public to just bop in and look at the orthophotos at their convenience and come up with their own applications. Rosas pointed out that in addition to the general public, the RDC Web site is also attracting developers, realtors and others in the private sector. Realtors can show the part of town that prospective clients are interested in. They can pull up 3D images to get an idea of the topography of an area, then check out its demographics. With a resolution of one foot, viewers can see hiking and riding trails and zoom in to identify objects as small as three feet square.
Clients can begin making decisions right from the desktop.
They are using the data to assist in drainage studies associated with road improvements. It allows them to view watersheds, make hydrology calculations and calculate flow rates of specific drainage basins. Information like this is helpful in a variety of engineering applications, for example, determining the substructure of a bridge, how deep the support pylons must be. The site also has information and features that can be accessed only by jurisdictional members who are responsible for maintaining and updating their respective data layers and posting changes on the Web site. The Pima County Department of Transportation, Technical Services Division, maintains the parcel base layer.