How the voice on your dashboard knows where to turn

DINGMAN — Chris Woods, Dingman Township zoning officer, is reviewing a “schematic” of township roads for the U.S. Census Bureau. The TIGER (Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing) Map Service began in 1995 and was first put online in 1998 by the Census Bureau. TIGER maps all roads and streets in the U.S. The Census Bureau uses this as a tool to determine population statistics. It is available to everyone at www.tiger.census.gov/cgi-bin/mapbrowse-tbl/. “The last time I had to do this back in 2000, it was bad. This time, there are only a couple of hundred mistakes, so this is a great improvement,” Woods recalled. There are over 600 roads in Dingman Township and many of the roads on the schematic have wrong names, don’t go where they are shown to go; and some are not shown at all, he said. The TIGER Map Service information is used by Internet search engines like Map Quest and by companies that load the information into their GPS (Global Positioning Systems), devices which are becoming very popular and are often standard equipment in many “high-end” automobiles sold today. Woods has to take the schematics and check the names of street and roads and then updates them. The Census Bureau depends on these schematics, which also includes types of residential structures, such as single or multi-family residences. He is sworn in and has to be very accurate. “I have till April 1 to get this done, so it will keep me busy for sure,” said Woods. There are also specific requirements as to how schematics get marked by Woods. The Census Bureau requires this information from local zoning officers across the entire country. So when you access Map Quest for directions to where you want to go and it gets you to the wrong place, you’ll know that someone didn’t correct what the U.S. Census Bureau asked them to do.