Metadata: Counties and Cities & Townships, Twin Cities Metropolitan Area

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Counties and Cities & Townships, Twin Cities Metropolitan Area

This page last updated: 07/24/2008
Metadata created using Minnesota Geographic Metadata Guidelines

Metadata Summary

Originator	The Counties of Anoka, Dakota, Carver, Hennepin, Ramsey, Scott and Washington and the Metropolitan Council
Abstract	This is a polygon dataset for county boundaries as well as for city, township and unorganized territory (CTU) boundaries in the Twin Cities 7-county metropolitan area. The linework for this dataset comes from individual counties and is assembled by the Metropolitan Council for the MetroGIS community. This dataset is updated quarterly. This dataset is composed of three shape files. - County.shp = county boundaries - CTU.shp = city, township and unorganized territory boundaries - County_CTU.shp = combined county and CTU boundaries This is a MetroGIS Regionally Endorsed dataset. (See http://www.metrogis.org/data/about/index.shtml#whatis for more information.) NOTES: - Effective April 2008, a change was made in GNIS to match the FIPS place codes to the 'civil' feature for each city instead of the 'populated place' feature. Both cities and townships are now 'civil' features within GNIS. This means that the official GNIS unique ID for every city in Minnesota has changed. See full notice on change here: http://www.datafinder.org/notices/gnis_update.asp - The five digit CTU codes in this dataset are identical to the Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) ''Place'' codes. They are also used by the Census Bureau and many other organizations and are proposed as a MN state data coding standard. - Cities and townships have also been referred to as ''MCDs'' (a census term), however this term technically refers to the part of each city or township within a single county. Thus, a few cities in the metro area that are split by county boundaries are actually comprised of two different MCDs. This was part of the impetus for a proposed MN state data standard that uses the ''CTU'' terminology for clarity. - The boundary line data for this dataset comes from each county. - A variety of civil divisions of the land exist within the United States. In Minnesota, only three types exist - cities, townships and unorganized territories. All three of these exist within the Twin Cities seven county area. The only unorganized territory is Fort Snelling (a large portion of which is occupied by the MSP International Airport). - Some cities are split between two counties. Only those parts of cities within the 7-county area are included. - Prior to the 2000 census, the FIPS Place code for the City of Greenwood in Hennepin County was changed from 25928 to 25918. This dataset reflects that change.
Browse Graphic	View a sample of the data.
Time Period of Content Date	07/24/2008
Currentness Reference	Data are intended to reflect county, city and township boundary changes (annexation, etc.) as of the Time Period of Content date above. All counties report their data to be current as of that date. Please note that municipal boundaries can change through several different processes, involving different organizations. County staff are not always notifiied of boundary changes in a timely manner. If you are aware of boundary changes that are not reflected in this dataset, please notify the contact person in Section 1 of this metadata.
Access Constraints	None
Use Constraints	By acceptance of this data, the user agrees to include a copy of this metadata record, including the liability disclaimer, whenever the user transmits or provides the GIS Data (or any portion of it) to another user. We recommend that other interested parties download this dataset from the Data Finder web site (www.datafinder.org) to ensure that the most current data is obtained.
Distributor Organization	Metropolitan Council
Ordering Instructions	This dataset is distributed on the internet by clicking below after 'Online Linkage'. Doing so will tell your browser to download a 'ZIP' file which will contain the following: - ArcView shape files - metadata for the dataset (.htm) - NOTICE.RTF, an important notice about this dataset that can be read by any word processing software. This dataset can also be viewed and downloaded from the MetroGIS DataFinder Cafe at http://www.datafinder.org/cafe/ . The Cafe allows users to subset or clip datasets using an existing feature, such as a city or school district boundary or an ad-hoc, user defined area. Additionally, this dataset is available for direct use via one or more map services. More information about what a web mapping service is can be found at http://www.datafinder.org/services/ The specific map service and layer name for this dataset can be found by clicking the blue or green boxes under the map service column of the DataFinder Catalog at http://www.datafinder.org/catalog/ .
Online Linkage	Click here to download data. (See Ordering Instructions above for details.) By clicking here, you agree to the notice in "Distribution Liability" in Section 6 of this metadata.

Full Metadata

Counties and Cities & Townships, Twin Cities Metropolitan Area

Go to Section:
1. Identification Information
2. Data Quality Information
3. Spatial Data Organization Information
4. Spatial Reference Information
5. Entity and Attribute Information
6. Distribution Information
7. Metadata Reference Information


Section 1	Identification Information		Top of page
Originator	The Counties of Anoka, Dakota, Carver, Hennepin, Ramsey, Scott and Washington and the Metropolitan Council
Title	Counties and Cities & Townships, Twin Cities Metropolitan Area
Abstract	This is a polygon dataset for county boundaries as well as for city, township and unorganized territory (CTU) boundaries in the Twin Cities 7-county metropolitan area. The linework for this dataset comes from individual counties and is assembled by the Metropolitan Council for the MetroGIS community. This dataset is updated quarterly. This dataset is composed of three shape files. - County.shp = county boundaries - CTU.shp = city, township and unorganized territory boundaries - County_CTU.shp = combined county and CTU boundaries This is a MetroGIS Regionally Endorsed dataset. (See http://www.metrogis.org/data/about/index.shtml#whatis for more information.) NOTES: - Effective April 2008, a change was made in GNIS to match the FIPS place codes to the 'civil' feature for each city instead of the 'populated place' feature. Both cities and townships are now 'civil' features within GNIS. This means that the official GNIS unique ID for every city in Minnesota has changed. See full notice on change here: http://www.datafinder.org/notices/gnis_update.asp - The five digit CTU codes in this dataset are identical to the Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) ''Place'' codes. They are also used by the Census Bureau and many other organizations and are proposed as a MN state data coding standard. - Cities and townships have also been referred to as ''MCDs'' (a census term), however this term technically refers to the part of each city or township within a single county. Thus, a few cities in the metro area that are split by county boundaries are actually comprised of two different MCDs. This was part of the impetus for a proposed MN state data standard that uses the ''CTU'' terminology for clarity. - The boundary line data for this dataset comes from each county. - A variety of civil divisions of the land exist within the United States. In Minnesota, only three types exist - cities, townships and unorganized territories. All three of these exist within the Twin Cities seven county area. The only unorganized territory is Fort Snelling (a large portion of which is occupied by the MSP International Airport). - Some cities are split between two counties. Only those parts of cities within the 7-county area are included. - Prior to the 2000 census, the FIPS Place code for the City of Greenwood in Hennepin County was changed from 25928 to 25918. This dataset reflects that change.
Purpose	This dataset was developed to be used for many purposes including a variety of analysis and query tasks that relate to counties, cities and townships, and as a general municipal boundary base layer.
Time Period of Content Date	07/24/2008
Currentness Reference	Data are intended to reflect county, city and township boundary changes (annexation, etc.) as of the Time Period of Content date above. All counties report their data to be current as of that date. Please note that municipal boundaries can change through several different processes, involving different organizations. County staff are not always notifiied of boundary changes in a timely manner. If you are aware of boundary changes that are not reflected in this dataset, please notify the contact person in Section 1 of this metadata.
Progress	Complete
Maintenance and Update Frequency	Quarterly
Spatial Extent of Data	Twin Cities 7 County Metropolitan Area. This includes the counties of Anoka, Carver, Dakota, Hennepin, Ramsey, Scott and Washington in Minnesota.
Bounding Coordinates	-94.012 -92.732 45.415 44.471
Place Keywords	Twin Cities, Anoka County, Carver County, Dakota County, Hennepin County, Ramsey County, Scott County, Washington County
Theme Keywords	political boundaries, counties, cities, townships, FIPS place code, CTU, CTUs, MCD, minor civil divisions, municipal boundaries, county boundaries, city boundaries, communities, community boundaries
Theme Keyword Thesaurus	None
Access Constraints	None
Use Constraints	By acceptance of this data, the user agrees to include a copy of this metadata record, including the liability disclaimer, whenever the user transmits or provides the GIS Data (or any portion of it) to another user. We recommend that other interested parties download this dataset from the Data Finder web site (www.datafinder.org) to ensure that the most current data is obtained.
Contact Person Information	Jessica Deegan, Senior GIS Tech Metropolitan Council 390 Robert Street North St. Paul, Minnesota 55101-1805 Phone: 651-602-1718 FAX: 651-602-1674 E-mail: jessica.deegan@metc.state.mn.us
Browse Graphic	View a sample of the data.
Browse Graphic File Description	Sample map showing county and city & township boundaries datasets.
Associated Data Sets	County_CTU_LUT.dbf = a lookup table containing various data related to cities, townships, unorganized territories and any divisions created by county boundaries splitting them: http://www.datafinder.org/metadata/county_ctu_lut.htm County & MCD boundary dataset for 1990: http://www.datafinder.org/metadata/comcd_1990.htm County & CTU boundary dataset for 2000: http://www.datafinder.org/metadata/county_ctu_2000.htm

Section 2	Data Quality Information	Top of full metadata	Top of page
Attribute Accuracy	Valid code tests have been conducted. No known attribute errors exist.
Logical Consistency	The dataset is topologically 'clean'.
Completeness	Entire seven county geographic area is covered.
Horizontal Positional Accuracy	The estimated positional accuracy of the dataset varies with the source of the data as follows: Anoka County No testing of the positional accuracy has been done. Carver County County has GPS data for all 1/4 Section corners accurate to 1/50th foot. Township boundaries that follow PLS lines are estimated at between 0.2 ft. and 0.5 ft. of true location. City boundaries that follow PLS lines are also expected to be near this range of accuracy. Other boundaries are within .5' to 5' of horizontal accuracy. Dakota County Estimated +or- 0.2 feet on lines that follow the PLS or well described parcels. 90% of lines are estimated to be within 0.5 feet of true location. Some problem areas exist. For example, many questions exist as to where the boundary of Mendota is supposed to be. Hennepin County Estimated +or- 2 to 4 feet at section corners. Positional accuracy decreases with distance from section corners. Ramsey County The majority of the municipal boundary layer possesses a horizontal positional accuracy equivalent to that of our digitized parcels. (+-7 feet) Exceptions to this include unresolved boundary issues and interpreted boundary positions such as the thread of the Mississippi River. Some areas could deviate in position by more than 100 feet. Further municipal boundary annexation information may be found at the Minnesota Planning agency, the municipality in question or at the Minnesota Department of Transportation which performs most annexation mapping functions. Public Land Survey (PLS) and parcel mapping information can be found at the Ramsey County Surveyors Office. Scott County Township boundaries that follow PLS lines are estimated at between 0.4 ft. and 1 ft. of true location. City boundaries that follow PLS lines are also expected to be near this range of accuracy. Other boundaries are thought to be within 20 or 40 ft. Washington County Boundaries shown that coincide with hydrological features or those that have generalized definitions with little supporting detail of their location are digitized from partially rectified aerial photographs at 1 inch equals 200 feet. These features have been tested 23 feet horizontal accuracy at the 95% confidence level using NSSDA testing procedures except in areas of high vertical relief where such features tested 120 feet horizontal accuracy by use of other testing procedures. Boundaries defined as center of main channel on Mississippi and St. Croix rivers are approximations only (source U.S.G.S. quadrangle maps). All other boundary segments are generated by coordinate geometry based on a framework of accurately located PLSS corner positions. Legal boundary definitions were interpreted and analyzed according to records available and are not based on field survey. The nature of these definitions present situations where documents of record may not coincide with known ground position or that their ambiguity makes it difficult to identify precise ground location. As a result, caution is necessary in use of the municipal boundary data when using it in site specific applications. For more information contact the Washington County Surveyor's Office.
Lineage	SOURCES USED: This dataset consist of lines from several sources. They are: - Anoka County - Carver County - Dakota County - Hennepin County - Ramsey County - Scott County - Washington County For currentness information (or date) on each county, please refer to the currentness reference section. ASSEMBLING THE DATA: Linework was taken directly as provided from the counties. County boundaries were taken from the county datasets as follows: Dakota/Scott boundary: Dakota County dataset was used. Dakota/Washington: Washington County dataset was used with a minor exception when the two counties meet Ramsey County. Washington/Ramsey: Washington County dataset was used. Dakota/Ramsey: Dakota County dataset was used. Hennepin/Ramsey: Hennepin County dataset was used with the exception of St. Anthony's northeast corner within Hennepin County. Scott/Hennepin: A combination of Scott (primarily) and Hennepin County datasets was used. Carver/Hennepin: A combination of Carver and Hennepin County datasets was used. Carver/Scott: A combination of Scott (primarily) and Carver County datasets was used. Ramsey/Anoka: Ramsey County dataset was used. Washington/Anoka: Washington County dataset was used. Hennepin/Anoka: Hennepin County dataset was used. Dakota/Hennepin: Dakota County was used with the minor exception where the two counties meet Scott County. Note: Municipal boundaries within Anoka County that follow the Rum River have been adjusted by Metropolitan Council staff to align with this feature as it appears in the Met. Council's 2000 orthophotography.
Source Scale Denominator

Section 3	Spatial Data Organization Information	Top of full metadata	Top of page
Native Data Set Environment	ArcGIS Geodatabase, version 9x
Geographic Reference for Tabular Data	County code, CTU code, county name, CTU name, COMCD code
Spatial Object Type	Vector
Vendor Specific Object Types	polygon shapes
Tiling Scheme	One layer for entire seven county region.

Section 4	Spatial Reference Information	Top of full metadata	Top of page
Horizontal Coordinate Scheme	UTM
Ellipsoid	GRS80
Horizontal Datum	NAD83
Horizontal Units	Meters
Distance Resolution
UTM Zone Number	15

Section 5	Entity and Attribute Information	Top of full metadata	Top of page

Entity and Attribute Overview

This dataset is composed of three shape files.  
 
county.shp = county boundaries 
 
ctu.shp = city, township and unorganized territory boundaries 
 
county_ctu.shp = combined county and CTU boundaries 
 
Definitions for each attribute table follow.  Field lengths and types for all 
attributes are listed at the bottom. 
  
----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
  
Attributes for County.shp: 
  
CO_CODE:    3 digit FIPS and state standard county ID code; e.g. 163, 003 
  
CO_NAME:    Name of the county, upper case e.g. WASHINGTON 
  
CO_NAME_FU: Full county name, mixed case e.g. Washington County 
  
CO_ABBREV:  Four character county abbreviation e.g. WASH 
  
----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
  
Attributes for CTU.shp 
  
CTU_ID:     The Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) official federal 
            unique identifier for each city, township or unorganized territory.  
 
CTU_CODE:   5 digit FIPS 'Place' code for CTU.  As of 2006 these codes have  
            been officially retired by the federal governement.  They are 
            replaced by the GNIS codes above.  They will continue to be 
            included in this dataset, but codes will not be created for new  
            cities. 
 
CTU_NAME:   Name of the city, township or unorganized territory,   
            e.g. Burns Twp., Blaine 
 
CTU_TYPE:   Type of CTU 
            C = city 
            T = township 
            U = unorganized territory 
 
ABC_SORT:   3 digit integer that will sort alphabetically e.g. 'St.' is  
            sorted as 'Saint' 
  
FIVE_COLOR: Numbers 1 to 5 for shading CTUs so adjacent CTUs have different 
            colors 
  
----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
  
Attributes for County_CTU.shp 
 
COCTU_CODE: 8 digit code (concatenation of CO_CODE and CTU_CODE below) 
 
COCTU_DESC: Description of the COCTU; e.g. Burns Township, Blaine  
            (Anoka Co. part) 
 
CO_CODE:    3 digit FIPS and state standard county ID code; e.g. 163, 003 
 
CO_NAME:    Name of the county 
 
CTU_ID:     The Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) official federal 
            unique identifier for each city, township or unorganized territory.  
 
CTU_CODE:   5 digit FIPS 'Place' code for CTU.  As of 2006 these codes have  
            been official retired by the federal governement.  They are 
            replaced by the GNIS codes above.  They will continue to be 
            included in this dataset, but codes will not be created for new  
            cities. 
 
CTU_NAME:   Name of the city, township or unorganized territory,   
            e.g. Burns Twp., Blaine 
 
COMCD_CENS: The Census Bureau's old 6 digit county-MCD code (concatenation of  
            FIPS county code and old Census MCD code) 
 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
 
Field types and lengths using ArcGIS 9x terminology 
 
COCTU_CODE  string   8 
COCTU_DESC  string   40 
CO_CODE     string   3 
CO_NAME     string   24 
CO_NAME_FU  string   24 
CO_ABBREV   string   4 
CTU_ID      integer  long (9) 
CTU_CODE    string   5 
CTU_NAME    string   24 
COMCD_CENS  integer  long 
CTU_TYPE    string   1 
ABC_SORT    integer  short (3) 
FIVE_COLOR  integer  short (1)

Entity and Attribute Detailed Citation	None

Section 6	Distribution Information	Top of full metadata	Top of page
Publisher	Metropolitan Council
Publication Date	Periodically revised
Contact Person Information	Mark Kotz GIS Database Administrator Metropolitan Council 390 Robert Street North St. Paul, Minnesota 55101-1805 Phone: 651-602-1644 FAX: 651-602-1674 E-mail: mark.kotz@metc.state.mn.us
Distributor's Data Set Identifier	county_ctu
Distribution Liability	NOTICE: The Geographic Information System (GIS) Data to which this notice is attached are made available pursuant to the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act (Minnesota Statutes Chapter 13). THE GIS DATA ARE PROVIDED TO YOU AS IS AND WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY AS TO THEIR PERFORMANCE, MERCHANTABILITY, OR FITNESS FOR ANY PARTICULAR PURPOSE. The GIS Data were developed by the Metropolitan Council for its own internal business purposes. The Metropolitan Council does not represent or warrant that the GIS Data or the data documentation are error-free, complete, current, or accurate. You are responsible for any consequences resulting from your use of the GIS Data or your reliance on the GIS Data. You should consult the data documentation for this particular GIS Data to determine the limitations of the GIS Data and the precision with which the GIS Data may depict distance, direction, location, or other geographic features. If you transmit or provide the GIS Data (or any portion of it) to another user, the GIS Data must include a copy of this disclaimer.
Transfer Format Name	Shapefile
Transfer Format Version Number	ArcGIS 9x
Transfer Size	3 MB for zip file.
Ordering Instructions	This dataset is distributed on the internet by clicking below after 'Online Linkage'. Doing so will tell your browser to download a 'ZIP' file which will contain the following: - ArcView shape files - metadata for the dataset (.htm) - NOTICE.RTF, an important notice about this dataset that can be read by any word processing software. This dataset can also be viewed and downloaded from the MetroGIS DataFinder Cafe at http://www.datafinder.org/cafe/ . The Cafe allows users to subset or clip datasets using an existing feature, such as a city or school district boundary or an ad-hoc, user defined area. Additionally, this dataset is available for direct use via one or more map services. More information about what a web mapping service is can be found at http://www.datafinder.org/services/ The specific map service and layer name for this dataset can be found by clicking the blue or green boxes under the map service column of the DataFinder Catalog at http://www.datafinder.org/catalog/ .
Online Linkage	Click here to download data. (See Ordering Instructions above for details.) By clicking here, you agree to the notice in "Distribution Liability" above.

Section 7	Metadata Reference Information	Top of full metadata	Top of page
Metadata Date	07/24/2008
Contact Person Information	Jessica Deegan, Senior GIS Tech Metropolitan Council 390 Robert Street North St. Paul, Minnesota 55101-1805 Phone: 651-602-1718 FAX: 651-602-1674 E-mail: jessica.deegan@metc.state.mn.us
Metadata Standard Name	Minnesota Geographic Metadata Guidelines
Metadata Standard Version	1.2
Metadata Standard Online Linkage	http://www.gis.state.mn.us/stds/metadata.htm

This page last updated: 07/24/2008