TNRIS is the clearinghouse for geospatial data in the state of Texas.
And part of our job is to maintain the historical aerial archive.
We're really excited to have fully scanned the TNRIS historic aerial archive.
These collections are collections of historic
aerial imagery that are individual photo frames.
Most of them are going to be nine by-nine- inch frames.
Some of those can range upwards into a larger format.
We have some 14-by-14.
Our largest is like 24-by-20 inches.
So, really, really big.
We can see just about every piece of Texas.
We have some from the 1920s, but not a whole lot.
And once you get into 1930s, 1940s, you start to see more collections.
More agencies or private entities were acquiring more photography
of the state of Texas, and it ranges from all over.
We have 254 counties within Texas; we have imagery from every single one.
Individual frames are housed by collection,
and we actually have them in file folders within those photo boxes.
Our archive is organized alphabetically
by county and then chronologically by year.
We have gone through and inventoried all of the collections that are here.
The collections themselves are put into individual folders and labeled
with the collection information and referenced within a scanning log.
And before they go out,
or actually are packed up, we have to go through and prep them.
So, that means removing all of the duplicate frames,
making sure that the frames are clean, whether that’s markings on them, tape,
whatever residue they might have so that we can get the cleanest scan possible.
So, once they're all clean and logged
in our spreadsheet, that spreadsheet is sent to the vendor,
and all of the collections are boxed into larger banker's boxes.
We're putting close to a thousand, 1,200
frames per box.
And we'll send those out to the vendor in Houston.
They scan them, and they actually upload them directly to the cloud.
So, we see them almost as soon as they're scanned and ready to go.
These digital collections will one day be on the DataHub for people to download.
They'll be able to go on to the DataHub, look on the digital map that we have,
and there will be a download link
for them to download each frame individually or even by collection.
We are working diligently to get them there as quickly as possible.
There's a number of different benefits to digitizing the archive.
One of our mission statements is that we
maintain and preserve the historical aerial archive.
The other benefit is that we will
actually have scanned the entirety of our collections.
It’s artwork; it’s
scientific data; it’s whatever you use it for.
You can look back and see how Texas has changed over time over the past century.
And that by itself is a beautiful thing.
On the other hand, you can literally use it for scientific purposes.
You can see how our roadways have changed, how our rivers have changed,
how we've switched up agricultural methods.
It's limitless what you can use this imagery for.
It's a state treasure that will forever be immortalized digitally.
I'm super happy that I was able to help establish these in a permanent form.