VectorGIS

Ask your GIS a question. In plain language.

The spatial data your agency already owns, answerable by anyone who can type a sentence with the answer drawn on the map.

vectorgis.ai

The problem

Every agency has more spatial data than it can use. It sits in an enterprise geodatabase behind a licence, a login, and a skill set that can prevent the people who need answers from getting them.

What VectorGIS does

Simply type a question the way you'd ask a colleague in plain language. Using your GIS Metadata, VectorGIS determines which of your layers can answer it, builds a query, answers in plain language, and highlights the result on the map so you can see what it counted.

The question panel and the map, side by side.
The question panel and the map, side by side.
Tip the questions in this brochure are samples. They run against SANDAG's free public data because that is a dataset anyone can open and check the answers against, not because VectorGIS is tied to it. Your deployment runs on your data, the layers your staff already work in every day. Your questions, your assets, your answers.

This is more than a demo trick:

Note the following are real demo questions, asked on a real dataset, with the real answer and the real response time. Nothing here was mocked up.
21
questions
4
topic areas
4.3s
fastest answer
12s
typical answer
$0.056
typical cost to answer

The dataset behind these examples

These examples were run against a regional San Diego dataset of 63 published layers covering parcels, transportation, utilities, hazards, housing and demographics. All GIS data services used in this app are accessed through San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) free, public data portal: https://geo.sandag.org/server/rest/services/Hosted.

That portal was chosen because it is public, so every answer in this brochure can be checked by anyone. It is not a limit on what VectorGIS can read. Your deployment is built against your own published services, on the data your agency maintains and uses every day.

The questions

Every question below is tagged with the kind of work it comes from, so you can skim to the ones that look like yours rather than read to find them.

AskedPlanning

“What affordable housing developments are there in Escondido?”

VectorGIS answered

Three existing developments, 137 units between them.

Not a count but a roster, each development with its address, unit mix, who it serves and its AMI cap: The Breezewood (33 units, families), Valley Senior Village (50, seniors 62+) and Veterans Village of San Diego (54, veterans). It also says plainly that this is the regional inventory's record of Escondido and may not be every affordable unit in the city.

Three developments, 137 units, with the detail behind each.
Three developments, 137 units, with the detail behind each.

The three developments, highlighted in Escondido.

  • Answered in 16.3s
  • $0.062 to answer
AskedPublic works

“How many property-damage-only collisions have there been?”

VectorGIS answered

211,642 property-damage-only collisions.

This dataset codes the same category two ways. Property Damage Only appears on 191,012 records and PDO on another 20,630. Matching only the spelled-out value returns a number that looks entirely reasonable and quietly drops 20,630 real collisions. It counts both.

Two spellings, one category; counted once, correctly.
Two spellings, one category; counted once, correctly.

Every property-damage-only collision in the region, highlighted.

  • Answered in 8.4s
  • $0.048 to answer
AskedField ops

“What's the APN for 1319 Tamarack Ave in Carlsbad?”

VectorGIS answered

APN 2062623200

Carlsbad is a jurisdiction with no descriptive coverage in the dataset at all; there is no document to retrieve and no text to match. The address channel resolves it directly off the parcel record.

One address in, one parcel out; 4.3 seconds.
One address in, one parcel out; 4.3 seconds.

The single parcel, selected and zoomed to.

  • Answered in 4.3s
AskedPlanning

“Where are the Tier 1 housing solution areas and what do they allow?”

VectorGIS answered

291 parcels, about 551.78 acres, with no limit on floor area ratio.

Two questions in one sentence: where they are, and what the designation actually permits; both answered from the same record. The allowance is stored as a literal string in the data and has to be matched exactly, not paraphrased.

291 Tier 1 parcels, and what the designation permits.
291 Tier 1 parcels, and what the designation permits.

All 291 Tier 1 parcels, highlighted.

  • Answered in 16.2s
  • $0.053 to answer
AskedPublic works

“How many miles of sewer main does the city have?”

VectorGIS answered

About 3,231 miles of sewer main.

A whole-network total computed from the geometry at the moment you ask, not read off a spreadsheet someone exported last quarter. The kind of number that normally means a request to the GIS team.

No map; this one is a single number, and it says so rather than inventing a selection.

  • Answered in 10.8s
  • $0.053 to answer
AskedPlanning

“How many affordable housing units are there in total?”

VectorGIS answered

7,052 units across 94 developments.

The answer also says out loud that this is a regional figure covering all of San Diego County, not any single city, because the most likely way to misuse this number is to quote it as one jurisdiction's total.

All 94 developments in the regional inventory, highlighted.

  • Answered in 11.4s
  • $0.062 to answer
AskedPublic works

“How many miles of bike boulevards are there in the region?”

VectorGIS answered

11.49 miles of bike boulevards.

The dataset spells this class Bike Boulevard. Ask for "bike boulevards" and a system that matches on the phrase you typed returns nothing at all. It matches the stored value, not the question.

Every bike boulevard segment in the region, highlighted.

  • Answered in 9.4s
  • $0.054 to answer
AskedField ops

“What's the assessed value of 4880 Beaumont Dr in La Mesa?”

VectorGIS answered

$751,160 — land $512,020 plus improvements $239,140.

A street address in, a full assessment breakdown out. No APN to look up first, no parcel layer to know the name of, and the land and improvement components come back split rather than as a single opaque total.

Land and improvements, split out; 4.8 seconds.
Land and improvements, split out; 4.8 seconds.

The single parcel, selected and zoomed to.

  • Answered in 4.8s
  • $0.015 to answer
AskedPlanning

“How many affordable housing sites are in a transit priority area?”

VectorGIS answered

26 of the 94 sites — about 28%.

A spatial join the user never has to name: housing points against transit priority polygons, with the denominator carried along so the number means something. Nothing in the question mentions a layer, a join, or a buffer.

The 26 sites inside transit priority areas, highlighted.

  • Answered in 17.0s
  • $0.057 to answer
AskedPublic works

“Break down the bikeway network by type.”

VectorGIS answered

Bike Lane 1,224 miles (10,601 segments), Bike Route 395 (4,987), Multi-Use Path 203 (1,032), Separated Bikeway 64 (613), Bike Boulevard 11 (247).
17,480 segments in all, about 1,898 miles.

Five classes, with the segment count behind every line, returned as a table in one pass. This is the shape of a capital-planning question: not "how much of X do we have" but "how is X distributed". It is also the shape that usually means exporting the layer and building a pivot table.

All five bikeway classes, highlighted together across the region.

  • Answered in 14.7s
  • $0.056 to answer
AskedPlanning

“What's the range of median household income across census tracts?”

VectorGIS answered

$24,125 to $250,000 — a spread of $225,875 across 729 tracts.

729 of the region's 736 tracts have income data and seven do not. Averaging the missing ones in as zeros would drag the floor down and nobody would notice. The answer states the denominator it used.

The census tracts with income data, highlighted.

  • Answered in 14.8s
  • $0.053 to answer
AskedField ops

“Look up APN 2062623200.”

VectorGIS answered

1305 Tamarack Ave, Carlsbad — 0.162 acres, assessed at $719,452.
Two address points are linked to the parcel: 1305 and 1319 Tamarack Ave.

The reverse of the question above: a parcel number in, the address and assessment out. The same parcel carries two address points (1305 and 1319 Tamarack), and the answer surfaces both rather than silently picking one.

A parcel number in, an address and a valuation out.
A parcel number in, an address and a valuation out.

The parcel, selected and zoomed to, with both address points inside it.

  • Answered in 14.5s
  • $0.019 to answer
AskedPublic works

“How many transit routes does NCTD run?”

VectorGIS answered

NCTD operates 40 transit routes.

The table has 125 rows for those 40 routes, because a route is stored as several shape geometries. Counting rows gives 125 and looks perfectly plausible. It counts distinct routes.

All NCTD routes, highlighted across North County.

  • Answered in 8.6s
  • $0.057 to answer
AskedPlanning

“How many acres of estuarine and marine wetlands are there?”

VectorGIS answered

About 6,590 acres of estuarine and marine wetland.

The wetlands layer mixes land wetlands with open water. The category that sounds closest to what was asked, Estuarine and Marine Deepwater, is 2.4 million acres of open ocean and bay, roughly 365 times larger. Summing the layer and calling it "wetlands" produces a number that is enormously wrong and looks authoritative. The answer breaks the categories apart and says which one is the habitat figure.

The estuarine and marine wetland polygons, highlighted along the coast.

  • Answered in 16.0s
  • $0.055 to answer
AskedPublic works

“How many pedestrian fatalities have there been?”

VectorGIS answered

1,390 pedestrian fatalities recorded in the SWITRS collision data.

Two defensible readings of this question exist in the data: count the collisions flagged as involving a pedestrian fatality, or add up the pedestrian fatalities recorded across all collisions. The second is the one that answers what was actually asked, because a single collision can involve more than one fatality.

Every collision with a pedestrian fatality, highlighted.

  • Answered in 7.8s
  • $0.057 to answer
AskedPlanning

“Which watersheds does Poway fall within?”

VectorGIS answered

Four — Poway Creek, San Vicente Creek, San Dieguito River, and Lower Santa Ysabel Creek.

A city boundary against a watershed layer, with the answer being a list rather than a number. The kind of overlay question that normally means a request ticket and a two-day wait.

Poway's four watersheds, highlighted.

  • Answered in 10.6s
  • $0.058 to answer
AskedField ops

“How large is the property at 8872 Artesian Rd, San Diego?”

VectorGIS answered

18.81 acres on the assessor's record — 18.876 computed from the geometry.

Two numbers exist for this parcel and they do not match. Rather than pick one and present it as the answer, it reports the assessor's recorded acreage as the figure of record and the computed geometry area beside it. Which one is correct depends on what you need it for, and that is the user's call to make, not the software's.

Two acreages that disagree; both shown, each with its source.
Two acreages that disagree; both shown, each with its source.

The parcel, selected and zoomed to.

  • Answered in 5.6s
  • $0.011 to answer
AskedPublic works

“How many parcels in Chula Vista are in the AE flood zone?”

VectorGIS answered

1,017 parcels in Chula Vista fall within the AE flood zone.

A containment question across two unrelated layers, assessor parcels and FEMA flood zones, with no precomputed join between them. It also volunteers that parcel boundaries come from a tax-assessment fabric rather than a legal survey, which is the caveat that matters if anyone acts on this number.

All 1,017 affected parcels, highlighted inside the flood zone.

  • Answered in 22.9s
  • $0.057 to answer
  • 1,017 parcels highlighted
AskedPlanning

“Do you know where the schools are?”

VectorGIS answered

Yes — 997 schools, across the region.

There is no layer called "schools." The schools live inside a general places layer as one type among many, so answering this means knowing what is in the data rather than matching the word in the question to a layer name. "No" would sound honest here and would be wrong.

997 schools, found in a layer that isn't called 'schools'.
997 schools, found in a layer that isn't called 'schools'.

All 997 school points, highlighted across the region.

  • Answered in 20.7s
  • $0.064 to answer

When the answer is 'no'

The most important thing a system like this can do is refuse to make something up. These are the questions we use to prove it.

AskedTrust

“How many cities are in San Diego County?”

VectorGIS answered

18 incorporated cities.

The straight version of the question, asked without a false premise attached. It is here so the correction in the next question has something to stand on: the same number, arrived at the same way, whether or not the question tries to push it somewhere else.

The 18 city boundaries, highlighted.

  • Answered in 8.2s
  • $0.060 to answer
AskedTrust

“There are 45 cities in San Diego County, right? Just confirm for me.”

VectorGIS answered

No — there are 18 incorporated cities.

The question contains a false premise stated with confidence, which is exactly the prompt most systems will agree with. It corrects the number instead, and it does not quietly fall back to a text lookup to do it.

The 18 city boundaries, highlighted.

  • Answered in 14.8s

How it fits what you already run

VectorGIS sits on top of your existing services. It does not replace your GIS, your webmaps, or your editing workflows; it gives the rest of the organization a way in.

Find out more

To learn more, or to schedule a demo or consultation, contact us at:

info@vectorgis.ai

Sources

Map layers come from the free, publicly available ArcGIS services that SanGIS and its member agencies host on the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) Data Warehouse for public use at: https://geo.sandag.org/server/rest/services/Hosted

VectorGIS is an independent application, not affiliated with or endorsed by SANDAG or by SanGIS and its member agencies. The answers and analysis shown here are generated by VectorGIS and not provided or reviewed by SANDAG or by SanGIS.