How Ecopia AI’s Land Cover Data is Supporting Decision-Making in the City of Marysville

The second-largest city in Snohomish County, the City of Marysville, WA is home to over 70,000 residents. Like many forward-thinking communities, Marysville relies on geospatial data to support the growth and development of the city. To make informed decisions, it is important that the geospatial data the city is relying on is comprehensive, accurate, and up-to-date. However, obtaining high-precision data has traditionally been a time-consuming and labor-intensive process for communities, often requiring the manual digitization of features.

This was the challenge faced by Jacob Milner, GIS Manager at the City of Marysville. After spending weeks manually digitizing pavement data, he was looking for a more efficient way to get the data the city needed with the accuracy and detail required for analysis. 

Jacob had initially heard about Ecopia AI (Ecopia) during a webinar, where he discovered how the company uses artificial intelligence (AI) to rapidly transform geospatial imagery into high-definition vector maps at scale. Frustrated with the slow manual digitization process, Jacob decided to reach out to Ecopia, and soon realized that they were the efficient solution he had been looking for. 

“I was impressed by how quickly Ecopia could deliver highly accurate data that would have taken us months to digitize manually,” said Jacob Milner, GIS Manager at the City of Marysville. “The time savings and precision were exactly what we needed to support our workflows.”

After reviewing Ecopia’s data, the city was impressed with its quality. A cost analysis demonstrated that Ecopia’s data was not only faster but also significantly more cost-effective compared to previous manual digitization efforts. As a result, the city chose to partner with Ecopia to obtain the high-quality geospatial data they needed.

Digitizing land cover data with Ecopia AI

Ecopia’s proprietary AI-based systems ingest high-resolution geospatial imagery and digitize features into vector maps with the same level of accuracy as a trained GIS professional. This ensures the detailed, reliable data that city GIS and planning departments depend on. Ecopia’s systems can do this with remarkable speed and scale, digitizing features across an entire city in just a matter of weeks. 

The city of Marysville specifically required land cover data with distinct layers for impervious surfaces. Ecopia was able to efficiently deliver this data, providing unique layers for pavement, buildings, driveways, parking, sidewalks, sports grounds, swimming pools, and tree canopy. 

Supporting stormwater management with impervious surfaces

The comprehensive, accurate, and up-to-date impervious surface data Ecopia provided to Marysville is playing an important role in stormwater management efforts. Marysville’s stormwater team relies on impervious surface data to accurately calculate stormwater utility fees (SUFs) based on the amount of impervious surface on each property.

Impervious surfaces, such as roads, parking lots, and sidewalks, prevent water from being absorbed into the ground. Instead, water flows off of these surfaces during rain or snowmelt, creating runoff. This excess runoff can overwhelm stormwater systems, increasing the risk of flooding. Stormwater runoff can also transport pollutants into nearby water sources, leading to contamination. Commercial properties, which typically have larger impervious surface layers, contribute more to stormwater runoff than residential properties. To manage this, the City of Marysville, like many cities in Washington state, uses an Equivalent Residential Unit (ERU) system to calculate stormwater fees for commercial properties. 

Accurate ERU calculations rely on precise, up-to-date impervious surface data, which can be challenging for municipalities to obtain and maintain through manual digitization—particularly as communities constantly change and evolve. In Marysville, Ecopia’s detailed impervious surface data serves as a valuable tool to resolve uncertainties when land cover is difficult to determine from other sources like imagery.

“Ecopia quickly and accurately delivered the detailed land cover data we needed, with critical impervious surface layers,” says Milner. “The high-precision data has helped our stormwater team to efficiently and accurately calculate these fees and ensure data-driven assessments for our community.”

Integrating Ecopia’s data into basemaps

The stormwater team is not the only team in Marysville using Ecopia's data; it has also proven to be a valuable tool for the GIS team. Ecopia’s layers are integrated into the city’s vector tile basemaps, providing crucial context about buildings, roads, sidewalks, and more. By utilizing Ecopia’s layers, the team can display these elements clearly without the need to turn on imagery, which can present a cartographic challenge when displaying other GIS layers. The team regularly uses these layers when creating map products, providing a much cleaner presentation than the variety of colors present in imagery.

What’s next

Looking ahead, Marysville is exploring additional ways to apply Ecopia’s high-precision data, including potentially using Ecopia’s tree canopy data to support its Parks, Recreation, and Open Space Comprehensive Plan. This plan aims to assess the community’s current needs for parks and recreation, project future demands, and develop strategies to address unmet needs.

“Ecopia’s tree canopy analysis, based on three imagery captures over the past decade, could be incredibly valuable for our park comprehensive plan, helping to inform decision-making around green space distribution and park developments,” Milner says.

The city also plans to purchase Ecopia data every two years to keep pace with ongoing development. This regular refresh will ensure that the data remains up-to-date and accurately reflects the latest conditions, which is crucial for GIS operations. As a reliable source of truth, the city will continue to explore ways to integrate Ecopia’s data into more processes to support the efficiency and accuracy of GIS operations.

Geospatial data plays a vital role in driving progress, and with the speed, precision, and accuracy of Ecopia’s AI-powered data, new opportunities are being unlocked to advance community development. To learn more about how Ecopia is supporting geospatial data creation in municipalities, get in touch with our team.