The political boundary datalayer is a polygon representation of town boundaries created from arcs developed from survey coordinates extracted from the 68-volume Harbor and Lands Commission Town Boundary Atlas for the 351 communities (cities and towns) in Massachusetts. The Atlas was published in the early 1900's and is maintained by the Survey Section of Massachusetts Highway Department. For communities with a coastal boundary, MassGIS has collaborated with Massachusetts Water Resources Authority and the Department of Environmental Protection to complete a 1:12000 scale coastline. The boundary for the coastline was defined as being the upland side of tidal flats and rocky inter-tidal zones. Note that the 351 communities are the official municipal names, not including "villages" or other sections of towns.This datalayer was created for the purposes of providing an up-to-date polygon version of the town boundaries for the 351 cities and towns of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The legislative intent for some boundaries could not be mapped. Boundaries where that is true are identified in the attribute information. This layer contains multi-part polygons, one for each municipality. The coastline on this layer has been generalized for small-scale cartography and faster display in web map services.See the layer metadata for details.

MassGIS' standardized ("Level 3") property tax parcel mapping data set was developed through a competitive procurement funded by MassGIS. Each community in the Commonwealth was bid on by one or more vendors and the unit of work awarded was a city or town. The specification for this work was Level 3 of the MassGIS Digital Parcel Standard. Standardization of assessor parcel mapping is complete for all 351 Massachusetts' cities and towns. MassGIS is now incorporating updates from municipalities into the database. This hosted feature layer is exported from MassGIS' internal database of the feature class GISDATA.L3_TAXPAR_POLY_ASSESS, which links L3_TAXPAR_POLY and L3_ASSESS. The export includes the expression: (POLY_TYPE IN ('FEE', 'TAX')) OR (POLY_TYPE IN ('ROW', 'PRIV_ROW', 'RAIL_ROW', 'WATER') AND PROP_ID IS NOT NULL) It contains several fields from GISDATA.L3_ASSESS and stacked polygons where multiple assessor records link to a parcel. It contains features that do not have an associated record in GISDATA.L3_ASSESS, except for rights of way and water bodies. ROWs and water bodies with a non-null PROP_ID are included. The data in this feature layer is used for the popups in the Massachusetts Interactive Property Map. See full data descriptionA hosted tile layer will draw very quickly at map scale of 1:18,056 (level 15) to 1:564 (level 20).

To access parcel information:Enter an address or zoom in by using the +/- tools or your mouse scroll wheel. Parcels will draw when zoomed in.Click on a parcel to display a popup with information about that parcel.Click the "Basemap" button to display background aerial imagery.From the "Layers" button you can turn map features on and off.Complete Help (PDF)Parcel Legend:Full Map LegendAbout this ViewerThis viewer displays land property boundaries from assessor parcel maps across Massachusetts. Each parcel is linked to selected descriptive information from assessor databases. Data for all 351 cities and towns are the standardized "Level 3" tax parcels served by MassGIS. More details ...Read about and download parcel dataUpdatesV 1.1: Added 'Layers' tab. (2018)V 1.2: Reformatted popup to use HTML table for columns and made address larger. (Jan 2019)V 1.3: Added 'Download Parcel Data by City/Town' option to list of layers. This box is checked off by default but when activated a user can identify anywhere and download data for that entire city/town, except Boston. (March 14, 2019)V 1.4: Data for Boston is included in the "Level 3" standardized parcels layer. (August 10, 2020)V 1.4 MassGIS, EOTSS 2021

MassGIS' standardized assessors’ parcel mapping data set contains property (land lot) boundaries and database information from each community's assessor.The data were developed through a competitive procurement funded by MassGIS. Each community in the Commonwealth was bid on by one or more vendors and the unit of work awarded was a city or town. The specification for this work was Level 3 of the MassGIS Digital Parcel Standard.This map service contains three feature classes and one table.Feature service also available.See the datalayer page for full details.

The symbology of the data in this hosted tile layer is optimized for display atop aerial (ortho) imagery. Tiles are available for levels 7 through 20.Map Features for imagery include:

Political Boundaries: Massachusetts cities and towns, counties and state border, MassGIS).Transportation: Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) Roads (MassDOT, MassGIS); MBTA subway and Commuter Rail lines and stations (Central Transportation Planning Staff, MassGIS); Airports, Ferry Routes and Seaports (MassDOT); Airport Runways and Airfields (Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency (MEMA))Infrastructure and Facilities: Lighthouses and Lights (Massachusetts Coastal Zone Management); Schools (Pre-K-High School) (Massachusetts Department of Education, MassGIS); Colleges and Universities (MassGIS); Acute Care Hospitals and Non-acute Care Hospitals (Massachusetts Department of Public Health Office of Emergency Medical Services, CHIA); Libraries, Police Stations, Fire Stations, Town Halls, Places of Worship, Courthouses, Prisons.This service is used in the MassGIS Image Basemap.

The geographic extent of the town of Easton, MA and surrounding cities and townsTown boundaries were copied from MassGIS Data - Community Boundaries (Towns) from Survey Points (last update November 2015). Edits were made to remove coast lines of internal waterways. The boundaries of for Taunton, Raynam and Bridgewater were copied from MassGIS - Community Boundaries (Towns) Without Coast (February 2014). Boundaries were edited to match those from Community Boundaries from Survey Points.

Background and Data Limitations The Massachusetts 1830 map series represents a unique data source that depicts land cover and cultural features during the historical period of widespread land clearing for agricultural. To our knowledge, Massachusetts is the only state in the US where detailed land cover information was comprehensively mapped at such an early date. As a result, these maps provide unusual insight into land cover and cultural patterns in 19th century New England. However, as with any historical data, the limitations and appropriate uses of these data must be recognized: (1) These maps were originally developed by many different surveyors across the state, with varying levels of effort and accuracy. (2) It is apparent that original mapping did not follow consistent surveying or drafting protocols; for instance, no consistent minimum mapping unit was identified or used by different surveyors; as a result, whereas some maps depict only large forest blocks, others also depict small wooded areas, suggesting that numerous smaller woodlands may have gone unmapped in many towns. Surveyors also were apparently not consistent in what they mapped as ‘woodlands’: comparison with independently collected tax valuation data from the same time period indicates substantial lack of consistency among towns in the relative amounts of ‘woodlands’, ‘unimproved’ lands, and ‘unimproveable’ lands that were mapped as ‘woodlands’ on the 1830 maps. In some instances, the lack of consistent mapping protocols resulted in substantially different patterns of forest cover being depicted on maps from adjoining towns that may in fact have had relatively similar forest patterns or in woodlands that ‘end’ at a town boundary. (3) The degree to which these maps represent approximations of ‘primary’ woodlands (i.e., areas that were never cleared for agriculture during the historical period, but were generally logged for wood products) varies considerably from town to town, depending on whether agricultural land clearing peaked prior to, during, or substantially after 1830. (4) Despite our efforts to accurately geo-reference and digitize these maps, a variety of additional sources of error were introduced in converting the mapped information to electronic data files (see detailed methods below). Thus, we urge considerable caution in interpreting these maps. Despite these limitations, the 1830 maps present an incredible wealth of information about land cover patterns and cultural features during the early 19th century, a period that continues to exert strong influence on the natural and cultural landscapes of the region.

    Acknowledgements
    Financial support for this project was provided by the BioMap Project of the Massachusetts Natural Heritage and Endangered Species Program, the National Science Foundation, and the Andrew Mellon Foundation. This project is a contribution of the Harvard Forest Long Term Ecological Research Program.

Town of Chelmsford, MA GIS Viewer

The 2022 cartographic boundary KMLs are simplified representations of selected geographic areas from the U.S. Census Bureau's Master Address File / Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing (MAF/TIGER) Database (MTDB). These boundary files are specifically designed for small-scale thematic mapping. When possible, generalization is performed with the intent to maintain the hierarchical relationships among geographies and to maintain the alignment of geographies within a file set for a given year. Geographic areas may not align with the same areas from another year. Some geographies are available as nation-based files while others are available only as state-based files. The cartographic boundary files include both incorporated places (legal entities) and census designated places or CDPs (statistical entities). An incorporated place is established to provide governmental functions for a concentration of people as opposed to a minor civil division (MCD), which generally is created to provide services or administer an area without regard, necessarily, to population. Places always nest within a state, but may extend across county and county subdivision boundaries. An incorporated place usually is a city, town, village, or borough, but can have other legal descriptions. CDPs are delineated for the decennial census as the statistical counterparts of incorporated places. CDPs are delineated to provide data for settled concentrations of population that are identifiable by name, but are not legally incorporated under the laws of the state in which they are located. The boundaries for CDPs often are defined in partnership with state, local, and/or tribal officials and usually coincide with visible features or the boundary of an adjacent incorporated place or another legal entity. CDP boundaries often change from one decennial census to the next with changes in the settlement pattern and development; a CDP with the same name as in an earlier census does not necessarily have the same boundary. The only population/housing size requirement for CDPs is that they must contain some housing and population. The generalized boundaries of most incorporated places in this file are based on those as of January 1, 2022, as reported through the Census Bureau's Boundary and Annexation Survey (BAS). The generalized boundaries of all CDPs are based on those delineated as part of the Census Bureau's Participant Statistical Areas Program (PSAP) for the 2020 Census.

Town of Natick, MA printable Map

This map service from MassGIS displays the 26 Massachusetts Gateway Cities, municipalities with:population greater than 35,000 and less than 250,000;median household income below the state average;and rate of educational attainment of a bachelor’s degree or above that is below the state average.Read more about Gateway CitiesMap service also available.

Download PDF maps here.Land Use Map - 11X17in color mapLand Use Map - 34X46in color map

ESRI polygon feature class representing the City of Somerville, Massachusetts city boundary.

Effective January 2024.More information: Visit the Geographic Information System (GIS) webpage for access to additional City maps.Informing Worcester is the City of Worcester's open data portal where interested parties can obtain public information at no cost.

This datalayer is part of a group of layers used for research in the Ipswich River Watershed. This layer includes the area within each town in the Ipswich River Watershed in vector form. This map contains complete information and was derived from the ip30_noinfo_towns layer. To show area within the towns the make up the Ipswich River Watershed study area.

This dataset is no longer being updated as of 6/30/2022. It is being retained on the Open Data Portal for its potential historical interest.

In November 2020, the City of Cambridge began collecting and analyzing COVID-19 data from municipal wastewater, which can serve as an early indicator of increased COVID-19 infections in the city. The Cambridge Public Health Department and Cambridge Department of Public Works are using technology developed by Biobot, a Cambridge based company, and partnering with the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority (MWRA). This Cambridge wastewater surveillance initiative is funded through a $175,000 appropriation from the Cambridge City Council.

This dataset indicates the presence of the COVID-19 virus (measured as viral RNA particles from the novel coronavirus per ml) in municipal wastewater. The Cambridge site data here were collected as a 24-hour composite sample, which is taken weekly. The MWRA site data ere were collected as a 24-hour composite sample, which is taken daily. MWRA and Cambridge data are listed here in a single table.

An interactive graph of this data is available here: https://cityofcambridge.shinyapps.io/COVID19/?tab=wastewater

All areas within the City of Cambridge are captured across four separate catchment areas (or sewersheds) as indicated on the map viewable here: https://cityofcambridge.shinyapps.io/COVID19/_w_484790f7/BioBot_Sites.png. The North and West Cambridge sample also includes nearly all of Belmont and very small areas of Arlington and Somerville (light yellow). The remaining collection sites are entirely -- or almost entirely -- drawn from Cambridge households and workplaces.

Data are corrected for wastewater flow rate, which adjusts for population in general. Data listed are expected to reflect the burden of COVID-19 infections within each of the four sewersheds. A lag of approximately 4-7 days will occur before new transmissions captured in wastewater data would result in a positive PCR test for COVID-19, the most common testing method used. While this wastewater surveillance tool can provide an early indication of major changes in transmission within the community, it remains an emerging technology. In assessing community transmission, wastewater surveillance data should only be considered in conjunction with other clinical measures, such as current infection rates and test positivity.

Each location is selected because it reflects input from a distinct catchment area (or sewershed) as identified on the color-coded map. Viral data collected from small catchment areas like these four Cambridge sites are more variable than data collected from central collection points (e.g., the MWRA facility on Deer Island) where wastewater from dozens of communities are joined and mixed. Data from each catchment area will be impacted by daily activity among individuals living in that area (e.g., working from home vs. traveling to work) and by daytime activities that are not from residences (businesses, schools, etc.) As such, the Regional MWRA data provides a more stable measure of regional viral counts. COVID wastewater data for Boston North and Boston South regions is available at https://www.mwra.com/biobot/biobotdata.htm

High resolution land cover dataset for City of Boston, MA. Seven land cover classes were mapped: (1) tree canopy, (2) grass/shrub, (3) bare earth, (4) water, (5) buildings, (6) roads, and (7) other paved surfaces. The primary sources used to derive this land cover layer were 2013 LiDAR data, 2014 Orthoimagery, and 2016 NAIP imagery. Ancillary data sources included GIS data provided by City of Boston, MA or created by the UVM Spatial Analysis Laboratory. Object-based image analysis techniques (OBIA) were employed to extract land cover information using the best available remotely sensed and vector GIS datasets. OBIA systems work by grouping pixels into meaningful objects based on their spectral and spatial properties, while taking into account boundaries imposed by existing vector datasets. Within the OBIA environment a rule-based expert system was designed to effectively mimic the process of manual image analysis by incorporating the elements of image interpretation (color/tone, texture, pattern, location, size, and shape) into the classification process. A series of morphological procedures were employed to insure that the end product is both accurate and cartographically pleasing. Following the automated OBIA mapping a detailed manual review of the dataset was carried out at a scale of 1:2500 and all observable errors were corrected.

High resolution land cover dataset for City of Boston, MA. Seven land cover classes were mapped: (1) tree canopy, (2) grass/shrub, (3) bare earth, (4) water, (5) buildings, (6) roads, and (7) other paved surfaces. The primary sources used to derive this land cover layer were 2013 LiDAR data, 2014 Orthoimagery, and 2016 NAIP imagery. Ancillary data sources included GIS data provided by City of Boston, MA or created by the UVM Spatial Analysis Laboratory. Object-based image analysis techniques (OBIA) were employed to extract land cover information using the best available remotely sensed and vector GIS datasets. OBIA systems work by grouping pixels into meaningful objects based on their spectral and spatial properties, while taking into account boundaries imposed by existing vector datasets. Within the OBIA environment a rule-based expert system was designed to effectively mimic the process of manual image analysis by incorporating the elements of image interpretation (color/tone, texture, pattern, location, size, and shape) into the classification process. A series of morphological procedures were employed to insure that the end product is both accurate and cartographically pleasing. Following the automated OBIA mapping a detailed manual review of the dataset was carried out at a scale of 1:2500 and all observable errors were corrected.

Credits: University of Vermont Spatial Analysis Laboratory in collaboration with the City of Boston, Trust for Public Lands, and City of Cambridge.

Geospatial data about City of Springfield, Massachusetts Zip Codes. Export to CAD, GIS, PDF, CSV and access via API.

This datalayer is part of a group of layers used for research in the Ipswich River Watershed. This datalayer is a mask of the area within the towns that make up the Ipswich River Watershed study area. The area on this mask is the complete town area of each town, and as such includes areas that are not actually within the watershed. This map has full information and was derived from the “ip30_noinfo_townmask” image. To be used to maske out area not within any town within the Ipswich River Watershed.

City of Woburn MA, Public Map ViewerMap many types of local data - stormwater, drinking water, parking, sewer, zoning, etc.