Updated Continually

November 2024

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).

The 27 major drainage basins of Massachusetts as defined by the USGS Water Resources Division and the MA Water Resources Commission.Please see https://www.mass.gov/info-details/massgis-data-major-drainage-basins for more details.Map service also available.

December 2019

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 feature service contains three feature classes and one table.Map service also available.See the datalayer page for full details.

Massachusetts water features, including lakes, ponds, rivers, streams and wetlands. From USGS hydrography. For full metadata and links to download free data please visit https://www.mass.gov/info-details/massgis-data-massdep-hydrography-125000.

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); Licensed Child Care Programs (Department of Early Education and Care); 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, DCR Pools.This service is used in the MassGIS Image Basemap.

The Elevation Contours tile cache service displays at large scales contour lines at 3-meter intervals created from Digital Terrain Model (DTM) data points collected during the production of the 1:5,000 Black and White Digital Orthophoto images. See https://www.mass.gov/info-details/massgis-data-elevation-contours-15000 for more details.At smaller scales the service displays contour lines at 30-foot intervals originally developed at a scale of 1:250,000 and distributed by the U.S. Geological Survey. Please see https://www.mass.gov/info-details/massgis-data-elevation-contours-1250000 for more details.For both datasets, the index contours are labeled in feet above sea level.

March 2024

MassGIS is working very closely with the State 911 Department in the state’s Executive Office of Public Safety and Security on the Next Generation 911 Emergency Call System. MassGIS developed and is maintaining the map and address information that are at the heart of this new system. Statewide deployment of this new 9-1-1 call routing system was completed in 2018.Address sources include the Voter Registration List from the Secretary of the Commonwealth, site addresses from municipal departments (primarily assessors), and customer address lists from utilities. Addresses from utilities were “anonymized” to protect customer privacy. The MAD was also validated for completeness using the Emergency Service List (a list of telephone land line addresses) from Verizon.The MAD contains both tabular and spatial data, with addresses being mapped as point features. At present, the MAD contains 3.2 million address records and 2.2 million address points. As the database is very dynamic with changes being made daily, the data available for download will be refreshed weekly.A Statewide Addressing Standard for Municipalities is another useful asset that has been created as part of this ongoing project. It is a best practices guide for the creation and storage of addresses for Massachusetts Municipalities.Points features with each point having an address to the building/floor/unit level, when that information is available. Where more than one address is located at a single location multiple points are included (i.e. "stacked points"). The points for the most part represent building centroids. Other points are located as assessor parcel centroids.Points will display at scales 1:75,000 and closer.MassGIS' service does not contain points for Boston; they may be accessed at https://data.boston.gov/dataset/live-street-address-management-sam-addresses/resource/873a7659-68b6-4ac0-98b7-6d8af762b6f1.More details about the MAD and Master Address Points.Map service also available.

April 2003

In spring 2008, the U.S. Geological Survey, as part of its Boston 133 Cities Urban Area mapping program, contracted for true-color imagery covering the metropolitan Boston area and beyond. Image type for the entire region (more than 1.7 million acres) is 24-bit, 3-band (red, green, blue) natural color. Each band has pixel values ranging 0-255. Pixel resolution is 30 cm., or approximately one foot. In spring 2009, USGS continued the project and 4-band 30cm imagery was obtained for the remainder of the state.This digital orthoimagery can serve a variety of purposes, from general planning, to field reference for spatial analysis, to a tool for data development and revision of vector maps. It can also serve as a reference layer or basemap for myriad applications inside geographic information system (GIS) software.The data are served from MassGIS' ArcGIS Online account as a tiled cached map service for fast display.For full metadata and links to download the imagery visit https://www.mass.gov/info-details/massgis-data-20082009-aerial-imagery.

September 2025

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.

This reference contains the imagery data used in the completion of the baseline vegetation inventory project for the NPS park unit. Orthophotos, raw imagery, and scanned aerial photos are common files held here. High-quality existing photography developed by MassGIS was used as the base for the vegetation map (MassGIS 2007). A true color orthophoto mosaic was developed from a set of digital 1:5,000 scale medium resolution true color aerial images that are considered the new "base map" for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts by MassGIS and the Executive Office of Environmental Affairs (EOEA). The photography for the entire commonwealth was captured in April 2005 when deciduous trees were mostly bare and the ground was generally free of snow. The image type is 4-band (RGBN) natural color (Red, Green, Blue) and Near infrared in 8 bits (values ranging 0–255) per band format. Key information for the mosaic is summarized in Table 1. Appendix A contains additional detailed information regarding the aerial photography acquired from MASS GIS.

This MassGIS Land Use data layer has 21 land use classifications interpreted from 1999 1:25,000 aerial photography. Photointerpretation and automation were done by the Resource Mapping Project at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. All land use categories were aggregated from 104 categories originally defined in 1971 by Professor William MacConnell at the Dept. of Forestry at UMass Amherst.Please see https://www.mass.gov/info-details/massgis-data-land-use-1951-1999 for more details.Map service also available.

September 2025

Shapefiles of roads, schools, and places of worship for Amherst, MA, extracted from MassGIS database https://www.mass.gov/get-massgis-data EPSG 26986 Used as reference data for testing MapEval

December 1995, June 2001