ISPRS Workshop on Service and Application of Spatial Data Infrastructure, XXXVI(4/W6), Oct.14-16, Hangzhou, China
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THE US NATIONAL SPATIAL DATA INFRASTRUCTURE:
WHAT IS NEW?
Alan R. Steven
Federal Geographic Data Committee, 590 National Center, USGS,Reston, Virginia, 20192, USA
astevens@gsdi.org
ABSTRACT
Initially the US Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) and the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) major
development focus has been almost completely at the federal level. With time and much promotion, FGDC's vision has found its
way into states and local governments. The central focus of the NSDI is carried into the current political administration through the
President's management agenda consisting of 25 major programs with a vision to improve the federal government's value to the
citizen by an order of magnitude. The challenge is to make information, data and decisions available in minutes or hours, not weeks
or months to other government agencies and the general public. This e-govemment (E-gov) is focused on using digital technologies
to transform government operations in order to improve effectiveness, efficiency, and service delivery. Geospatial One-Stop (GOS)
grew from this vision and raises the visibility of the strategic value of geographic information. It is another mechanism to accelerate
the NSDI development in the US. Specifically it is to build framework data standards, breathe life into portal development,
accelerate data inventory, and promote data and its application throughout the marketplace. Concurrently, the FGDC, the NSDI and
GOS began to look strategically at the next steps in the evolution of the NSDI. International examples of infrastructure development
have been examined and the strategy has been formulated with three principal goals: creating partnerships with purpose, making
framework real, and communicating the message. The major message is that in order to create a truly national spatial data
infrastructure, one needs to involve the people and data at the day-to-day working level - cities, counties, and utilities. New and
different policies and partnerships need to be developed before all meaningful data can be made available for critical decision making.
This massive effort involves components of the US Federal Government as well as State, County, City, and community Governments.
The team also has considerable input from NGOs and the private sector. Early findings indicate that it is critical to build a formal
national council involving all potential generators, users, and distributors in the public and private sectors. This plan is being
reviewed at the current time and will yield a completely new approach to building the US NSDI.
1. GEOGRAPHY IS THE COMMON LANGUAGE
Cities, provinces, nations, and the world are largely built and
can be described in layers. Beneath ground one finds the
bedrock, soils, aquifers, sewers, subways, gas pipe lines,
transmission lines, etc. On the surface we find streets and
highways, land ownership, political boundaries, hydrography,
water and waste treatment plants, hazardous dumps/pipelines,
building footprints, farmland, forests, deserts, and a multitude
of infrastructure that evolve over time. We also have several
cultural layers of significance like demography, housing
quality, poverty, pollution, etc. Above one might find the air
quality, the atmosphere, and the planes that fly over. If a
disaster disrupts any or all of these, it involves hundreds of
federal, state, local and private groups with separate knowledge,
jurisdiction and interest in these layers. No one group alone has
all the data needed to do the job or to coordinate with others in
performing critical tasks. Geography provides the common
language and reference system for all response and recovery
efforts.
I am not here today to tell you that geographic information and
geographic information systems (GIS) are the keys to disaster
prevention and remediation. That fact is well established. A
common framework is critical. Agreements among those that
collect, process, archive, and distribute disparate geospatial
information do so using common standards and interoperable
systems and techniques...and share as much as possible via the
web. It is essential that, when resource managers try to
integrate these disparate data sets, for whatever reason, they fit
together vertically and horizontally.
Without a common framework there is no way to quickly tie
together the essential information used to coordinate any
unified response. A unified framework and base information
have been and will continue to be critical to emergency
managers and government officials responsible for response
and recovery efforts regardless of the type of disaster.
Imagine the confusion if the separate elements of information
(roads/highways, sewer lines, water supply, gas lines, electrical
transmission, building foot prints, land tenure, subways, toxic
wastes, etc.) in a dense urban setting were available but in
separate formats, collected via different standards, and with
different reliability and at resolutions.
2. SPATIAL DATA INFRASTRUCTURE (SDI) - WHAT
IS IT?
The single most important element to the success of any
emergency response operation is the human contribution.
Beyond that, standards for data quality and access become time
critical. What are these critical ingredients to a successful
emergency operation requiring geospatial data and information?
They correspond to the components of a National Spatial Data
Infrastructure (NSDI.)
GEODATA - the actual geospatial data and information
collected, processed, archived and potentially distributed by
multiple agencies/organizations to meet disparate mission
needs. It can be property ownership, political boundaries, land
use/land cover, transmission lines, transportation/energy grids,
geology, soils, surface and groundwater hydrology,
demography, disease vectors, economic service areas, and
many more.