A Call to CIOs for GIOs

TeleAtlas VP John Cassidy had an article in Government Technology recently making an argument in favor of adding GIOs to CIO offices to continue the expansion of GIS coordination in government.

In Enterprise GIS Strategies Strengthen Government Operations, Mr. Cassidy outlines some of the successes brought to government by the growth of well-coordinated GIS tools, data and processes. He goes on to suggest that CIOs can help things along with some basic guidelines:

• The success of a GIS application is more likely when it's considered a mission-critical IT system and an organization is built specifically to support that system. It's crucial to build a strategic plan to adopt GIS enterprisewide.
• Create a full-time GIS leadership position with a GIO who has adequate staff to build and enhance the enterprise GIS.
• Identify project leaders who have the necessary management and organizational skills to accomplish specific tasks, and motivate people on an interagency basis to overcome the resistance to change.
• Develop communication channels to identify and prioritize GIS application development and spread word of their success.
• Set reasonable goals that produce deliverables over short time frames, so quick results can be readily seen, used and appreciated.

(Assume) It's March: Do You Know Where Your DOT GIS Folks Are?

In mid-March, the nation's transportation-GIS community will gather in Houston, Texas, for GIS-T. They'll meet the week following the NSGIC Mid-Year Conference in Annapolis, Maryland.

The annual GIS for Transportation Symposium is sponsored by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials. It will include a wide variety of presentations and discussions about transportation-related GIS issues.

My personal favorite? "Trials and Tribulations of Completing the World's Largest Orthophotography Project." From Texas, of course.

GIS-T traditionally includes a State Summary and Roll Call of the States similar to those at NSGIC gatherings. This year's GIS-T State Summary survey includes some questions that highlight the relationship between DOT GIS staff and state GIS coordinators, an important component in Transportation for the Nation.

At the very least, state GIS coordinators may want to touch base with their transportation partners to see if they will be in Houston.

Internet mapping and the Public Trust

The ongoing discussion of web-based mapping and imagery applications (GoogleMaps, YahooMaps, Microsoft Virtual Earth, etc.) in the context of governmental data and funding objectives continues with this summary of a presentation made at the ESRI Federal User Conference. The summary, and the commentary by the original author of the presentation, are somewhat provocative. Definitely worth a click and a few moments of reading, especially the original author's clarifications in the comments section (#4).

All Points Blog - Is Google Earth a Public Trust?

Bob? Bob?.... Is He on Mute? Is Bob Still on the Call?

There's an interesting article on CIO.com about ways to run effective teleconferences and virtual meetings.

Meetings are hard enough to run when the participants are all in the same room, fighting over the last chocolate doughnut. . . . You may be great at orchestrating an in-person meeting, but running an effective teleconference requires new skills.

NSGIC is increasingly taking advantage of teleconferencing and WebEx to bring together members, sponsors, partners and leaders to work on issues around creating the NSDI. We're slowly learning lessons about making the best use of this technology; we are often amused at our own fumbling.

We do a pretty good job, but it may be worth a few moments to share the tips and tricks in this article before our next NSGIC Call.

2008 CAP Grant Awardees Announced

The FGDC Secretariat has announced the selection of the 2008 NSDI Cooperative Agreements Program (PDF) proposals that will be funded this year. The list includes several NSGIC members and partners. The 2008 grants were awarded in 6 categories, several of which are of greater interest to NSGIC members.

Seven states, and the US Virgin Islands, have been awarded funds to "develop and implement statewide strategic and business plans" under the Fifty States Initiative.

Two universities, a state council, and a state agency have been awarded funds to support for "building data stewardship for The National Map and the NSDI."

And two universities, a city and a state have been awarded funds "to assist in the implementation of FGDC- endorsed [data] standards."

Other categories are:

• Metadata Trainer and Outreach Assistance,
• Best Practices in Geospatial Service Oriented Architecture, and
  
• Joint Canadian and United States Spatial Data Infrastructure Project.

The FGDC has also posted a project status table that will eventually include fact sheets, a projects map, and reports and updates.

Do It Yourself Mapping

Got data and need a map? You don’t necessarily need expensive software to produce that map. GPS Visualizer is a free, easy-to-use online utility that creates maps and profiles from GPS data (tracks and waypoints), street addresses, or simple coordinates. Use it to see where you've been, plan where you're going, or visualize geographic data (business locations, scientific observations, events, customers, real estate, geotagged photos, etc.).


We just learned about this tool; see http://gpsvisualizer.com/. It already has made our life easier. A researcher was beginning to ask for some free consulting time to map store locations across Minnesota when she discovered the tool and told us about it. She has her map and we have that time back. I have copied most of the text about GPS Visualizer from their website.


GPS Visualizer can read data files from many different sources, including but not limited to: GPX (a standard format from many devices and programs, including Garmin's eTrex and GPSMAP series), OziExplorer, Geocaching.com (.loc), IGC sailplane logs, Garmin Forerunner (.xml/.hst/.tcx), Timex Trainer (v1.3+), Cetus GPS, PathAway, cotoGPS, CompeGPS, TomTom (.pgl), IGN Rando (.rdn), Emtac Trine, Suunto X9/X9i (.sdf), NetStumbler/WiFiFoFum, GPSManager, MS Excel, and of course tab-delimited or comma-separated text.


It can output maps in Google Maps, JPEG/PNG/SVG, or Google Earth KML. Other output formats include elevation profile, GPX file, and plain text table.

Boundaries Matter

A side effect of all this accurate geospatial data we've been having lately is that where the boundaries of things actually run is starting to matter to folks. Two recent interstate boundary disputes have placed placing accurate boundary lines in sharp focus.

The boundary between Delaware (my state) and New Jersey, for example, runs along a part of the New Jersey side of shoreline of the Delaware River. This is based on the original land-grant language from the King of England and on subsequent US Supreme Court decisions (See Sandy Schenck's informative Delaware's State Boundaries [Info Series No. 6]).

This went largely unremarked (with some occasional spats between the two state governments) until this century, when a proposal to build a Liquid Natural Gas terminal on land in New Jersey, but with a pier extending into Delaware, was nixed by Delaware under the state's Coastal Zone Act. New Jersey was not pleased. They sued and the two states are waiting now for another decision from the Supreme Court.

While we wait, a pair of public policy professors from Rutgers University (in New Jersey) has published an Op-Ed (Negotiate another way) in Delaware's largest daily newspaper proposing that the two states consider a less adversarial approach. They argue that it is unhelpful to base discussions on this issue on who "owns" the river:

Reconciling these positions framed this way is unlikely in an adversarial process. Instead, what is needed is an interest-based approach -- not contentions over who owns what, but rather how the river and its banks can be managed in a way to benefit the economic and environmental needs of both states.

On the other hand, a rising Delaware politician has floated a more direct proposal on his First State Politics blog: sell half of the river to New Jersey. Mr. Burris, who recently decided not to run for Governor (but held onto the notion of someday running), suggests that working out a real-estate deal with New Jersey might help solve Delaware's recent fiscal woes:

...if Dover is not willing to cut spending, they need to come up with a way to find new revenue, and a lot of it, in order to cover the budget gap and provide for our immense and growing infrastructure needs.

Though Dover is not exactly the land of big ideas right now, one outside-the-box idea they could explore is this: sell New Jersey their half of the Delaware River for $5 billion.

This may be no more than an attention-generating straw-man proposal. Mr. Burris remains a GOP activist and active critic of Delaware's democratic incumbent. But it does suggest the value of where boundaries get drawn.

And so does a recent story out of Georgia and Tennessee. The two states have a disagreement over where their common boundary should lie. At issue is whether a particular reservoir is in Tennessee (as it now seems to be), in Georgia, or in both states. Georgia has a strong thirst for additional water resources; strong enough that a resolution has been introduced in the state legislature to move the state boundary about a mile north, annexing (a wet) part of Tennessee.

This is not just based on the need for water, of course. The existing boundary appears to have been drawn in error back in 1818, missing the 35th parallel where it was planned to lie, by about a mile.

It is interesting to compare news coverage of this issue from each state.

In Georgia, today's article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution is headlined "Mapmaker's border error raises new water war front:"

In 1818, a University of Georgia mathematician named James Camak established the boundary between Georgia and Tennessee.

He screwed up. Georgia, especially during times of drought, has paid the price ever since.

The story in Friday's Tennessean, on the other hand, is a bit more to the point: Georgians want access to Tenn. water).

The resolution, which has passed early hurdles but has not received final passage, claims that the boundary was erroneously surveyed in 1818 and that Georgia has never accepted it. The resolution calls for the creation of a "Georgia-Tennessee Boundary Line Commission" that would perform joint surveys and change the line to the "definite and true" boundary line: exactly following the 35th parallel.

The Tennessean focuses on local reaction to the proposal, including that of a resident who had moved from Georgia to Tennessee and does not want to be re-claimed:

Kyle, 69, said he has no desire to be annexed by Georgia, which he gladly departed because of its taxes, and hopes the idea is "just a pipe dream."

"If it ever came to that, I would probably move," he said. "I've got seven acres here, and we're set up pretty well, but I wouldn't ever want to be in the state of Georgia again, to be honest with you."

The Georgia resolution may be mostly a negotiating tactic designed to focus attention on a need to share resources across state lines. As in the Delaware/New Jersey dispute, the 21st century argument stems from, and looks back to, mapping and surveying practices of a much earlier time.

And both situations can teach us the importance of getting it right.

Worth Repeating.....

Frank Taylor, at Google Earth Blog, has an interesting discussion today on the sources of imagery in Google Earth (and, by extension, Google Maps and other ortho-viewing applications) . It bears repeating. Google Earth Blog is not officially connected to Google, but does a nice job of tracking and discussing issues related to Google Earth.

Today's post is actually points to very cool, very "near real-time," but very low-resolution imagery from NASA. But first it takes a detailed look at just how all that "satellite" data gets into Google Earth in the first place. Mr. Taylor explains the (lay-person's version) basics of satellite imaging, aerial photography, ortho-processing, and the complicated web of private- and public -sector partnerships that get the data from data creators and funders to sites like Google Earth.

Not all the imagery in Google Earth comes from satellites. A lot of the imagery comes from aerial photographers mostly in airplanes with special high resolution cameras. Some of the imagery even comes from kites and balloons. Google acquires imagery from a variety of providers. Some of the imagery is given to Google by city or state governments. The age of the imagery varies greatly, but most of the high resolution imagery is between 6 months and 5 years of age. Again, because the imagery comes from a variety of sources, the process to get this imagery into Google Earth is complex and involves a great deal of time and effort.

Thank you. We are all often surprised at how little the data users who interact with imagery via Google Earth, and Maps and their competitors actually know about where the data comes from. Any explanations that get out into the general conversation can only help.

Another Map-Based News Aggregator

The Online Journalism Review has an interview this week with "noted journalist/programmer/Web guru Adrian Holovaty" about his new project EveryBlock, which filters local news by neighborhood and presents it in several formats, including a simple map view.

Mr. Holovaty was behind the recently ended chicagocrime.org which looked at one data stream for one city. He describes EveryBlock as an attempt to provide a full news feed for each individual block in three major cities: New York, Chicago and San Francisco.

While the graphic map-presentation aspects of this site are interesting -- Holavaty and his team created their own version of a base map, for example, instead of using Google or Yahoo -- what may be more interesting is their work on finding new sources of interesting information and new ways to extract location information where it is not already embedded.

"...we're detecting geography in narratives -- "blobs," so to speak -- and making it easy for people to find relevant news articles and government documents that refer to specific places near them."

It is also interesting to note that the project is funded under a grant from the Knight News Challenge that requires the source code to be released under an open-source license at the end of the 2-year grant period.

Update on USGS Research Priorities

Directions Magazine's Adena Schutzberg has an update this morning on research priorities for the USGS.

As we noted in November, the Mapping Science Committee of the National Research Council released A Research Agenda for Geographic Information Science at the United States Geological Survey which offered recommendations to the USGS for future research by the USGS Center of Excellence for Geospatial Information Science (CEGIS). Last week, Adena and colleague Joe Francica discussed some of those recommendations on their Podcast.

Today, Adena has some reaction from E. Lynn Usery, the acting director of CEGIS, including further discussion of the future of the USGS' National Map project.