An Interview with the USDOT GIO

Adenda Schutzberg has a five-question interview with USDOT GIO Steve Lewis up on DirectionsMag.com today. Mr. Lewis, who was with NSGIC in Colorado this fall and spoke this past March at the NSGIC Mid-Year, includes a gratifying shout-out to NSGIC when speaking about the role of a federal agency GIO.

But the part of the interview that caught my eye is where Mr. Lewis explains how his approach to coordinating the use of geospatial technologies will differ from past attempts in his agency, which focused on technical governance requirements.

There were no attempts to create a true sense of community, where the members can learn from each other and leverage the work that is being done across all of the DOT Operating Administrations. The community will, of course, address FGDC and OMB requirements, but it will also focus heavily on sharing experiences and working together.

This is an important aspect of coordination efforts that sometimes gets lost in the bureaucracy. NSGIC has, I think, done a fairly good job of building a community, and many of us working at the state level find that a sense of community and shared-purpose, while hard to measure, can be a valuable asset to coordination.

NSGIC Mid-Year Reports: Transportation and Addressing

The Transportation for the Nation and Addresses for the Nation working groups presented a joint panel that included several states, the US Census Bureau, US DOT, the Forest Service, the Postal Service and the National Emergency Number Association (NENA).

Will Craig, of Minnesota, gave an overview of the different roles of the counties, states and federal agencies and Jill Saligoe-Simmel gave an overview of the need for good address data. The address work group is developing a white paper on needs and approaches that will be reviewed by the NSGIC membership.

Dan Widener, of Virginia, gave an update on work on Transportation for the Nation. There was a Transportation Research Board meeting in 2007. That workshop was meant to bring data users and data producers together to talk about the idea of Transportation for the Nation. Dan ran through some of the work done to flesh-out ideas for national transportation data. The results of the workshop will be published in the summer of 2008 by the Transportation Research Board.

In 2008, the Transportation for the Nation working group will be working on a business plan and is interested in creating a regional "proof of concept." This would have to be a volunteer effort but would result in a report at the NSGIC Annual Meeting.

The US Census Bureau presented it updated TIGER data set as perhaps the start of Transportation for the Nation. Bob LaMacchia described the effort to update TIGER. The data were updated with input from states and counties and the TIGER now includes the National Hydrography data set. He noted that TIGER doesn't include everything that is needed, but it can provide a basis for the Transportation for the Nation. TIGER will now be released in shapefile format, starting with the 2007 update.

The US Department of Transportation expressed support for the idea of Transportation for the Nation, based on the needs of DOT for assistance in tracking the road miles in the nation. US DOT tracks several networks, including the federal highways, freight routes, a system used to track highway funding needs, and TIGER and TeleAtlas data. Steve Lewis suggested that the DOT and NSGIC will need to lead a group effort to create a single data set that meets all needs.

Betsey Kanally of the US Forest Service, presented some facts on the numbers of miles of roads on Forest System lands. The Forest Service provides some map data but hopes to provide more.

Ruth Jones, who works in Address Management for the US Postal Service, spoke about how the Postal Service manages addresses and how they might be shared. About 2 million addresses are added each year, from a variety of sources.

Patrick Halley, of the National Emergency Number Association, spoke about the needs of the emergency response community as they relate to addressing. He noted that the 911 community is still coming up to speed technologically. He also reviewed the changes in how people use telephones, cell phones and the personal computers and how those changes are impacting the emergency response community.

Update (3/18/08): Presentation materials from this session are now available on-line.

(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.

A Podcast on NSGIC's National Initiatives

Directions Magazine has released a 20-minute podcast interview of TeleAtlas' John Auble on the subject of national-scale data initiatives such as Imagery for the Nation and Transportation for the Nation.

The podcast serves as something of a catch-up on the NSGIC 2007 Annual Conference, which Directions writers were not able to cover in person.

Auble, a member of the NSGIC Corporate Leadership Council, gave an overview, from his perspective, of the advances made in the last several years towards the goals of the 50 state initiative and more robust local/state/federal/private-sector partnerships.

A Workshop on Improving Geospatial Transportation Data

The Transportation Research Board of the National Academies has announced a workshop in December to "examine the potential benefits and costs for the transportation community from improvements to the national geospatial information infrastructure for transportation. "

According to the Workshop Invitation (PDF), there are five objectives of the one-day workshop:

1. Investigate the likely applications, benefits, and costs of an improved multimodal surface national transportation geospatial information system for the transportation community;
2. Identify likely users, beneficiaries, and funding sources;
3. Discuss key data elements for the various transportation modes that could be included;
4. Suggest potential roles, mechanisms for sharing data, and approaches to integrate required data from multiple sources; and
5. Explore institutional arrangements that could facilitate such an initiative.

Among the speakers identified in the preliminary agenda included in the workshop invitation is NSGIC President Stu Davis.

The workshop is set for December 14, at the The National Academies Keck Center, in Washington, D.C. The workshop is not free. Costs and hotel information are also detailed in the workshop invitation.