Department
of Commerce, Washington DC
Attendees:
April
Avnayim (Census, SCDD Administrator), Cynthia Barnett-Ryan (FBI/Uniform Crime
Reporting), Marian Brady (Census/DADS), Robin Fegeas (USGS), Linda Franz
(Census), John Knoerl (NPS/Cultural Resources Working Group), Joe Marinucci
(Census), Anne O'Connor (Census), Tim Trainor (Census, SCDD Chair), Pete Wiley
(NOAA), Stacy Wood (NCPC).
Chair Tim Trainor called the meeting to order at
9:00 A.M. with introductions.
FGDC
news and update
Mr.
Trainor announced that Ivan DeLoach was selected as the new FGDC Staff
Director, and is heading a Future Directions initiative within FGDC to aid in
determining the work and direction of the FGDC for the next three years. This Future Directions work will focus on
implementing the National Spatial Data Infrastructure. The team working on the initiative is
focusing on increasing the participation of professional organizations and
non-federal government agencies, and will present the initiative to the FGDC
Steering Committee Spring 2004.
Standards
activities
Mr.
Trainor gave an update on the standards work being done at the federal level
through the FGDC Standards Working Group (SWG) and national level through
ANSI/INCITS L1 - Geographic Information (L1).
The following standards were discussed:
§
Governmental
Unit Boundary Standard (GUBS) - The GUBS originated in the SCDD and is
currently undergoing the harmonization process with other standards to
establish a cohesive, interoperable set of standards.
§
Address
Data Content Standard (ADCS) – In the public review of the ADCS Summer 2003,
URISA submitted "strong" comments primarily focusing on how the ADCS
does not meet the needs of URISA membership.
As a result of these comments a rewrite of the draft standard is
underway within Census. This rewritten
document will be reviewed by a small group of subject matter experts before
being submitted once again to the FGDC SWG for approval of another public
review.
§
Federal
Information Processing Standards (FIPS) Publications that are geospatial in
scope will be retired from NIST and will be migrated into ANSI standards. Census, the lead on this project, is
currently updating the documents and handling formatting issues.
§
Spatial
Data Transfer Standard (SDTS) – SDTS parts 1-4 are existing FGDC and ANSI
standards, and are under review within ANSI.
It was decided that these standards will be revised and not retired, and
new formats will be included in the revised standard to ensure relevance, i.e.,
Geography Markup Language (GML) profile.
Mr. Fegeas announced that a SDTS project team meeting will be held
February 13, 2004 and all are welcome to participate.
§
Geospatial
Positional Accuracy Standard Part 5: Standard for Hydrographic Surveys and
Nautical Charts was approved by the FGDC SWG and will be sent to the FGDC
Steering Committee for endorsement.
§
Spatial
Data Standard for Facilities Infrastructure and Environment (SDSFIE) –The
SDSFIE is a standard updated yearly that provides feature and attribute
information in a usable format.
§
Homeland
Security Working Group – Draft Point Symbology Standard for First Responders
has approximately 250 draft cartographic symbols, and these symbols received
over 400 comments in the recent public review.
National
Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI), The National Map, and Geospatial One-Stop
Mr.
Trainor described the relationship between the FGDC, NSDI, National Map and
Geospatial One-Stop initiatives.
Overall, these initiatives can be described as "three bodies of
activities":
§
The
FGDC works under the auspices of OMB Circular A-16 and is responsible for
overseeing the development of data themes, the responsibility for developing
the themes lie with individual agencies
§
The
National Map (TNM) is a USGS program and is a continually updated set of
topographic data for public use and is reliant upon data partnerships for
updated information. Mr. Trainor views
TNM as the integrator of data themes, or the practical implementation of the
NSDI.
§
Geospatial
One-Stop (GOS) is one of the E-Government initiatives of the President
Management Agenda. The primary
objectives of GOS are to provide access to many themes of geospatial data and
web mapping services to portray that data.
The
relationships between these initiatives and the distinctions between their
scopes are somewhat unclear. In January
2004 Hank Garie (Executive Director, GOS), Barb Ryan (Associate Director, USGS
Geography Discipline) and Ivan DeLoach (Staff Director, FGDC) outlined the
relationships and distinctions between the programs and this information will
be made public soon.
Within
each of the initiatives/programs, standards are essential for the integration
and understanding geospatial of datasets, and the framework theme standards
(outlined in OMB Circular A-16) are currently undergoing a
"harmonization" process to work out inconsistencies before these
framework standards will be sent out for public review.
Mr.
Fegeas responded to a question raised on the potential duplication of effort
between TNM and GOS, stating that there are certain areas of duplication
between TNM and GOS, and certain areas where the initiatives are distinct. TNM, considered the new digital base maps, is
replacing the old topographic mapping program (paper) and contains only base
data and categories. GOS is
standardizing the framework themes that are layers/themes within TNM. The objectives of the two initiatives are
similar; GOS seeks to provide data in a "one stop shop" whereas TNM
intends to be the topographic map of future.
The major distinction between GOS and TNM is that GOS is a government,
cross-agency initiative and TNM is a single agency sponsored program (USGS).
Other
information about GOS portal was given:
§
The
focus of GOS is the GOS portal (at http://www.geodata.gov/
) which seeks to provide "two clicks to data".
§
A
Board of Directors primarily consisting of non-federal representatives manages
GOS.
§
Adherence
to metadata standards is critical to the success of GOS, and all datasets
featured on the portal must have FGDC-compliant metadata.
§
Metadata
information already existing on the FGDC Clearinghouse will be
"harvested" and information on those records will be provided on the
GOS portal.
§
The
GOS portal features a "marketplace" of planned data acquisitions
where metadata about planned acquisitions will be posted to facilitate
partnerships
§
Web
Mapping Services (WMS) are employed on the GOS portal so that one can bring
disparate datasets together and merge them for analysis.
Each
data channel/category on GOS is based on A-16 responsibilities, with "data
stewards" from federal agencies responsible for overseeing the GOS
channels and content. Mr. Trainor
stated he would like to see SCDD embrace the channel content responsibilities
for the Administrative and Political Boundaries, and Cultural, Society, and
Demographics channels. Currently
channels have default content, and the data stewards and communities are tasked
to shape the content and meaning of the channel by populating the channel with
links to datasets, “highlighting” essential and interesting specific
datasets. Concerns noted were that of
data quality, data authority, and privacy/security. The GOS management and data stewards are addressing these issues.
The
"Participants and existing datasets and services for the Geospatial
One-Stop Channels: Administrative and Political Boundaries, and Cultural,
Society, and Demographics" spreadsheet was circulated to the membership as
a tool to indicate additional contacts/participants on GOS channel topics,
existing datasets on channel topics and related web pages, and existing web
mapping service on channel topics to encourage participation in GOS.
Action
Mr. Trainor
to send the "Participants and existing datasets and services for the
Geospatial One-Stop Channels: Administrative and Political Boundaries, and
Cultural, Society, and Demographics" spreadsheet electronically for
completion by SCDD members to aid in outreach and encourage
participation in GOS
Action:
All members
of the SCDD to complete "Participants and existing datasets and services
for the Geospatial One-Stop Channels: Administrative and Political Boundaries,
and Cultural, Society, and Demographics" spreadsheet and return digitally
Action: Mr. Knoerl to extend invitation to other partners participate in the SCDD
US
Geological Survey - Robin Fegeas stated that outside of the previous discussion on TNM
and the relationship between GOS and TNM, a recent topic of discussion within
TNM is locating and identifying structures.
Furthermore, TNM is a partnership program and is defining partnership
relationships with federal, state, local and tribal entities, specifically what
information is exchanged, defining which standards to utilize, etc. It was noted that Census and USGS are
working together to discuss common geospatial programs and partnerships, and
how collaboration will lead to achieving the objectives of both agencies.
National
Capitol Planning Commission (NCPC) - Stacy Wood stated NCPC is unique in that NCPC both utilizes
data as well as provides data at the most basic level, aggregating disparate
geographic and statistical information at a unique regional level for programs
and analysis, and producing information for users and decision-makers. NCPC uses ArcIMS to provide information on
the web, and is involved with GOS.
Federal
Bureau of Investigation/Uniform Crime Reporting Program (UCR) - Cynthia Barnett-Ryan
stated the UCR utilizes data from local and state law enforcement agencies, and
is relatively new to GIS and mapping.
The largest challenge UCR is facing in respect to geospatial data is
that the data collection methodology is old, that internal codes don't match
with accepted standardized codes which makes data sharing and utilization of other
data difficult. UCR must evaluate the
best method to update their system, to either reapply new codes to existing
data or create lookup tables with new standard codes. The SCDD suggested that when collecting and utilizing sensitive
data, consult the University of Minnesota and Newberry Library (John Long) for
research on sensitivity of data in database development with historical
geography at the county and census tract level.
Census
/ Data Access and
Dissemination System
(DADS) - Marion
Brady stated Census produces and disseminates a large volume of varied data,
including data from economic censuses, decennial censuses, and American
Community Survey (ACS) collected on an annual basis. The American Fact Finder (AFF) is a tool for dissemination of census
data, and currently provides Census 2000 decennial data, 1997 economic Census
data, and will publish ACS data annually when it is made available (2005
nationwide). Currently AFF does not
provide spatial data, but provides the geoID which references the spatial files
downloadable from Census Geography Division.
One member noted that TerraFly (www.terrafly.com)
links Census summary file (SF) data to imagery files.
Mr. Trainor adjourned the meeting at 12 P.M.
stating he would send draft meeting minutes to the SCDD membership as
well as keeping the SCDD updated in relevant events to the committee.
Action
Items:
Action: Mr. Trainor to keep the
SCDD updated in current, relevant events
Action:
Mr. Trainor
to schedule a meeting for May or June 2004
Action:
Mr. Trainor
to send will send minutes to the SCDD membership as well as post them to the
SCDD website (currently being updated)