USGS Multimedia Gallery: (Video)--The National Map Users Conference: Plenary and The Current Status of the National Map and a Vision for the Future

Demulder

Kevin Gallagher: I’m Kevin Gallagher, I’m the Associate Director of Core Science Systems and I had -- it’s my honor and privilege to be your host this morning for the next two hours. And I want to welcome you all to the first ever National Map Users Conference. We’re really excited about this.

01:04

I live in Western Virginia and it’s been spring there for about a month so I was really a surprised to see snow yesterday morning and this morning but I see you all made it and it’s a pleasure to have you. So when I talk about the make up of this group, we have a -- our target is about 315 for today but we’re happy to report that we’ve enrolled over 412 students conference this week and it represents 15 different federal agencies, 11 states, five local agencies, 13 academic institutions and many, many folks from USGS outside of National Geospatial Program.

So we’re very, very excited about the demographics. We think that really is a wonderful cross-section of our users and our partners and so we’re just really excited about this opportunity to engage in a live discussion about The National Map and its uses.

02:04

So we have some -- I will talk a little bit about the conference purpose. Oh, I also wanted to mention we have students here from the Colorado University in Colorado School of Mines. And again, it’s a university so we’re excited about that. And I want to talk about the conference purpose. First of all, to communicate and strengthen -- communicate with and strengthen our National Map user community. In 2009, we conducted a science workshop to improve The National Map for our internal USGS science university.

And the number one feedback that we heard back from that the single greatest guiding was I think to better communicate about The National Map. In fact many scientists were unaware of the various uses and applications of The National Map and how to get there to do that. So this conference was sort of a direct outgrowth from that event. And our goal, number one, is to better connect with you, the user.

03:05

Secondly, we want to gather your feedback. We’ve developed a strategic plan where we increase our focus on understanding our users and addressing National Map user needs. So we really want to hear what you have to say, we can find better ways to support you. Our tag line is connect, engage and discover and it really summarizes our goal for the conference, so we’re really hoping you’re going to be into it with us, so be vocal.

So after the planning talks we have a really exciting agenda for you and I’m going to walkthrough and highlight some of the things. First on national programs, we’re fortunate to have many from the federal representatives with us today from the -- over the last three days, for example, we had the National Digital Orthophoto Program Steering Committee Meeting.

04:08

They met in conjunction with this conference. Today, The U.S. Board of Geographic Names is meeting and all the -- all the -- you all the conference participants are welcome to join in that meeting. We also have a conference within the conference design which is focused on the National Hydrology Dataset. These activities are going to continue to the next two days and you’re all welcome to attend those sessions.

Tonight we’re going to have a unique celebration. We are going to award the Henry Gannett Awards, honorary award to commemorate Gannett’s varying contributions and passions for American Geography and Cartography and recognizing this the same the distinguished contributions to contemporary USGS Topographic map.

05:03

Our director, Dr. McNutt, will be here to present the award and recognize the various significant accomplishments. We’ll be able to celebrate that award tonight with two very special guests, Henry Gannett’s descendants, Alison Gannett and her 11-year old nephew, Brady Gannett. Alison like Henry, is distinguished in her chosen field and you can see that on her biography in the conference materials.

These awards will be followed by a reception so I certainly hope you all can attend. Tomorrow, we are featuring a mash-athon. The mash-athon is for developers and managers and users to showcase National Map data, provide different products, services and different ways that the viewers used. So it’s kind of sort of a map gallery.

06:01

You can still submit mashup entries until noon today and we’re also asking everyone to vote on their favorite mashups. Voting ends at 4 o’clock p.m. today and there’s several ways to do that, you can -- there’s laptops available for voting in the doctor’s office which is on Keystone Room. If you don’t have a way to get online your conference materials tell you other ways that you can vote.

So here we have some great speakers for you. We’re going to kick off our session with the discussion of The National Map and two very distinguished leaders that I’ll introduce in just a moment. Tomorrow we have a second plenary session beginning with the renowned climatologist, Joel Sheraga, a Senior Advisor for Climate Adaptation in EPA’s office and policy in the Office Of The Administrator. Tomorrow also we can hear from Larry Sugerbaker. Larry is the Senior Advisor to the National Geospatial Program.

07:03

He’s been working on The National Enhanced Elevation Assessment and he’s the USGS lead for that effort. He’s going to give us some preview of some of the study’s findings as well as sharing the direction for the support effort. Finally, Professor “Babs” Buttenfield of the University of Colorado in Boulder, speak about her research on the representation of Geospatial data and how that connects to The National Map and its users. So we really hope you attend that plenary tomorrow as well.

A conference like this, with this level of coordination and this level of attendance, it takes a whole lot of effort and so before we get started, what I want to do is kick off by saying thanks to the conference organizers. Jennifer Sieverling is the manager of GIS workshop which is to take place earlier this week and Jeff Dietterle is the manager of The National Map Users Conference.

08:05

We also got a lot of support, I want to recognize the significant expertise and support, Lead Alliance and Trisha Gibbons. So if I could ask Jennifer and Jeff and Trisha to stand and we’ll just sort of recognize them for the tremendous job they’ve done.

[Applause]

Kevin Gallagher: Okay, so let’s get into it. I’m going to introduce our first speaker, Mark DeMulder, who actually I think probably most of you recognizes him, long-time leader in this community and probably needs no introduction but he is the director of The National Geospatial Program and prior to his return to USGS in 2008, Mark served as the Deputy Director in Office of the Chief Architect at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.

09:02

Here, he directed the enterprise level of architecture and engineering strategies within the national system for Geospatial-Intelligence. His earlier career experience from geographic -- in Geospatial science and national mapping issues included Chief of Data Policy and Standards branch in the National Mapping Division of the USGS where he led the initial design and implementation of The National Map.

Preceding experience includes Chief of the U.S. Army Intelligence Threat and Analysis Center’s Photogrammetry Branch and as an Imagery Intelligence Officer with the U.S. Air Force. Mark holds a B.A. degree from University of Connecticut and an M.S. degree from George Mason University both in Geography. He’s also a graduate of the Senior Executive Fellows Program at Harvard University, the Kennedy School of Government, the Federal Executive Institute and completed Department of Interior’s Senior Executive Candidate Developing Program.

10:05

His career highlights include Open Geospatial Consortium’s Vision Award for his work to advance the international geospatial community, the Outstanding Alumni Award from the College of Science in George Mason University and selections by the U.S. Ambassador to the Permanent Mission of the Organization of American States, serves the president of the U.S. National Section of Pan American Institute of Geography and History, a specialized organizations of the OAS.

Mark resides in Springfield, Virginia with his family and his primary interest outside of work is attempting to play classical guitar.

[Laughter]

Kevin Gallagher: Actually, I’m sure he’s quite accomplished although, he owes me a concert. I think it’s only appropriate now to kick off this conference of the First National Map Users Conference by hearing the current status as well as the vision for The National Map and its director. Please join me in welcoming Mark DeMulder.
11:15

Mark DeMulder: Kevin, thank you very much and let me add my thanks to Kevin’s to all of you for making this event such a smashing success by your attendance here. As I look at on the room today, it’s so encouraging to see 400 friends of The National Map and that’s what I see when I look at across the room, 400 friends of The National Map.

We’ve been -- some of you who have been with us from the beginning, some of you have joined along the way, some of you are probably just learning about our program but we welcome all of you and very glad you’re here. I did have a PowerPoint and I’m going to launch into that in a second, but first, does anybody know what anniversary today is?

12:03

Jay Parrish cannot answer. Today is 103rd anniversary of the Association of American State Geologists, the AASG. Our first meeting was 103 years ago today in Washington D.C. and it was hosted and organized by George Otis Smith, the fourth director of the U.S. Geological Survey. We had a fantastic partnership with the AASG for 103 years and looking forward for another good 103 years moving forward and Jay Parrish is one of those who’s been with us from the beginning. He’s been one of the first class --

[Laughter]

Mark DeMulder: Not far from 1908. Yeah, well, now that you’re smiling, let me ask, who flew in to Denver to attend this conference today? That’s a lot of people. You all have the opportunity -- I will take advantage of it, to see my absolute favorite street sign.

13:03

When you get on -- when you get off Tano Boulevard and you’re on Route 70, right after it splits 225 North and South and 70 West. If you look -- turn to your right, there’s a brown official state sign, it says in bold letters, “CAUTION: CORRECTIONS FACILITY. DO NOT STOP FOR HITCHHIKERS.” As if they don’t have enough confidence in their ability to retain the inmates that they’re all going to be out and on the road trying to bum a ride.

I chuckle every time I go by that. I need take a photograph of it but I never done so. One last thing I’ll say before I try to tear through this PowerPoint in 30 minutes or less. We’ve been at this about ten years now. It was early in 2001 that The National Map study team was formed and as Kevin said I had the privilege to lead that.
14:08

There are 200 people in the room here today to -- we’re on that team, my comrades and George Lee. I just want to recognize their contributions to the vision that we are all benefiting from today, so thanks for that. So 10 years is a bit anniversary kind of say let’s stop and reflect and that’s a little bit about what this is -- what we’re doing here today. We want to collectively reflect and learn from you, the users and partners who have been with us every step of the way to make this tradition come to pass.

One of the other things that I’d like to just say before I start, to highlight it, I’ll mention it again in the clock is that 2001 was a watershed year for us but that’s when we published the first study and kind of got started on internet mapping and web services and that sort of thing which has become national now.
15:04

And I guess, I would just remind us actually, we did that before the events of September 11, 2001, well before Google Earth, well before Bing Maps and I just want to say that we’re very proud of the early start that we had there. We’re also very proud of the partnerships that we’ve been able to form with some commercial applications. It makes us very ratified to see USGS, The National Map data displayed in Google Earth or displayed in our GIS online which you can do and now you do use those functions.

So we just launch into the PowerPoint here, after I reflect on one more thought which is the -- the other water shed long before us I guess in the last decade, November 6, 2008, we decided we we’re going to get back into the photographic map generation on business and by June of 2009, our staff had time product, go to production system, train the workforce and got into full production.

16:16

Since June 2009 until today, with the help of our partners, the USGS has published over 40,000 new topographic maps on the 24,000 scale.

[Applause]

Mark DeMulder: We are well on our way to beating the goal of replacing all 55,000 inventory went on a three-year cycle that will help. Okay, so The National Map, if you don’t know what The National Map is, The National Map is geospatial data for the 21st Century. This data services on -- for the things that you see around the slide, data visualization through our viewer, other people’s viewers, online maps, the U.S. topo which I just mentioned, the national analyst, historical information.

17:03

Kevin mentioned the Science workshop that we had years ago in USGS, the four most important items that our scientists called out was access to historical information in digital form. So very important part of our program and I hope I can say this, The National Map is evolving to meet your future needs and that’s the purpose for this conference. We want to understand to make sure we’re heading in the direction.

We do cherish what the nation’s proud history of topographic mapping but we are all about the future and we’re very much looking forward and that future includes you. It includes you whether you are a partner in data acquisition or data construction or whether you’re a user and I guess I’ve been extra curious that the early days of The National Map really was focused mostly on our partners.

18:00

We are trying to get enough data off the grind so that we have an operational system. We matured to the point now where I think we really focus on you the users and make sure that the product and services we produce meet your needs. So for the next two days, we commit to listen, learn to understand your needs and to let you know that we value what you know and what you do.

So let’s take a look at some of these data services quickly just pass through the data services. Jim Mauch is in the backroom here. Jim is our elevation program manager. We have a seamless dataset at a variety of resolutions, some are shown to you on the screen. There are new datum for horizontal data and that’s anything 83 for the vertical data on 88. And we’re very fortunate, in 2009 we got a bump up in our program through the Stimulus Bill formerly known as the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act. We’ve got about $17 million dollars in total and almost all of that went to elevation data.

19:03

We partnered with many of you on projects to acquire the high resolution mostly lighter data. We need a big dent in getting Alaska map within 10 percent of the state in partnership with the State of Alaskan and with the Department of Defense and other agencies so it’s very exciting that’s happening in elevation. Data services include our demographic names. This is an interesting map, it’s a nice map of the Rightsville beach area but you wouldn’t know that unless you’re very familiar with the area because not many is on that map until now.

And as the full caption says, a man without name is not a complete man, and that’s true. If you look at the difference between a map with no names and then what value it has to put those names on there is really quite significant. And we just say also for among the names meeting as Kevin said we are holding a board of geographic names meeting as part of this conference and you are all welcome to attend that and observe.

20:06

The National Hydrography Dataset is -- it is the theme they we're calling us proud of. It is just a fantastic job for a very long time. One of the great things about the National Hydrography dataset is it’s a network database that allows people to do modeling applications. So we had included flow of direction into the dataset. This little humorous picture here is not actually how we do it.

[Laughter]

Mark DeMulder: And for those of you who know Kevin Raw, this is Kevin’s niece. It was like part of the project that she haven’t been captured by photographed and we've been using since. It’s a great -- so people think for you to send a satellite of and take pictures of arrows floating down the streets. That’s how we do it but it’s not that way. Jefferson Lee our project leader from the National Hydrography Dataset and the huge community of people that he works with, just done a phenomenal job on really providing the definitive service water database for the United States.

21:12

We’re very fortunate now we have a containing dataset for the water shed boundaries which is nested with drainage area that are married to the NHD. And if you wonder why NHD is important, there’s just one example, this is a sort of a Homeland Security example. So a tool built for the Department of Homeland Security called the incident command pole. I’m using the NHD where it allows a user to do is model the amount of time between when a contaminant has enter into these three network one that contaminant will first reach a drinking water intake and that allows them to take action to close off those intakes.

A network database is necessary to make that happen. We've invested heavily in orthoimagery over the years, this is an exciting area probably because it’s a very useful component of any GIS or map allocation but because there’s been such a nominal growth in the private sector around this particular data, in the ‘90s I think I can say pretty honestly that the USGS really was instrumental in starting orthophotography business in the United States by conducting the International Ortho Program.

22:29

And equivalent place of commercial capability that has run and matured and has long since left behind the kind of the customer that it started with and virtually everybody out there uses imagery on the Web now. My 83-year old father uses imagery on the web, it’s hard to imagine but it’s true. And so I’m very excited and we continue to invest in the National Agricultural Imagery Program and with the partners in high resolution data. Nate is one reader, NGAs, states and local governments work for with us for high resolution data.

23:03

These are some examples of the type of imagery you’ll find in The National Map. This is an eighth image of the Hoover Dam. It’s one meter, it will be fun, natural color, this is a high resolution image that we got in conjunction with the partner in Florida and then in conjunction with NGAs, this is an example of image in -- of one foot resolution image in Seattle, Washington. I can actually read the name of the stadium on the roof of a house there.

An additional data service in The National Map is land cover information. Land cover provided through the classification of lands that image data along with other insularly data. Consistent land cover for all 50 states including Alaska. And this image actually shows that with American land cover map which we did in partnership with Canada and Mexico, our data has 16 classes of land cover data and it also includes other information like service and imperviousness and tree camping and this is just a quick snapshot of what that looks like.

24:05

So this is land covers from Santa Fe to Mexico. This is the impervious surface, in other words the paved part of our environment and in tree camping, all very useful for a variety of applications and modeling functions. There are three other data services that you can get from The National Map, transportation, boundaries and structures.

These are the ones for which the USGS does not have a mandatory responsibility for the other data teams, our office management, budget, the executive branch, cost of management budget, tells us we have to do those other five teams. Other agencies are responsible for these three so it’s especially critical for us to partner effectively with those agencies and others to be sure that The National Map is up to date, roads and other transportation, up to date boundaries and structures and all of the holograms or bases from the structures for us to provide buildings, the building environment.

25:07

So shifting from services, the visual -- the visualization for just a moment. This is an image of the current National Map here and we have a beta version of the upgrade out there now. Rob Dollason, our product leader but this is here at the conference and they did a workshop on it earlier this week. It’s really a huge improvement over the viewer that we used 10 years passed.

This is a FAST-based map, you can bring in your user content. Any consumable Web service can be brought into this National Map viewer. You can use The National Map as the base to publish and display whatever scientific data or other information you have so long as you can put in a consumable Web service being it’s a WC compliant service. These past services that we provided in The National Map are available to other applications. It’s very easy to go into our GIS online and open The National Map services in that portal application likewise Google and the others as well. So it’s a two-way communication.

26:09

We're not limiting people to use our viewer to use The National Map, they prefer different platforms, that’s fine they can consume our services and use whatever portal that suits their needs. One thing that is different about our portal and I want to emphasize is that it offers a download capability. All the data you see in The National Map, you can -- you just click on this download button on the upper right hand side of the screen, it will offer you some free, selected areas like 24K quad boundaries or counties or water sheds that you can use or you can just download whatever is displayed on your screen.

You get a little pop-up that says, what themes are you interested in that area, what format would you like it delivered and you can just click on one button and it sends it to your cart and you get an email saying that data is available.

27:02

And people have availed themselves of these capabilities to the tune of more than 400 terabytes over the last year on this application. I’m going to talk about two little case studies. One is a download case study and the other is a visualization case study. If you’re not familiar with Carolina days and I wasn’t until I did a research on this, it’s a geomorphological form in the Eastern Unite States.

And their low lying depressions they often have unique ecosystems and rare or endangered species live in this unique habitat. So it’s important to know where they are. Interestingly, they’re not called Bays because they’re off and filled with water, they’re called Bays because they’re often populated with the species of tree called the Bay tree, it’s subsequent offshoots. So interesting little bit of history there.

28:01

In many places, modern land use skewers to put the presence of these Carolina Bays through this supplier or IDES. They can very easily be spotted. So let me just show you this little case study. This is an image from the 1930s, areal photograph, before the land, the land uses this part of North Carolina. You can very easily see these Carolina Bays and they almost always run northwest and southeast like they do in this in the southeast. End of it is almost always white sand. I’m very curious, so that’s 1930s.

This is a National Map image being shown in a Google application from the much more recent image and it’s much more difficult to spot. You can see some of it but because of the disruptive land pattern it’s much harder to see. If you want to actually detect the map of those what you can do is go to National Map, download the light R data for that area, bring that into whatever application you want, this is the user brought in to do the work, and you can very readily spot these Carolina bays.

29:11

Now that this state is on your system, you can do things like cross-section profiles that help you to better understand the characteristics of this base and so on. So that’s the case for download. Here’s the case for visualization or a scientist studying the Patuxent wildlife refuge, looking at land conservation issues needs to bring together the visual sense of diverse set of information like you see on the slide here from diverse organizations.

So in The National Map you can break up the base layer and then what this person has done is added the protected area database of the U.S. Information for protected wildlife refuge. It shifts all the protected areas and the status of that protection -- conservation status, basically. This is a product of the U.S. Geological Survey and produces and maintains under Kevin Gallagher’s part of the organization.

30:03

So there’s part of her answer, and now she brings up fish -- from the fish and wildlife service brings up the National Wetlands Inventory Data and she needs a better understanding of the categories, the weapons they’re in her study area, finally brings on some superficial geology from the USGS and really has a vivid picture of what the scenario is in that particular part of the Patuxent Wildlife Refuge from a visualization perspective to get a study started.

I’ll shift just one more time or two more times actually. This is to talk about online maps and we’ll talk about U.S. Topo, that’s the new generation of USGS topo maps. I’ve told you we started the centralized in 2008, started production in 2009, built from the four layers of The National Map is a completely visual products this is what it looks like. It’s in the GeoPDF format. Do you or not familiar with GeoPDF? Any computer that can read a PDF can read a GeoPDF.

31:05

So that’s pretty much every computer in the world and we’re very fortunate, Michael Bufkin who is the inventor of GeoPDF is doing a paper at this conference in the next couple of days and I don't remember if he's there tomorrow. If you want to learn more about it, he is the guy that dreamed it up. Our products are available for free over the Web. About half a million of them have been downloaded in the last 20 months or so and that number continues to slightly increase.

It includes an image base as you can see which is new for topographic maps. That’s selectable content, you can turn away your line off and as I said we’ve published more than 40,000 of these in the last 20 months and so for my colleague at headquarters for carrying on from our operations center and all the staff at work preparing, we’re very proud of what you’ve done, it’s amazing.

31:57

National Atlas is a fantastic program that’s been around actually probably longer than The National Map. Is that right, Jay? Yeah. And it is a beautiful, small scale, thematic representation of the geography of our country. It’s authoritative, it’s accurate, it’s compiled using sources from 20 federal agencies. It is the kind of data you see on the screen here and it also gives you pre-made maps. If you don’t want to make a map on mind which some people might not want to do, you can go to menu and tick maps that’s been made for you and download them and print them if you wish to print them.

And the page-sized maps and wall-sized maps, these are high quality cartographic products, beautiful maps and they’re really successful programming that Jay has managed for years now, 10, 12, 13 probably, yeah. In the beginning of my talk, I mentioned historical information and I told you that at least the USGS scientists have told us that they may need access to what things were likely to ask and that includes historical maps but it also includes other kinds of historical information.

33:10

We do maintain geographic names on process, historical information about name changes over the centuries if not over the last century, it’s also very useful. The USGS has published over 250,000 individual topographic maps since the 1880s. Most of those historical maps are not available to the general public because they’re not just accessible, they’re in the basement of the USGS building and resting.

Yes, you can come out and show a driver’s license and go down the library, court room and look at historical maps but if you live in Sacramento that might not be very convenient. And It’s also very difficult to use that information in combination with your GIS or digital other data so that’s the challenge.

34:01

The solution is we are scanning all 250,000 of these maps, we’re re-projecting them all to do the same projection system and it’s the same projection system that our U.S. Topo maps and being put in two formats, GeoPDF and GeoTIFF, it’s either choice and they are georeferenced with complete FGDC defined metadata. We're about two-thirds through this project. Greg Allard is doing a paper. He has a display on his project on the hall. He’s doing a paper on it later. So all of these maps will be available wherever you are I the world for free and their point of being the same geographic reference frame as the maps are going to change over time with this.

This little example just shows you 1997 and 2010, not a very long period of time but look at -- if you look at the area kind of right in here this development is not in the 1997 map, it’s this area down here and you can see the water figures have been engineered as part of this development.

35:07

So that’s a substantial change and those kinds of things that our scientists want to track. So are we on the path to meet your future needs? We have a photograph here of a seven-year old boy holding an iPad looking at a U.S. Topo. It’s young Mr. Dietterle and we use that as kind of a way to sort of trigger your thinking about the future -- trigger our thinking about the future. This is the customer base that you need to be thinking about and mobile is the way these young people are going to want their data delivered and there’s a lot associated with that.

36:51

The other purpose of this slide is I want to share with you what the research areas are that we are currently pursuing in the National Geospatial Program. Lynn Usery is our director for research program is here. I think probably every one of these topics appears somewhere in the agenda in the next couple of days but if you want to talk to Lynn, he’s right here in the middle of room and he’ll tell you more specifically what we’re doing on the total map design, generalization, and the integration, so that one is really interesting, everybody is talking about Cloud computing, DGI in the sense this is volunteer, provided geographic information on social media.

These things are changing the way we do our business and they certainly are going to have profound impact on what the customer’s expectations are. Ontology is kind of a loopy word. What it means is being able to describe things in a way that allow people to do searches over the Web using real words and get real words back as an answer. So the semantic Web and the other work is built around that.

36:59

Lots of work on data models to track both temporal change in 3D, the semantic data modeling, and one of the exciting things treating these research activities, we do expect that at some point we’ll be able to not only see what the geographic features are on the landscape but for the -- how that will change over time based on the information that’s resident in that database. It’s like in research in this carrying up over there.

So what’s on your mind? We did a word Cloud from your papers and this is it? So this is one way for us to sort of visually display what you are thinking about or at least what you have -- wants to talk about in the papers that you’re doing, names, integrating, validation, services, total of future mapping light or hydrography, integration, NHD, geospatial, all very familiar.

38:02

I think the fact that national art is so large, I guess I’ll -- we sort of think of the federal government were probably more concerned with the national situation than others but this one tell me maybe not because many of you are not from the federal sector and very interesting result.

Alright, my clock says I have three minutes left. I’m on my last slide. So are committed to you going forward from this month the rest of the two days and going forward in time from here on is to connect and by that I mean to communicate, to keep you included and informed, to engage, to listen to your concerns and needs and ideas and to discover, and through that discovery with you, help evolve our content, our processes, what our capabilities are and what we do in response to what we learned from you at this conference.

39:08

So let me just say again, how absolutely thrilled we are to see so many of you come to this event. Thank you for your attendance here, it means a lot to us, we really appreciate it and with that I will turn it back to our master of ceremonies and thank you very much.

[Applause]