NSDI: Tower of Babel aspiring to lingua franca

Abstract

Consistent means to share geographic data among all users could produce significant savings for data collection and use and enhance decision making. Executive Order 12906 calls for the establishment of the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) defined as the technologies, policies, and people necessary to promote sharing of geospatial data throughout all levels of government, the private and nonprofit sectors, and the academic community. The goal of this Infrastructure is to reduce duplication of effort among agencies, improve quality and reduce costs related to geographic information, make geographic data more accessible to the public, increase the benefits of using available data, and establish key partnerships with states, counties, cities, tribal nations, academia and the private sector to increase data availability. A panel of state, federal, academia and industry experts in spatial data will lead a free-wheeling discussion regarding survival in the spatial age with "data, data everywhere and yet not enough to think." 1. Hundreds of thousands of KML/SHP/etc. spatial data files are out there. How do you find the ones you want? 2. Computation-heavy data analysis is needed just to see climate data, much more do research with. How do you spread that computation load around? 3. Each local government entity throughout each state and across the nation are in need of similar data management tools, as well as access to similar datasets. How do we route ourselves away from duplicative GIS solutions and happily harness the larger community? 4. Given that natural disasters are an inevitable part of life on Earth, be they earthquakes, forest fires or storm activity, how do we optimize access to the considerable datasets (i.e., NetCDF) essential for weather forecasting, climate research and disaster management? Please join us in brainstorming smarter ways for a precious planet to do business.