An advisory board that includes the other disciplines of USGS would foster channels of connection and communication with these disciplines, as well as providing a path for defining requirements and research needs. The disciplines would benefit by having influence on the research agenda of CEGIS to suit their needs.

RECOMMENDATION 12: To provide broad-based input, review, and critique of CEGIS plans, activities, and progress and to institutionalize CEGIS’s connection to the USGS disciplines, the National Geospatial Program Office should establish an advisory board for CEGIS that includes members from each of the USGS disciplines as well as non-USGS GIScience experts.

With these actions, and a focus on the research areas recommended in this report, CEGIS could become a nimble, dynamic, cutting-edge research unit that emerges as the critical research engine underpinning USGS’s capability to supply the nation’s authoritative geospatial base content. Although the committee’s charge was to suggest an agenda for this early phase of CEGIS, it is assumed that as CEGIS grows in resources and expertise, it will expand to encompass research into broader areas of GIScience. The committee believes that in the future, not only could CEGIS provide the structure to conduct research—its approach could establish GIScience leadership for the USGS.