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Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction ." National Research Council. 2007. A Research Agenda for Geographic Information Science at the United States Geological Survey. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12004.
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Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction ." National Research Council. 2007. A Research Agenda for Geographic Information Science at the United States Geological Survey. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12004.
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Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction ." National Research Council. 2007. A Research Agenda for Geographic Information Science at the United States Geological Survey. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12004.
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Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction ." National Research Council. 2007. A Research Agenda for Geographic Information Science at the United States Geological Survey. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12004.
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Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction ." National Research Council. 2007. A Research Agenda for Geographic Information Science at the United States Geological Survey. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12004.
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Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction ." National Research Council. 2007. A Research Agenda for Geographic Information Science at the United States Geological Survey. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12004.
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Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction ." National Research Council. 2007. A Research Agenda for Geographic Information Science at the United States Geological Survey. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12004.
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Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction ." National Research Council. 2007. A Research Agenda for Geographic Information Science at the United States Geological Survey. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12004.
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Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction ." National Research Council. 2007. A Research Agenda for Geographic Information Science at the United States Geological Survey. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12004.
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Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction ." National Research Council. 2007. A Research Agenda for Geographic Information Science at the United States Geological Survey. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12004.
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1 Introduction The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has a long history in the development of geospatial data, starting with the topographic mapping of the nation that be- gan in the late nineteenth century and continued throughout the twentieth century. The USGS developed topographic maps on several scales that have been used over the past 100 years by professionals and citizens alike. To carry out its mapping mission the USGS gained considerable expertise in cartography and, with the advent of computer technology, was one of the leaders in the de- velopment of techniques and standards in the field of digital cartography. Even further advances in technology have pushed the USGS to strive toward a fully electronic implementation of the topographic maps and related geospatial data, which has been named The National Map. The challenges of developing The National Map differ greatly from those faced by cartographers even 20 years ago. Meanwhile, geographic information system (GIS) technology has become ubiquitous, with digital mapping sources to be found anywhere from specialized government agency sites, to state and local government web pages, to commercial sites that have caught the interest of the general public. Within this fast-changing environment, the USGS realized the need to assess the focus of its research in geographic information science (GIScience) to determine how it could best meet the needs of The National Map, the USGS, and the nation. 13

14 A Research Agenda for GIScience at the USGS THE EMERGENCE AND FOCUS OF CEGIS The idea of a Center of Excellence for Geospatial Information Science (CEGIS) was first proposed by McMahon et al. (2005) in a report that describes a science strategy for geographic research, including GIScience, at the USGS between 2005 and 2015. CEGIS was initiated by the Associate Director for Geospatial Information in 2006. CEGIS is housed within the National Geospatial Program Office (NGPO). The NGPO was created in 2004 when the USGS reorganized its geospatial in- formation programs to better invest in technology and partnerships aimed at modernizing its collection, management, processing, updating, and delivery of geospatial information.1 The major elements of USGS’s geospatial programs and services unified under NGPO include The National Map, the National Atlas of the United States of America®, the Federal Geographic Data Committee se- cretariat, Geospatial One-Stop, and other geospatial program elements (Figure 1.1). Geospatial information is one of five disciplines within USGS, the others being water, geology, geography, and biology (Figure 1.1). Among the NGPO’s responsibilities are defining the overall GIScience (see Box 1.1) research agenda and championing GIScience research as a component of USGS's science portfolio. CEGIS undertakes these GIScience research re- sponsibilities. The USGS’s vision for CEGIS is to “conduct, lead, and influence the research and innovative solutions required by the National Spatial Data In- frastructure (NSDI)” (CEGIS, 2006). 2 CEGIS’s mission is to “conduct, support, and collaborate in research to address critical Geographic Information Science questions of importance to the USGS and to the broader geospatial community” and “as an outgrowth of and complement to this research program, CEGIS will support and collaborate in technological innovations that further the implemen- tation of the NSDI” (CEGIS, 2006). 1 See http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=80. 2 The NSDI is the means to assemble geographic information that describes the arrange- ment and attributes of features and phenomena on the Earth. The infrastructure includes the materials, technology, and people necessary to acquire, process, store, and distribute such information to meet a variety of needs (NRC, 1993).

Introduction 15 FIGURE 1.1 Organizational chart that emphasizes (in italics) (A) organizations that carry out geospatial responsibilities of the Associate Director for Geospatial Information and (B) the major program activities through which these responsibilities are carried out. SOURCE: USGS.

16 A Research Agenda for GIScience at the USGS BOX 1.1 Definition of Geographic Information Science The individual who coined the term GIScience defined it as “a multidisciplinary re- search enterprise that addresses the nature of geographic information and the application of geospatial technologies to basic scientific questions” (Goodchild, 1992). CEGIS staff recently identified the reach of GIScience as including “the traditional mapping disciplines of surveying, aerial photographic interpretation, photogrammetry, re- mote sensing, and cartography. It also encompasses a broader scope of issues related to the modeling and representation of geographic phenomena, data, and processes; human cognition of geographic information; the analysis, depiction, and use of uncertainty informa- tion; spatial analysis and modeling, including geographic information systems (GIS); scale sensitivities; geographic ontologies; visualization; and other similar topics” (CEGIS, 2006). GIScience relies on expertise from many allied fields and has intimate ties to geospatial technology and applications. As stated earlier, the starting point for planning CEGIS’s GIScience re- search activities is a study by McMahon et al. (2005) that describes a science strategy for geographic research, including GIScience, at USGS between 2005 and 2015. The recommendations of the McMahon report were, in fact, quite broad and include the needs of the other USGS disciplines. Furthermore, many of the authors, including McMahon, were from disciplines within USGS other than geography, or were from outside of the USGS. The McMahon report rec- ommended that USGS establish CEGIS to lead USGS GIScience research (for details on the McMahon report’s ideas for CEGIS, see Appendix C). Proposed areas of focus within CEGIS are drawn from goals 8, 9, and 5 in McMahon et al. (2005), namely: • Provide timely, efficient, and intelligent access to new and archived USGS geographic data needed to conduct science and support policy decisions (Goal 8). • Develop innovative methods of modeling and information synthesis, fusion, and visualization to improve our ability to explore geographic data and create new knowledge (Goal 9). • Develop credible and accessible geographic research, tools, and meth- ods to support decision making related to the human and environmental consequences of land change (Goal 5). While the call to action in the McMahon report is the primary reason that CEGIS is being established now, the agency feels a need to retain key talent with a critical mass of researchers for which a center of excellence would be helpful (Steve Guptill, USGS, personal communication, 2006). The McMahon report suggests that such a center would build, nurture, and maintain a core of GIScience researchers and provide a focal point and sense of identity for these

Introduction 17 researchers. Lastly, CEGIS will build a science role within NGPO in addition to its operational and leadership roles. CEGIS TODAY The CEGIS budget covers three full-time equivalent (FTE) employees who are considered CEGIS staff—one in Reston, Virginia, and two at Rolla, Mis- souri. In addition, CEGIS funds GIScience-related projects conducted by two to three other USGS FTEs and a support staff of four to six FTEs.3 The USGS also funds a CEGIS-affiliated postdoctoral research position managed by the Univer- sity Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS) (CEGIS, 2006). In late 2007, three additional postdoctoral positions in GIScience will be added through USGS’s participation in a National Research Council (NRC)- administered postdoctoral program. The FY 2007 budget has two components. The first is $1.2 million to cover the activities listed above, which are located not only at Reston, but also at the Center for Earth Resources Observations and Science (EROS) in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and in Rolla, Missouri (to support all of the FTEs mentioned above). The second component of the CEGIS budget is an FY 2007 call for proposals, which resulted in approximately $1 million being awarded to seven interdisciplinary projects that involve people across USGS in collaboration with non-USGS partners. CEGIS’s research portfolio is thus a mix of (1) preexisting GIScience- related projects already funded within USGS and placed under the management of CEGIS when it was formed in 2006 and (2) the seven new projects funded under the FY 2007 call for proposals. FOCUS OF THIS REPORT Recognizing the need to develop a set of research goals and priorities for CEGIS that will best meet its needs for future capabilities in GIScience, the USGS approached the NRC through its Mapping Science Committee (MSC) and asked the MSC to form a committee to develop these research goals and priori- ties (Appendix A). Using knowledge of the current state of the art in GIScience and information from USGS on current and future needs and capabilities, the committee was asked to determine which areas of research would be most effec- tive for the CEGIS to pursue. The three primary tasks follow: 3 The ranges arise because CEGIS provides partial support to a number of people whose combined contribution is equivalent to between eight and nine FTE positions.

18 A Research Agenda for GIScience at the USGS 1. Identify current and future USGS needs for GIScience capabilities. 2. Assess current capabilities in GIScience research at the USGS and rec- ommend strategies for strengthening these capabilities and for collaborating with others to maximize research productivity. 3. Using knowledge of the current state of the art in GIScience, make rec- ommendations regarding the most effective research areas for the CEGIS to pursue. To complete its task, the committee met three times in person—twice in Washington, D.C., and once in Irvine, California—and numerous times by phone. The committee benefited from input from a range of experts (Appendix B) and drew from a broad range of documents listed in the references. Given the short time frame and potentially broad scope of its task, the committee chair and study director met with the USGS Associate Director for Geospatial Information, the CEGIS Director, and the Associate Director’s Chief Scientist (Karen Siderelis, Steve Guptill, and Anne Frondorf, respectively) prior to the first full committee meeting to discuss the sponsor’s expectations from the study and to gain insights into their priorities among the items in the commit- tee’s task. As the primary audience for the report, these senior USGS staff indicated that they were most interested in the committee’s insights on item 3 and the second half of item 2 of its task. These tasks were summarized as, What should CEGIS focus on and how can this be achieved? The committee’s discus- sion of and recommendations on these tasks are covered in Chapters 3 and 4, respectively. In addition to emphasizing a desire for the committee to focus on tasks 2 and 3, USGS steered the committee away from primary research on the first task and the first half of the second task. Instead, the USGS urged the committee to draw on recent reports such as McMahon et al. (2005) and on responses to the call for pro- posals for this information.4 These tasks are covered in Chapters 1 and 2. In addition to the USGS’s guidance on emphasis among the committee’s three tasks, it encouraged the committee to shape the CEGIS research portfolio based on its need for GIScience research across USGS (i.e., not solely within NGPO). However, the committee is keenly aware of the importance of The Na- tional Map to the mission of NGPO and to the USGS as a whole, not to mention 4 The McMahon et al. report was written by a team whose primary objective was to develop a strategy for USGS geography science activities from 2005 to 2015 by analyzing regional, national, and global scientific issues and needs. The 12-person team that conducted the work spanned all the disciplines of USGS and also included the chairs of NRC panels that earlier had reviewed the geography program and the vision for The National Map. The group heard from 175 people from all facets of government, academia, industry, and nongovernmental organizations. That effort was supported by almost an order of magnitude more funds than this NRC study, and USGS sponsors of this study urged the committee to draw from that re- source with respect to USGS needs for GIScience capabilities.

Introduction 19 the USGS’s topographic mapping mission responsibilities. In 2002, the NRC stated that “developing The National Map is the most important single initiative in the Geography Discipline at the USGS” (NRC, 2002), while recognizing that “The National Map as a database product and an information base is an attain- able goal by 2010, but some of the basic knowledge needed to create it (and other spatial data products) is not yet available,” and that “present knowledge, methods, and tools are inadequate to create The National Map . . . ”. In the committee chair’s meeting with Karen Siderelis, Steve Guptill, and Anne Fron- dorf, they confirmed that supporting The National Map is of highest priority and that there were critical research needs for accomplishing that objective. The USGS urged the committee not to constrain the scope of research based on current CEGIS resources and to think in terms of the next decade of research. Even with this guidance, the committee concurred with the USGS sponsors that the range of needs for GIScience research (as described in USGS, 2001; NRC, 2002; McMahon et al., 2005, and responses to the FY 2007 call for proposals, for example) would readily exceed even the most optimistic expectations of re- source availability for CEGIS. Consequently, the committee focused its view of CEGIS’s role on applied, technical aspects of GIScience and away from soft- ware engineering, product development, and nontechnical aspects (e.g., institutional issues, digital rights management challenges) of supporting the Na- tional Spatial Data Infrastructure (while recognizing the need for these roles elsewhere in USGS). The committee’s process of prioritization of research tasks is explained in Chapter 3. GISCIENCE CAPABILITIES AT USGS The USGS employs a small cadre of GIScience professionals. In addition, it uses several mechanisms that bridge to external GIScience expertise. Internal GIScience Resources Much of USGS’s GIScience expertise has already been identified and linked to CEGIS. As one indication of the GIScience capabilities already tapped by CEGIS, the projects funded in FY 2007 (excluding those funded through the bureau-wide call for proposals) focus on the following: • Automated data integration ($280,000) • Generalization for The National Map ($190,000) • Building an ontology for The National Map ($250,000) • Multiresolution raster data for The National Map ($200,000) • LIDAR-derived elevation technology assessment ($80,000)

20 A Research Agenda for GIScience at the USGS • Elevation feature extraction ($127,000) • Fractal and variogram analysis of scale and resolution effects in geo- spatial data ($100,000) Appendix D includes more information on each of these projects, and Chap- ter 3 describes how these projects fit with the committee’s suggested research topics. Another indication of GIScience capabilities across the bureau arises from the topical focus of the proposals received in response to CEGIS’s FY 2007 USGS-wide call for proposals. This call by CEGIS leadership had a goal to identify “hidden” GIScience talent within the disciplines at USGS that might be a valuable resource for the center (Steve Guptill, USGS, personal communica- tion, 2006). Although each research team must be led by a USGS researcher, the team is encouraged to be multidisciplinary and include non-USGS expertise. Consequently, an additional result from this call is that it reveals the broader network of GIScience capabilities to which USGS experts are already con- nected. Of the 69 proposals received in response to the call, 23 were submitted from the water discipline, 20 from geography, 15 from biology, 10 from geology, and 1 from NGPO. In all disciplines there was a broad range of proposed topics that spanned monitoring and data capture through data integration, analysis, and er- ror propagation to modeling and decision support. CEGIS leadership now has a better sense of the distribution and range of GIScience and related capabilities across USGS. The seven projects funded through this call for proposals are: 1. Scaling, Extrapolation, and Uncertainty of Vegetation, Topographic, and Ecologic Properties in the Mojave Desert ($73,000); 2. A Landscape Indicator Approach to the Identification and Articulation of the Ecological Consequences of Land Cover Change in the Chesa- peake Bay Watershed, 1970 – 2000 ($132,000); 3. Assessing Local Uncertainty in Non-Stationary Scale-Variant Geospa- tial Data ($117,000); 4. Methods to Quantify Error Propagation and Prediction Uncertainty for USGS Raster Processing ($135,000); 5. The Geoscience of Harmful Invasive Species: Integrating LANDFIRE (Landscape Fire and Resource Management Planning Tools Project) and Invasive Species Data for Dynamic and Seamless Integration of Raster and Vector Data to Meet Management Needs at Multiple Scales ($150,000); 6. Mapping Inundation at USGS Stream Gage Sites: A Proof of Concept Investigation ($150,000); and

Introduction 21 7. GEOLEM:5 Improving the Integration of Geographic Information in Environmental Modeling through Semantic Interoperability ($150,000). See Appendix D for more information on these projects. FIGURE 1.2 Difference between employee functions in 2003 and projected future geog- raphy discipline employee functions. Negative numbers represent an excess of employees in the function; positive numbers represent a current shortage in the function. Largest proposed growth areas (positive numbers) are in data integration and partnership development. Because this figure was generated before the USGS map production func- tions moved to NGPO, it is at best a general indication of planned changes that are not yet complete. SOURCE: USGS, 2003. GIScience research activities funded within and by CEGIS are occurring in the midst of USGS’s shift in emphasis of staff expertise away from paper map production and toward integration of digital data (Figure 1.2). An assessment of resources against the current mission shows an excess of staff engaged in data production and a shortfall of staff skilled in data integration—a function that will be important for assimilating data from other sources as the USGS moves out of internal production and into working with partners. 5 Geospatial Object Library for Environmental Modeling.

22 A Research Agenda for GIScience at the USGS Leveraging External Resources USGS uses Cooperative Research and Development Act (CRADA) agree- ments as one means of connecting with external GIScience expertise. An example of such an agreement for geospatial activities is with Microsoft Corpo- ration on the development of Terraserver.6 In addition to CRADAs, USGS has leveraged external GIScience expertise by arranging a series of visiting aca- demic GIScientists who have been based at Reston, Virginia during sabbatical leave; participating with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) in the solicitation and review of NGA University Research Initiative proposals; conducting a graduate school training program in which more than a dozen USGS employees pursued GIScience studies at universities including Ohio State University, State University of New York Buffalo, University of California at Santa Barbara, and University of South Carolina; organizing research meetings (e.g., the Public Health Colloquiums) with expert participants invited through UCGIS; funding postdoctoral positions in GIScience at USGS facilities; and sponsoring GIScience professional meetings (Steve Guptill, USGS, personal communication, 2007). FUTURE USGS RESEARCH NEEDS AND CEGIS Geography, GIScience, and mapping will be increasingly important to the USGS’s water, geology, and biology disciplines. With the new roles of map and information integration, CEGIS will face increasing demands for solutions to complex geospatial data processing challenges as well as automation of those functions so that USGS researchers can handle large amounts of dissimilar and nonconforming data with frequent updates. In addition, USGS’s major role in analyzing land change over time will require new GIScience-derived methods. In 2007, the USGS released its report outlining a 10-year science strategy for the agency. Facing Tomorrow’s Challenges: USGS Science in the Coming Decade (USGS, 2007) sets the bar high early in the introduction: “The USGS is the Nation’s and the world’s leading natural science and information agency . . . [whose efforts] . . . allow the USGS to map and understand land use/land change trends across the Nation.” The 2007 report highlights the GIScience needs that could be fulfilled by CEGIS. These needs are described in Chapter 2. 6 See http://nationalmap.gov/gio/viewonline.html.

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Comprehensive and authoritative baseline geospatial data content is crucial to the nation and to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). The USGS founded its Center of Excellence for Geospatial Information Science (CEGIS) in 2006 to develop and distribute national geospatial data assets in a fast-moving information technology environment. In order to fulfill this mission, the USGS asked the National Research Council to assess current GIScience capabilities at the USGS, identify current and future needs for GIScience capabilities, recommend strategies for strengthening these capabilities and for collaborating with others to maximize research productivity, and make recommendations regarding the most effective research areas for CEGIS to pursue. With an initial focus on improving the capabilities of The National Map, the report recommends three priority research areas for CEGIS: information access and dissemination, data integration, and data models, and further identifies research topics within these areas that CEGIS should pursue. To address these research topics, CEGIS needs a sustainable research management process that involves a portfolio of collaborative research that balances short and long term goals.

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