4 COVER STORIES Governance of the NSDI Continued from page 3 sufficient for their more general needs. This is actually fairly rare, but I have a good example from McLeod County in central Minnesota. The county wanted 1-foot contour data and worked with several local cities and a watershed district to contract for services. USGS needed only 10-foot resolution for its National Elevation Database, but contributed financially so it could access the finer data, process it, and publish a 10-foot summary of the original county data. The Minnesota Department of Transportation also contributed to the effort. This partnership was recognized in 2008 with a commendation from the governor of the state of Minnesota. A fourth approach is for the private sector to get involved and create something that has value to the nation—enough value to support the enterprise. A number of popular Web providers of maps, travel directions, and aerial photos are doing a great job of delivering this kind of information to the public; much of the data comes from government sources, but it is delivered in useful packages by private firms. Ideally, we would base other work on public/private partnerships, so government has a say in the nature and availability of the final product. We lack good models on how this should work, but the potential is there. Parcels and Addresses Parcels and addresses are especially useful pieces of the NSDI from my perspective. They present a conundrum for federal partnerships. Many federal agencies need such data for their day-to-day operations or in emergencies. This data is typically created and maintained by local government, but there is no systematic way for this local data to flow up to state or federal agencies as described in the third option above for delivering data for the nation. Illustration by Suzanne Davis, Esri There is no system for collecting and organizing local data, so federal agencies collect their own data. Taxpayers foot the bill for multiple versions of the same data. No governing body in Washington has responsibility for resolving the conundrum— addressing the fragmented landscape. Data on addresses is the most vexing because it is the closest to being ready for widespread sharing. The Census Bureau and the U.S. Postal Service have nationwide databases but share only with each other. A 1982 Supreme Court decision supports the Census Bureau decision to not share its Master Address File with local government. That decision was based on the court’s understanding of congressional intent in writing Title 13 of the U.S. Code forbidding access to internal Census Bureau records, not on any intrinsic right of privacy. The past 27 years have brought significant developments in technology and business databases, making moot decisions about unknown addresses. Most recently, the Census Bureau has spent millions of dollars hiring out GPS work to add an x,y coordinate to every front door in America. For some reason, this information is also held as nonpublic. I could easily see a system where I provide my address to the Census Bureau and it returns my x,y coordinate. Local governments and 911 authorities would love to have this information for their business needs but do not have the funds to collect this data themselves and cannot get it from the Census Bureau. I am not talking about internal and possibly illegal housing units, just about the front door that anyone could see when walking by. I am not talking about unknown places in the woods, only those buildings for which the local authority already has addresses. The x,y coordinates remain an internal, nonpublic resource at the Census Bureau, paid for with public funds, but not available to the public or any other government agency. Does this make sense? Parcels are in a similar situation, but different because no federal agency has responsibility for maintaining a national parcel dataset. Nearly every domestic agency, save USGS, has the need for parcel data. USDA needs parcel data to manage its crop insurance programs. Our national parks and forests need information on parcels to communicate with neighboring landowners. FEMA needs parcel data for rescue and recovery operations; it wasted millions of dollars following Hurricane Katrina in aid to people who did not own property in the damaged area. The Census Bureau could use parcels on the outer edge of cities to update their governmental unit boundaries. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) could use parcel data to monitor urban decay or renaissance. Some would argue that access to good parcel data would have allowed us to foresee the recent mortgage crisis and intervene before things went so horribly wrong. A 2007 report by the National Academy of Sciences looked at parcel data issues: National Land Parcel Data: A Vision for the Future. I was on the committee that drafted that report. We envisioned a Web mapping service that would allow people to see parcel maps, along with a limited set of attributes, for any place in the country without regard to county or state borders. States would play an intermediary role, adding their own landownership data and managing records for those local governments without sufficient internal capacity. This It’s not just a picture. It’s a pool of data. We capture and deliver the most image data. From Abu Dhabi or any location, look to GeoEye’s comprehensive imagery products and services for everything you need to receive accurate, timely and accessible location intelligence. Plus, our trusted imagery experts unlock even more data with services like feature extraction and image classification. For the most complete, most actionable image intelligence possible, choose GeoEye. Image intelligence. Delivered intelligently. www.geoeye.com / svc © 2009 GeoEye. All Rights Reserved. Arc News Size: Junior Page 7.365” x 8.5” 300 dpi