Nebraska GIS Steering Committee
1:00 PM, Thursday, February 26, 2004
Minutes
Roll Call Present were (authorized to vote *):
Billie Jo Beck FSA – USDA
Jim Brown * State Surveyor
Chris Chalmers * NHHSS
Ray Fox USGS
Dick Genrich * Nebraska
Department of Roads
Dave Hess Datastor,
Inc.
Les Howard * Conservation
Survey Division
Jim Langtry * Lancaster
County Engineers Office
Kim Menke * Nebraska Department of
Natural Resources
John Miyoshi * Lower
Platte North NRD
Steve Schafer * CIO
Curt Sorenson FSA – USDA
Rick Spoerl Datastor,
Inc.
Dan Steinkruger FSA – USDA
Duane Stott * Scottsbluff
County Surveyor
Paul Yamamoto * Department
of Environmental Quality
Larry Zink GIS Steering Committee
Coordinator
MAJOR MEETING TOPICS
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NOTICE OF MEETING: A public notice of the meeting, pursuant to Section 84-1411 R.R. S. 1943, was published in the Lincoln Journal Star on Thursday, February 19, 2004.
ROLL CALL: Chairperson Jim Brown called the meeting to order at approximately 1:00 PM. There were ten duly authorized members present therefore a quorum was present to conduct business.
PUBLIC COMMENT: Comments were invited from the general public in attendance at the meeting. No public comments were offered.
APPROVAL OF 1/8/04 MINUTES: There were a couple editorial changes suggested on the 1/8/04 minutes on pages 3 and 4. John Miyoshi moved to approve the minutes as amended. Paul Yamamoto seconded. The motion passed (see vote #1 on Voting Record sheet).
STREET CENTERLINE/ADDRESS DATABASE:
a) Update on Street Centerline/Address Database
Development Efforts
Larry reported that due to his injury (broken elbow and shoulder blade), he was unable to get the Advisory Committee on Transportation/Street Addresses organized and convened.
Watershed Boundary Dataset: Larry reported that this two-year project is starting. The project will redefine and further subdivide watershed boundaries in the state, according to national standards. There is a full watershed boundary dataset for Nebraska that DNR developed several years ago but it is not based on the new national standards that have been since that data was create and therefore in many places the dataset does not comply. One example within the dataset involves using the stream centerline as a boundary, which is not permitted under current national standards. Also, some of the subdivisions are either too large or too small. The national standards provide minimum/maximum acreage for each subdivision level. There will be an effort, where possible, to follow those existing DNR lines. The focus will first be on going around the boundary of Nebraska, picking up the watersheds that cross the boundary lines because other surrounding states are going to or have already done this. More detail can be found on the agenda site. This is being contracted out of USGS, Utah office, and primarily funded by NRCS. The main role the GIS Str. Cmte. and state agencies are taking is an attempt to facilitate feedback from interested individuals and agencies, as draft boundary lines are developed.
Nebraska Land Record Modernization Study and Proposed Land Information System Program. Duane Stott noted that last week there was public hearing on LB 1169, the Nebraska Land Information System Program Act before the Legislature’s Government and Military Affairs Committee. Larry: Duane, John, Larry (in a neutral capacity), and Jim testified before the Government of Military Affairs Committee. They had not acted on LB 1169 at this point. There is a similar bill, LB 232, which was introduced last year by the Register of Deeds and is out of committee on general file. LB 232 raises money from a Recording Fee increase, much like the land information system does, but is dedicated to Registered Deeds only with more focus towards record preservation.
There seems to be real interest by Senator Wehrbein who introduced the Nebraska Land Information System Program Act, LB 1169, and Senator Smith who introduced LB 232, to explore the possibility of merging those two bills in some way. They both have to do with land records, one more focused on preserving documents and one will be brought into GIS format. They both proposed using recording fees as a revenue source. There is also some level of revenue re-distribution in both bills, though significantly different for both bills.
There is a meeting scheduled for Monday, March 1, 2004 in Senator Wehrbein’s office for a few people on each side of this issue, including Larry Zink and John Erickson, to talk about pros and cons of merging the bills. This is a short Legislative session but the Speaker of the Legislature did designate LB232 as a priority bill so there is some hope of getting it passed before Legislature ends.
Opposition to the bill was, primarily, from the Register of Deeds due to the concern for their bill. It is quite possible that there could be an interim study resolution done over the summer. Input is welcomed from everyone before the Monday meeting. Larry referred to a document that he had prepared that provided a Crosswalk Analysis of LB 1169 and LB 232. He noted that one of the most significant things on this chart is the fact that in the Register of Deed’s bill, the funding from recording fees is for 5 years only where the Land Information System Program the funding is ongoing. The Land Information System has two finding sources. One is recording fees and one is the dock stamp. Other major differences are that in LB 232 there is no discussions of collaboration regionally nor much in the way of a policy component. Larry and John Erickson were encouraged to work with the Senator’s staff and the Register of Deeds in an attempt to find common ground.
Nebraska Geospatial Data Clearinghouse and National Map Update: Kim Menke reported that the Department of Natural Resources is moving forward with the development of a enterprise-wide geospatial data clearinghouse consistent with the recommendations of the Advisory Committee on Facilitating Geospatial Data Sharing. The NDNR enterprise clearinghouse will merge NDNR current metadata clearinghouse with the earlier Steering Committee pilot project Nebraska Geospatial Data Clearinghouse. Kim noted that NDNR is now ready to accept any reasonably current metadata for incorporation into the clearinghouse catalog. Kim also reported that the name of Nebraska Geospatial Data Center has been adopted for this enterprise effort.
Kim also reported that NDNR has signed a MOU with the USGS for the provision of Nebraska geospatial data to The National Map. NDNR is currently providing seven data layers to The National Map.
Larry noted that an initial draft Memorandum of Understanding between the GIS Steering Committee and NDNR has been developed and is now being reviewed by NDNR to outline the relationship and respective responsibilities related to the operation of the Nebraska Geospatial Data Center. Larry also noted that there are at least three grant opportunities upcoming in the very near future that might be used to support the development of the clearinghouse, data center, and Nebraska’s participation in the National Map. The three grant opportunities include: 1) a State Records Board grant; 2) a USGS National Map Partnership Fund grant; and 3) an FGDC C-Cap grant. Larry indicated that he would try to pull together a small working group of interested parties to try to develop a consensus around how best to attempt to leverage these grant opportunities. The Steering Committee expressed support for this approach.
Future Nebraska DOQs – A Request for a Partnership – USDA Farm Services Agency: Dan Steinkurger, FSA-USDA, provided the Str. Cmte. with a presentation on the National Agricultural Imagery Program (NAIP) and the FSA-USDA’s continuing interest in pursuing partnerships for this program. Dan noted that FSA has been flying imagery starting in 2001 under the NAIP. He reported that they flew 26 counties in 2001 – 2002 and for 2003, the program was expanded statewide in Nebraska. We are looking for a possible partnership with the state, other federal agencies, or local entities.
Dan reported that the imagery for 2003 was flown in early July. It was a digital product, done with a wide-scan digital camera, not a film-based product, and we ended up with an excellent product. We were able to obtain compressed MR SID county files and we have those preliminary products in our county offices. Our county offices and the Natural Resource Conservation Service - USDA are using them.
The FSA Salt Lake City office is doing a quality control process. The contracts we had in 2003 did not allow for the contractor to provide metadata and make it available to the public until that quality control process was completed. Our Salt Lake City office said it would be completed in March, for Nebraska.
Dan noted that one thing that partnering would provide is that when the imagery was completed and immediately available, a copy would be provided to the partner. Minnesota, for instance, in 2003 partnered and they got a copy of the imagery in September when the preliminary product was provided to FSA. The other avenue to obtain is it to request and buy a copy. And in Nebraska that would be a product to be acquired in March if they get the quality control process done. So, immediate delivery is one advantage to partnership. An additional opportunity on a partnership is that if an urban area or a county or some other regional area wants to partner, FSA is willing to look at that. Examples are higher resolution imagery, infrared imagery in an area, or some other variation from the standard contract that is awarded under the program. The other opportunity is to upgrade from a 2-meter product to a 1-meter product. The current plan is to fly 2-meter imagery for four years and then upgrade to 1-meter DOQ quality on the fifth year. In 2003, the funding was available in USDA and they called and asked us if we wanted 1-meter, which we took. We will have that once it passes quality control. The 2003 pre-award partnership agreements on the program is an example of what our FSA office in Salt Lake had lined up for pre-award. The two state contracts that we had at that time were with Minnesota and Missouri. Dan noted that NRCS, our sister agency, also partnered in those and other states. NRCS put in more money, bureau of land management put in money and Oklahoma also partnered. Minnesota, Missouri and Oklahoma partnered a dollar amount.
Q: What was
the total cost to you for Nebraska?
A: The total cost for the Nebraska
1-meter imagery was a little over $1.2 Million. Of that amount NRCS (at the
National Level) contributed $400,000.
Dan showed a slide of the areas that they tried to fly in 2003. What determined those areas is the use of GIS in the USDA agencies and where that is progressing in 2003. The program continues to expand in 2004. The colors represent the contractors that were awarded the contracts. Northwest Geomatics is the company that flew Nebraska and they had an area in Idaho, also. They are a Canadian company and they flew the 2001 imagery in Nebraska, which is available on the DNR web site. Missouri got infrared imagery in 2003.
Q:
Regarding the infrared, is this instead of or in addition to full color?
A: Either instead of or in addition to
full color. With the digital camera,
they can capture both infrared and full color and you can order whatever
product you want, under the contract. The advantages to infrared would be crop
development, etc.
Q: As long
as it is digital?
A: Yes.
Dan noted that he feel that there are benefits to state, local government, county assessors, private business and economic development in having current imagery available to the public. About a month ago, he tried to see if we could get the 2003 imagery available for Nebraska since it is already paid for. The request was made and they would not waive fees to provide a copy. The cost for all the tiles would be $44,000 for the State of Nebraska. That would be available after the metadata QA/QC process was completed in March. We were disappointed that they would not waive the fees up front and then we would continue on partnering. The Washington perspective is that if it is given away, it is then hard to attract partners.
One partnership would be if we wanted to go from 2-meter to 1-meter, based upon the 2003 contract, the cost would be $750,000 vs. $1,200,000. It is the intent of the department to fly the 2-meter but we could partner for a fixed amount, also. Someone could talk with our Aerial Photography Field Office and see if they would be willing to develop some kind of partnership to do that, too.
We have compressed county mosaic and in March those will be available on a county-by-county basis at $50 a CD. The full resolution tiles would run $44,000 for the State of Nebraska and both would be provided with metadata.
Q: The
cost, if the state wanted to go out and buy it is $44,000 but in March you
mentioned the counties would be done for $50 a CD. What would be the difference between those two costs? They are about the same quality?
A: The counties are in a compressed MR
SID format. Yes, one is tile by quads
and the other is tiled by county.
Q: How
often do you fly?
A: The intent is to fly once a
year. I am not sure that is necessarily
what we need; it would be whatever the partner would want to do.
One of the discussions they have had for 2004 is whether or not they wouldn’t go ahead and have the imagery available with the metadata. One of the things they found, under the contract in 2003, is that there are a significant amount of errors and are having to go back to the contractor and ask them to make corrections.
Q: Does
that prove nationwide? I know Missouri
put out their metadata through their clearinghouse in January. So are they finding problems with that,
also?
A: I believe so, but it depends on the
contractor. But in the case of a
partner, once they get the corrections, they are providing the corrections to
the partner.
Q: One of
the things we are continually interested in, on the Tax Assessment side of it
is your field polygons as well as your area attributes. If we partner with the 44K, can we get those
polygons and the area attributes, as well?
We would be interested in land use and area.
A: I believe so. We worked very had in the last six months to
have all of the counties offices to review all of the polygons and get them
updated. Then the final step, before we
start using them, is that we are sending out the section maps, on a 8 ½ x 11,
to all of the land owners and all of the farm operators to give one final
review regarding our field and track boundaries. We will start using these maps for our 2004 programs. We are hoping to get the accurate metadata
within the next 2 to 3 months. One
thing we run into with this layer, we do it by administrative boundaries, not
necessarily physical boundaries. So we
do have some overlap because our offices may administer outside of a county boundary
if the landowner wants it administered out.
That is why we have those outlying polygons.
Q: If we
partnered with you and we had the whole coverage, we would have the mosaic
because this would all fit together, presumably? For someone trying to do assessments and find where the field
boundaries were, it would be a very good product. I would be much more interested in partnering with the $44,000 if
we just had one product that we were buying because the imagery is not worth
that much to me or people doing assessments without the field boundaries. I would just as soon have it as one package.
A: Yes, there would be some work to
make those overlaps. Whatever we would
have to charge to provide you with a copy would be in addition to the
$44,000. I understand what you are
saying, but our Salt Lake office wants $44,000 for the imagery and we have the
common land unit that we will have to create out of our Lincoln office.
Larry Zink: It seems to me that there are several issues here. From my perspective it seems like we want, in some way, to get this data for Nebraska. At one level that is what Paul mentioned, the $5,000 for the whole state in the county compressed imagery, which sounds like the cheapest way to get it. The next level would be the $44,000, which is the full-blown dataset, not the compressed. So the question is one, do we want the data and two, which one of those do we want for the 2003 data. Then there is a series of questions related to future partnering.
Q: Paul
Yamamoto: Future-wise, one of the
slides said the 1-meter, it would be possible to estimate $1.2 Million for the
entire state and for the 2-meter $750,000 for the whole state? So basically if we, as a state, decided we
wanted to on our own to move to 1-meter, the worse case scenario is to come up
with one-half million to get that $750,000 to $1.2 million total to get 1 meter
imagery.
A: Yes
Jim Brown: One of the problems I see, Paul, is the old cycle on photography used to be 6 to 7 years. That is probably not going to be there anymore and once a year might be too much. Buying a new 1-meter annually is probably overkill for what most of us do.
Larry Zink: That becomes another question, then, how often would you want to do that?
Q: Now the
5 K that you spend to get MR SID dataset, does it include metadata?
A: I assume it does. We have not approached our Salt Lake office
on what they do for a county-wide compressed format, as far as the price, to
order one set for the State of Nebraska.
I think our thought process when we made that request was to get the
entire state, serve it up, and the tiles were the way to go. I don’t know what the technical aspects
would be to serve it up on a state basis using a compressed MR SID file.
Larry Zink: Kim and I discussed this and came up with a list of potentially 13 organizations that I thought we might approach for $4,000 - $5,000. Those are: Roads, DEQ, DNR, State Surveyor’s office, Conservation Survey Division, Calmit, NEMA, HHSS, AG, Game & Parks, NPD, OPPD, and NRD. If a significant number of those came though with funding commitments, that would be a relatively small hit on a relatively small number of groups and we would be able to buy the full dataset. I am not sure how we will judge this question about the $5,000 vs. $44,000. Someone would need to look at both and decide. I would propose that we get a committee together to look at the need, how frequently the need would be and cost. Just to get it on the table, it seems to me that we need to look at this as two separate issues: a) getting copies of the 2003 data; and b) what do we want to do for 2005 and beyond, because I don’t think we can do 2004.
Q: What if
some might want leaf on and leaf off, such as Omaha.
A: If Omaha is interested in leaf on,
they could investigate partnering with USDA, too.
Larry Zink: If the Land Information System Program passes, this probably is the most realistic scenario for providing funding for regular updates of the land-based imagery.
Jim Brown: I think about all we can do at this time is put a committee together to talk about it. In the next 30 days we should know more with all that we have going on.
Q: Do you
have available, at this time, both the Mr. Sid files and the full tiles that we
could compare?
A: Dan indicated he didn’t currently
have that data and suggested that we contact the Salt Lake City Office and
request sample data. He also suggested that even if there is no resources
available to partner for 2004, would be beneficial to contact out Salt Lake
office and let them know that Nebraska is discussing it and ask about the MR
SID sample data issue.
Jim Brown:
Why don’t you send them a letter, Larry, asking them to meet with the
committee.
Larry Zink: OK
Notice of Election of Officers at May 6, 2004 Meeting: Larry noted that the May 6th GIS Steering Committee meeting is the time for the annual process of electing Steering Committee officers. The Steering Committee elects both a Chair and Vice Chair. Larry pointed to the Steering Committee’s Voting Policies and Procedures document that was among the meeting handouts and available as a link from the meeting agenda. Jim Brown announced that he will not be available to be an officer next year because he plans to retire on January 1.
Adoption of Meeting Schedule for Next 12 Months: Larry called the Steering Committee’s attention to the proposed 2004-05 Steering Committee meeting schedule that was included in the meeting handouts and available as a link from the online meeting agenda. Larry noted that the meeting dates continue to revolve around the first Thursday, unless conflicts exist. Larry also noted that he is still looking for a meeting place for the October 27th I-Team meeting. The Steering Committee noted their support for the meeting schedule as proposed.
Nebraska GIS/LIS Association: The website (http://www.gislis.org/index.html) has details on upcoming meetings and events, GIS Awards and 2004 Board Nominations.
Report on GIS Activities from Member Agencies:
Dick Genrich: NDOR has a web mapping application called NECTAR. I have been taking that out to the district NACO Meetings and showing the county highway superintendents. I was out at Bridgeport and Ogallala last week with good reception there. Also, Kathy Russell, from Kearney County, contacted me and sent information that she has collected using a little Garman GPS unit that she paid $100.00. She has collected information on all of her sign locations and culverts, open spanned ridges under 20 feet and we were able to pull that in and display that with amazing accuracy. We have not done any roads yet but we are working with some of these folks. We are meeting this week to look at our Survey Control database here at the agency, possible putting that out on the web.
John Miyoshi: We are modifying our IMS servers and hope to have them up within the next month. We have a website on our IMS server. GPS is being used to map noxious weeds in the county and lower Platte regions.
Chris Chalmers: At HHS we have a two major projects going on. One is our GIS seeding project. We go to the local public health departments and install ArcGIS and provide them with data. That is 57-60% done. On our IMS side is currently having issues. We are looking at partnering with local health departments on West Nile and getting a live-reporting web-based surveillance system going within the next couple of months.
Paul Yamamoto: NDEQ is following-up on last meeting’s report that NDEQ would be working with NEMA to provide them data. NDEQwill be setting up a node to allow NEMA to access our system and data directly.
Kim: Kim reported that the effort to develop a statewide SURRGO soils coverage still has two counties left to get the entire state SURRGO soils certified, but that this multi-year project is expected to be completed in the very near future. Larry said we needed to arrange a SURRGO party when done as this has been a very successful collaborative project involving NDNR, NRCS, and CSD-UNL.
Ray Fox, USGS: Ray noted that he had spoken to NDNR some time back about some possible grant money being available. There will be USGS Partnership Funds available in March and later there will be funds coming through the FGDC C-Cap Program. The intent of both programs is to foster the National Map. I think there are some grant opportunities there for Nebraska. I am told there is approximately $500,000 available nationwide in both grant funds. Certainly Nebraska would be a good candidate for it.
Jim Brown: I just wanted to thank those of you who came over and testified on LB 1169, those that called your senators, and worked with NACO. If it were not for all of that work we would not be where we are today. I think we have somewhat of a shot on this bill because people had enough interest to come in and do it.
Larry Zink: I am looking at pulling together three committees: street centerline address, land records standards, and DOQ. Also, we need Nebraska presentations at the Magic symposium. Anyone interested in any of these efforts please let me know.
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Vote Tallies for 2/26/04 GIS Str. Cmte.
Meeting |
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. |
Roll |
Min |
|
|
#4
|
#5 |
#6 |
#7 |
#8 |
|
DAS - Steve
Schafer |
P |
NV |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
|
DEQ - Tom
Lamberson, |
P |
+ |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
|
CSD - Mark Kuzila
|
P |
+ |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
|
NGPC - Bruce
Sackett |
A |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
|
NRC - Kim
Menke, |
P |
+ |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
|
PTD - Cathy
Lang |
A |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
|
PRO - Lauren Hill
|
A |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
|
DOR - Dick
Genrich |
P |
+ |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
|
St.Surv - Jim
Brown |
A/P |
+ |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
|
Clk of Leg. -
Patrick O'Donnell |
A |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
|
Sonia Sebree |
A |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
|
John Miyoshi, |
P |
+ |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
|
Alan J. Beierman |
A |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
|
Cliff
Welsh |
A |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
|
Larry Worrell
|
P |
+ |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
|
Lash
Chaffin |
P |
+ |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
|
Duane Stott |
P |
+ |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
|
Scott McIntyre
|
A |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
|
Dick Nelson |
A |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
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TOTALS |
11/13 – P |
11 + |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
"P"=present, "A"=absent,
"+"=voting for, "-"=voting against, "NV"=not
voting