Between the Poles: US Economic Stimulus: Three Proposals for Developing a National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI)

Geoff Zeiss

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Open Source Geospatial Foundation OSGEO
OSGeo was created to support the collaborative development of open source geospatial software and promote its widespread use
Proven guidelines for reducing underground infrastructure damage at airports, university, industrial, and commercial campuses, and towns
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Sharing information about the location of underground utilities
The U.S. devotes an estimated $10 billion annually to locating underground infrastructure. Every construction project requiring excavation involves significant efforts in locating underground utilities prior to and during construction to reduce the risk of injuries and unexpected project delays. But this information is rarely shared and the location of underground infrastructure is recaptured over and over again. There are successful examples around the world where municipal and regional governments have helped enable a shared underground utility network database.
Growing evidence of the benefits of an integrated BIM+geospatial full lifecycle approach to construction
Building information modeling (BIM) has been applied to design-build construction projects for many years. A growing number of countries are mandating BIM for public projects. While the UK government has said that "...we know that the largest prize for BIM lies in the operational stages of the project life-cycle", until recently there has not been hard data to support this conjecture. Similarly there has been only anecdotal support for an integrated BIM and geospatial approach for design, build, operate and maintain projects. Now we are beginning to see data from real world projects that offer evidence for the benefits of an integrated BIM+geospatial full lifecycle approach for construction projects.
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The BIM and geospatial interoperability challenge is the latest symptom of the broader problem of integrating AEC and geospatial workflows, that has contributed to low productivity in the construction sector. After the announcement about a year ago by Jack Dangermond and Andrew Anagnost of a new relationship to build a bridge between Autodesk and ESRI technologies, I thought it a good time to review progress toward interoperability between the AEC and geospatial worlds.
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BIM + geospatial interoperability would avoid another CAD + GIS quagmire
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February 06, 2009

US Economic Stimulus: Three Proposals for Developing a National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI)

Directions Magazine has just published an article about three proposals recommending that the development of a national spatial data infrastructure (NSDI) be part of a US economic stimulus package . I've mentioned two of them in this blog previously, because these proposals are from a group of companies including Google, Microsoft, ORACLE, Autodesk, and Intergraph in one case and a group of individuals in the other. Directions Magazine asked spokespeople for these two proposals, Michael Jones of Google and Jeff Harrison of the the Carbon Project, as well as Jack Dangermond on his company's proposal, to respond to three questions about the proposals. You can read these for yourself, but I liked Jeff Harrison's open approach and his group's suggestion "to establish a collaborative web discussion site for maintenance of the concept paper over time, and welcomes contributions and participation."

I think Michael Jones really captured what many feel the nation needs right now, "We have focused our broad-based, shared proposal on what we believe meets the stimulus mandate of the administration, further enables geospatial technologies to assist in America's economic rebound, and avoids using the economic crisis to our own business advantage. We welcome the support - directly to Congress or through any of us - of the entire geospatial community in advocating the importance of these themes and the peril of ignoring them. This is the time for the geospatial community to serve our nation."

Posted at 02:01 PM in Economic Stimulus, General Infrastructure | Permalink

Comments

Geoff,

Actually, the response regarding the "National GIS" proposal was from Jack Dangermond and Anne Hale Miglarese, Booz Allen Hamilton. I'm still not 100% clear on whose proposal it is!

Early drafts of that proposal had both of the names mentioned above. However, the version hosted at ESRI owned GIS.com has no names on it.

Adena

Posted by: Adena Schutzberg | February 06, 2009 at 05:27 PM

Adena
I looked at the "National GIS" proposal available on the web and I didn't see any names either.
Geoff

Posted by: Geoff | February 08, 2009 at 04:11 AM

The comments to this entry are closed.

Between the Poles

Geoff Zeiss

October 2024

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February 06, 2009

US Economic Stimulus: Three Proposals for Developing a National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI)

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