Since Google Earth's release in June 2005, the rise of crowdsourced OpenStreetMap, the deluge of remote-sensed imagery from private satellite companies Digital Globe, Planet Labs, UrtheCast, and others, and private geospatial data companies like HERE, national mapping agencies and related government organizations involved with geospatial data and technology have found that the traditional role of the government mapping agency is no longer viable. It has been suggested that national mapping agencies are an anachronism that are no longer required since the private sector is flooding the world with huge volumes of timely, frequent, high resolution geospatial data. As a result all national mapping agencies have had to reasess their role in the geospatial ecosystem. At the GeoBuiz conference in Hyderabad, a panel discussion moderated by Karthik Ramamurthy, Regional Director, IPSOS Consulting included Dorine Burmanje, Chair of the Executive Board of the Dutch Kadaster, Dr. Virginia Burkett, Chief Scientist at the US Geological Survey, Nigel Clifford, CEO of the UK Ordnance Survey, and Major General Girish Kumar, Surveyor General of the Survey of India provides a fascinating perspective on how different national mapping agencies are coping with the post Google Map world.
Dutch Kadaster
One of the roles for national mapping agencies which Dorine Burmanje mentioned about which there appears to be a consensus is as custodians of authoritative data. This includes property boundaries (referred to as parcel files in North America), data used to monitor pollution and climate change, and other data that is closely tied to monitoring and measuring national objectives and priorities. Governments have also an important role in making data, whether collected by themselves or more typically by the private sector, available to the public for free. This is important because it contributed to the public good. She identified a further key role that a government mapping agency can fill - as a custodian of data about the underground including underground infrastructure. The Netherlands is just embarking on implementing legislation passed by the States General in 2015 and the Dutch experience could be come a model to help the rest of the world address the pressing problem of cost-effectively geolocating underground infrastructure.
US Geological Survey
President Trump's fiscal year 2018 budget requested a 15 percent funding cut for the U.S. Geological Survey and proposes deep cuts for all mission areas. This is not the first time the USGS has faced large cuts in its funding.
At GeoBuiz Virginia Burkett gave two very intriguing examples of how the USGS is finding new and interesting roles for itself. The USGS continues to develop with NASA the Landsat series of satellites. Landsat 7 and 8 are currently operational, and two more, Landsat 9 and 10, are in development to replace them. The USGS is finding new ways to reuse the existing Landsat data that currently stretches back to 1972. Using data cube technology the USGS is able to track individual (cloud free) pixels over time, currently back to Landsat 4, but ultimately to Landsat 1. She gave an example of a pixel in a forested area of the US which recorded the evolution of the forest since 1982 including a fire and the slow recovery after the fire.
She also described how the USGS is supporting citizen science using crowd harvesting - mining social media of evidence of earth tremours and quakes to be able to provide earlier warning - within 29 seconds - than is possible using only seismological analysis.
Ordnance Survey
The Ordnance Survey (OS) is the world's oldest national mapping agency - having begun in Napoleonic times as a military mapping agency. Since then the OS has weathered several disruptions including the industrial revolution, the digital revolution, and the current disruption of the tradtional national mapping agncy business model. Currently the OS is effectively a private, for profit company, albeit with a single shareholder, the UK Government. As CEO not only is Nigel Clifford responsible for national mapping objectives, but he has to generate a financial return to Parliament. One role he sees for national mapping agencies is becoming custodians for national registers - of addresses, property boundaries and other core national data. Nations also require new data sets including detailed street furniture and vegetation. IGN, the French national mapping agency, is currently piloting a data model for doing this called PCRS 2.0. Nigel also sees national mapping agencies as undertaking projects that are considered too risky by the private sector but for which the social payoff may be large. He emphasized that national mapping agencies have to follow a fine line since they should not be perceived as competing with the private sector. He also mentioned a role for national mapping agencies in providing data for startup incubation, for example, the Geovation hubs in the UK.
The immediate challenge the OS is facing is that Parliament has recently created a Geospatial Commission tasked with determining the role of geospatial data in developing the national economy. 55% of OS revenue derives from selling their premier data set, the OS Mastermap, to government and private companies. The Geospatial Commission is proposing making Mastermap data available at no cost to small business as an economic development stimulus for the SMB sector. Since this initiative would directly impact OS revenues, either large customers would have to pay proportionately more to make up for the short fall or the OS has to find alternative revenue sources.
Survey of India
The Survey of India has been around for 150 years. Incredibly until 2005 the national datum remained the Everest datum - named for the Surveyor General responsible for the first survey of India. General Girish Kumar was unambiguous in recognizing that the availability of huge volumes of private data has changed the national mapping agency business model. These are clearly challenging times for the Survey of India. His view is similar to the Ordnance Survey - national mapping agencies cannot and should not compete with the private sector. He still sees a role for national mapping agencies collecting data in rural areas that are financially unattractive for the private sector. He also sees that national mapping agencies have a role in setting standards for data quality to ensure that the private sector is collecting data reliably and to prevent "fake data". National mapping agencies can also provide training to support capacity building so citizens are able to understand how different types of geospatial data should be used. General Kumar singled out a new role that he suggested only a national mapping agency can take on - mapping underground infrastructure. He revealed that the Survey of India has already mapped the underground infrastructure of Delhi.
New roles for national mapping agencies
These are clearly challenging times for national mapping agencies, but new roles are emerging for these agencies. There is a consensus that an increasingly large proportion of geospatial data is sourced from the private sector and from crowdsourced data such as OpenStreetMap. There is also an consensus that government agencies have a a role as the custodian of authoritative data including registers of national base data and data for monitoring and measuring national objectives and priorities such as air and water quality and climate change. While government agencies are, with some exceptions, no longer in the business of collecting data themselves, they need to quality control data that gets the government imprimatur. Speakers also said that government mapping agencies have a role in ensuring that nationally significant geospatial data which may come from from many sources including private commercial sources is made open and available to the public for the benefit of society at large.
Mapping underground infrastructure
Two speakers identified as a new role for which national mapping agencies are well suited - mapping and being the custodian for underground infrastructure. Increasing urbanization throughout the world challenges the sustainable development and resilience of cities. The importance of the ground beneath cities is often overlooked. In many parts of the world the location of underground infrastructure including electric power, water and wastewater, gas, district heating, and other networks is unknown or poorly known. Information about the underground is captured during excavation and drilling, but this data is typically stored in project or private databases and is not shared. Government may be uniquely qualified for mapping and maintaining information about national infrastructure, much of which has a national security dimension. For example, in the U.S. access to infrastructure data including location is restricted under Protected Critical Infrastructure Information (PCII) Program. There are successful examples around the world where municipal and regional governments have helped enable a shared underground utility network database.
Capturing this data in a shared, open database is a first step toward developing a model of the subsurface that can be reliably used for urban planning, design, construction and maintenance. The Netherlands has recently embarked on a national program supported by legislation and standards to do just that. In 2015 a new law was passed by the States General or parliament in the Netherlands creating a Basisregistratie Ondergrond (BRO) or Key Registry for the Subsurface. This law mandates that if you excavate or drill you have to share your data with the registry. In addition if when using the data in the registry you find something is incorrect you have to report it. The registry is required to be open and accessible to all citizens of the Netherlands. This new registry will require new standards for recording data and there is a major effort underway in the Netherlands to develop these standards. The implementation of the new subsurface registry will begin this year. Furthermore at the Geobuiz conference I was encouraged to hear from the Surveyor General of India, Major General Girish Kumar, that the Survey of India has mapped the underground infrastructure of Delhi. After the panel discussion General Kumar said that information about the Delhi underground mapping project will be forthcoming.
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