GIS Workgroup Update

1. GIS Workgroup Update Tony Selle, EPA R8 IRM Branch Chiefs Meeting Oct 4, 2007 Denver, CO

2. GIS Workgroup Quickplace Site: Almost Everything is Posted Here https://epaqpx.rtp.epa.gov/QuickPlace/epagisworkgroup/Main.nsf/ Or http://www.gisworkgroup.org

3. TOPICS • Greetings from the GIO • National Data Acquisitions • Licensing Agreements • GIS WCF updates • Network testing • ER Short Plan • R8 Superfund GIS App

4. Ask Jerry Anything… The new EPA Geographic Information Officer Jerry Johnston (formerly with OPPT) would like to brief at a future IRM BC meeting. He sends his best wishes and would like to know what topics the BCs would like to hear about from him Johnston.jerry@epa.gov Jerry's Presentation to the GIS Workgroup Sept 07

5. EPA GIS Acquisition Priorities(From Matt Leopard’s Presentation) Rank Type • Buildings and Facilities • Digital Ortho-Imagery • Hydrography • Transportation • Biological Resources • Earth Cover • Terrestrial Elevation (10m or higher) • Government Units • Watershed Boundaries • Wetlands CRITICALVERY IMPORTANT

6. Great News: Data and Software Licenses • Geo Licensing Banner Year: • 2003 – Zero ELA’s • 2007 – Ten ELA’s: • Dun and Bradstreet • Mergent • ESRI • TeleAtlas • Census • X Tools Upgrade • GlobeExplorer/Digital Globe • Microsoft Virtual Earth • NatureServe • Google Earth • Great Value. Street Price of these Services: About $6.5 million, WCF costs about $1.1 Million • Census, Google Earth, Microsoft Virtual Earth, X Tools – these are not covered by WCF and available free to GIS community this year.

7. New Data Services Microsoft Virtual Earth Purchase: • Virtual Earth - web based mapping api • Pictometry Imagery (45 degree/bird's eye visualization) • Offers - $600k -> $261k -> $200k • Primarily benefit to EPA’s public access sites • First Year procured by OEI/OW, may renew second year Google Agreement: • 1500 Google Pro Licenses one year • 5 million api credits • Opportunity to expand 2500 (@ 500 units/$10k) • Procured by OEM/ORD/OEI, may be renewed

8. National Data Acquisitions • NatureServe (Heritage) – contract now in place, national services now in negotiation. BYOM. • HSIP-Gold (NGA) – V2 released. National Infrastructure and mapping base for Emergency Response / Homeland Security. • NLCD (USGS/others) – 2000 product released. Moving from ORD to OEI for ongoing national acquisition. • Comparative Census Data – Normalized to current census area designations for comparison between census collections (every 10 years). Contact Matt Leopard or Ana Greene for details

9. The Optimistic ESRI PlanRenegotiating the ELA October - Conduct Inventory and Questionnaire of ESRI existing holdings/Planned holdings (publish notice of sole source) November - Verify Holdings/Planned Codify as Requirements December - Ratify New BPA/SOW for ESRI January - Begin Negotiation? March - Evaluate Draft Proposal April - Ratify Proposal

10. Licensing AgreementsAnyone See This? EPA selects Microsoft Virtual Earth for geospatial mission • http://www.gisdevelopment.net/news/viewn.asp?id=GIS:N_barwqytmno&cat=Industry%20Application&sub= • 14 September 2007 Washington D.C., USA, September 13, 2007: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has licensed the Microsoft Virtual Earth platform on which to develop its mission-critical geospatial and mapping applications. The commitment to Virtual Earth will improve data sharing, analysis and insight for partner agencies, citizens and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) on topics ranging from superfund sites and oil spills to waterways and the quality of beach water. • Previously, when the EPA sought to develop geospatial applications, the agency bought imagery from disparate sources to combine it with agency maps, often an intensely time-consuming and costly process. Virtual Earth provides not only three-dimensional city models and satellite and aerial imagery but bird’s-eye imagery, which gives users a unique 45-degree-angle perspective, a feature found only in Virtual Earth. Combined, these models and imagery allow agencies to build applications that layer business data directly over Virtual Earth imagery that is kept current by Microsoft Corp. For example, using Virtual Earth, the EPA is designing a Web-based mapping tool for anyone to access information on beach and water quality. • The benefits of Virtual Earth for the EPA will be both internal and external: • A common operational platform. • Integrated approach. • Simple development platform. • Enhanced business intelligence. • Improved information sharing through data visualization. • “Before we selected Microsoft’s Web-based Virtual Earth, the EPA relied on more expensive and cumbersome desktop applications,” said Pat Garvey, manager of the Facility Registry System at the EPA. “Our goal was to provide our customers a consistent, richer user experience. We can do that with Virtual Earth because its performance and imagery make it easy for us to focus on our core environmental-data and mission applications.

11. GIS WCF Issues • No status change since last BC briefing • XB and EG remain nebulous and ill-defined, no governance identified. • RTP-NCC has consulted the workgroup on annual reporting. Major recommendations for 08 are better tracking/reporting of services for regions

12. GIS Network Test (Tim Richards)The Purpose of the EPA GIS Network Test 2007 • How does the EPA current network structure affect the EPA GIS activities? • What is the impact of EPA GIS activities on the EPA current network system? • How to improve the EPA network system and achieve better performance of GIS data and services? • How to improve GIS data and services and achieve better network efficiency? EPA GIS Workgroup Meeting, 09/18 – 09/21/2007, Las Vegas, Nevada

13. 12 EPA Locations for the EPA GIS Network Test EPA GIS Workgroup Meeting, 09/18 – 09/21/2007, Las Vegas, Nevada

14. Ranking of Test Results Based on Overall Response Times Note: The full capacity DS-3 network has 45 Mbps. 9 Mbps is a provisioning DS-3 with ¼ of full DS-3 capacity. EPA GIS Workgroup Meeting, 09/18 – 09/21/2007, Las Vegas, Nevada

15. GIS Related Network Utilization in Relation to the Overall Network Utilization • The peak GIS transfer rates during the test were only a small portion of the overall network utilization between the test locations and the NCC. It ranged from 7.5% (lowest with Corvallis, OR) to 38% (highest with Santurce, PR). • It appears that the GIS tests did not “grab” as much network bandwidth as possible during the test period. The peak GIS transfer rates during the test were only a small percentage of the overall network capacity even when network bandwidth was available. • It is unlikely that one or two GIS feature data transfers could exhaust all available network bandwidth resources. However, if there are 8 or 10+ concurrently GIS feature data transfers, the current EPA network capacity between the test locations and the NCC would not be effectively supported. • All test locations with T1 (1.536 Mbps) network links overall were very busy during the test and experienced slow response times for the GIS tests. In these locations, additional network bandwidth will be needed in order to achieve reasonable response times for accessing or delivering GIS feature data. • More info about this can be found at Table 5.3 of the EPA GIS Network Test Report. EPA GIS Workgroup Meeting, 09/18 – 09/21/2007, Las Vegas, Nevada

16. GIS ER Short Term Plan (Ana Greene)Introduction & Background • Role of the Short Term Plan • Intended as a guide for managers • Includes: • Initiation & Communication • Roles & Responsibilities • Staffing • Start-up • Data/infrastructure • Procedures

17. Unresolved Issues • FTP & Security – No permanent fixes available, cost implications • Symbology Standardization – working to integrate existing standards from other agencies • Map Tracker – No national implimentation yet, cost implications

18. ER-Geospatial Skills Survey • Purpose • Obtain information on specific GIS skills to better target GIS team needs during a response • Approach • Simple, short survey • Designed to be quick, easy and inclusive