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Pennsylvania Leads the Way to Making The National Map Possible

September 14, 2006 By: Tina Cary


An initiative of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), The National Map is a noble vision involving collaboration between local, state, and federal governments. As every GIS professional knows, however, creating and maintaining such a spatial data infrastructure involves a lot of detail work ("the devil is in the detail,") leading to the opening question: Is it even possible?

Because local governments have the most knowledge of their particular areas, the idea that their efforts serve as the basis for all mapping activities has strong appeal. The detailed mapping scales of local governments — combined with the frequency with which they update their maps to accommodate new land development for taxing purposes and other essential government functions — can support the map-maintenance needs of most state and federal government agencies. However, such enterprisewide efforts require a lot of planning, cooperation, and coordination to ensure that all participants have satisfactory answers to the key question, "What's in it for me?"

In the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania Map (PAMAP) is just such a collaborative effort between local, state, and federal governments. PAMAP planning efforts are addressing some of the thorny practical questions that must be answered to form the foundation for The National Map's broad vision. The progress made and lessons learned indicate that PAMAP will illustrate that yes — The National Map is in fact possible.

PAMAP: Paving the Way
PAMAP began in 2002. At that time, the traditional 1:24,000-scale topographic maps were already out of date, some by more than 20 years. Requirements of local governments necessitated up-to-date, GIS-compatible mapping with much greater detail and accuracy. Dr. Jay Parrish, director of the Pennsylvania Bureau of Topographic and Geologic Survey, proposed a radically new concept for mapping the state: Build a collaborative mapping partnership to leverage the investments in mapping by local governments for use by county, state, and federal agencies.

This concept became PAMAP, which is a designated pilot project of USGS' The National Map. In keeping with the intent of The National Map, PAMAP is being designed with the idea that its data will be available for free to the public via the Internet. The goal is to build a base of geographic information that serves the needs of the individual partners and provides decision-making capabilities at all levels of government.

Similar to The National Map, PAMAP consists of ten key data layers:
  • Buildings
  • Elevation Contours
  • Hydrography
  • Geodetic Monuments
  • Geographic Names
  • Orthoimagery
  • Tax Parcels
  • Political Boundaries
  • Road Centerlines
  • Other Transportation (Airports and Railroad Centerlines)
Pennsylvania's approach clearly identifies the role of the state and of individual counties in developing and maintaining high-quality vector datasets. In-depth planning helped to define technical details, stakeholder roles, and the "give-get" for each part of the enterprise. Specifically, the state provides raster data, while state agencies and counties provide vector data that align to the orthophotos and conform to a published logical data content standard.

Given the complex nature of the proposed enterprise, extensive planning is required. Thus far, Pennsylvania has planned what to collect, how to collect it, and how it fits together. By documenting its approach, plans, and decisions, PAMAP provides a valuable case study for other states seeking to gain the benefits of statewide enterprise data collection and coordination activities and Geospatial Enterprise Architecture planning. The existence of a well-documented working prototype of The National Map offers details and guidance for a variety of aspects of the process of developing the critical foundation for e-government geospatial services.

Cy Smith, statewide GIS coordinator for Oregon, has reviewed the PAMAP documentation and found a number of elements that will be useful in Oregon. "One of the primary concepts I found to be of great interest is the partnership with local governments. There are several elements of this concept that are very interesting, including what amounts to an exchange of vector data from the counties and cities for orthoimagery provided by the state, and the flat, one-time payment to counties of $40 per square mile for the initial development of the standardized vector data. I also found the formalized cost-sharing agreement with USGS to be intriguing."

Ahead of the Game in PA
David Terrell, USGS' geospatial liaison for Pennsylvania, described The National Map and the significance of the PAMAP project as follows:

"The National Map is best understood as the seamless, digital successor to the old series of topographic maps produced jointly by the U.S. Geological Survey and the states. All States are participating, to some degree, in The National Map, but Pennsylvania, with PAMAP, is farther along than most. The USGS is extremely appreciative of the effort in Pennsylvania.

"The fact is that the USGS has for quite some time been unable to keep the 'topo' maps up to date," Terrell added. "Moreover, the graphic product — the paper map — is no longer suitable for most professional purposes. At the same time, the need for more refined and more current cartographic and geographic data is greater than ever. In my view, therefore, projects like PAMAP are a critically important part of the nation's shared intellectual property — our data infrastructure. To the extent we succeed with it, we contribute to the success of every scientist, engineer, planner, property owner, and recreational user in the nation. To the extent we fail, we force all these people and all levels of government to work with old or insufficient data, or to create their own in uncoordinated, unshared, very expensive ways."

The benefits identified in Pennsylvania suggest the short- and long-term benefits that other states can expect to accrue for local, state, and federal government, academia, businesses, and citizenry:
  • Eliminate redundant digital orthophoto mapping activities prevalent between county, regional councils of government, and state agencies;
  • Enable electronic distribution in a more cost-effective manner;
  • Build a standardized statewide seamless map capable of supporting micro and macro scales of analysis for planning, assessment, and response;
  • Optimize and promote cross-border delivery of county government services, such as emergency dispatch and client access to the nearest social service providers;
  • Expand the utility of local government data in support of regional planning, assessment, and management of transportation, land use, watersheds, and emergency response;
  • Improve the timeliness of updates and more accurate data than was available through the 1:24,000 USGS topographic quadrangle program;
  • Promote new academic and private-sector market opportunities, such as location-based services based on accurate, standardized, and regularly maintained data;
  • Lower the costs of data maintenance, analysis, and mapping applications to local governments as a direct result of data standardization.
The Planning Process
To achieve the PAMAP vision, a great deal of communication and collaboration are required. Planning began with identification of prospective members of an advisory committee from local, state, and federal government. These individuals were thanked for their past and current support of and involvement in PAMAP and were invited to a workshop. Representatives who agreed to participate in the workshop were interviewed in advance to get input for the workshop design. Questionnaires were also sent to confirmed participants, to further improve the design of the workshop. In addition to providing input to the planning of the workshop, the questionnaires also documented the diversity of views about PAMAP that the advisory committee must help to reconcile and address.

Workshop participants also agreed to meet monthly for the first year to continue the work of structuring bylaws and doing the work of the advisory committee. In addition, the workshop resulted in an approved vision/mission, objectives, and performance measures to guide the PAMAP program.

The Leadership Plan. (Click HERE to obtain even more information.) The Leadership Plan is more complex than the Operational Plan. A leadership plan "involves energizing the organizations involved in the effort; maintaining open, timely, consistent, and effective communications; establishing shared values that will guide the program qualities; and modeling the behavior that is desired throughout the effort." By investing significant effort in its Leadership Plan, PAMAP has come up with creative ways to ensure that all participants have satisfactory answers to the key question, "What's in it for me?"

The Operational Plan. Operational planning is addressed separately for raster data and vector data. Jim Steil, director of the Mississippi Automated Resource Information System, reviewed the conceptual design of PAMAP and found it to be simultaneously comprehensive and simple. "The technical approach is both elegant and very understandable," he said. "It is awesome."

The operational plan for raster data is centralized at the state and guided by an advisory council. This is consistent with the fact that the state has a lead role in the provision of these data. The plan includes three components: requirements, conceptual design, and an implementation plan. Three categories of data are included in the raster plan:
  • Natural Color Digital Orthophotograph Imagery
  • Elevation Data (Digital Terrain Models and Derived Products)
  • Geodetic Monuments
Some vector data are included in the Raster Operations Plan because, in addition to being viewed as the responsibility of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the themes are traditionally created or updated through photogrammetric or remote sensing procedures. Thus it makes sense to include them all in the same contract for simultaneous delivery to the commonwealth.

The plan is to update the raster data for one-third of the counties every year, providing statewide coverage in three years. Figure 1 shows the proposed grouping of counties for three-year reflight frequency. The western group is 18 counties, the central group is 23 counties, and the eastern group is 26 counties, with the area covered ranging from 12,925 square miles in the western group to 17,351 square miles in the central group.



Figure 1: Proposed grouping of Pennsylvania counties for three-year re-flight coverage. Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Bureau of Topographic and Geologic Survey.

The operational plan for vector data is more "federated" rather than centralized, consistent with its reliance on state agencies and counties as the source of the data. The vector plan includes requirements and will eventually include a conceptual design and an implementation design. The following seven vector layers are included:
  • Buildings
  • Hydrography
  • Road Centerlines
  • Other Transportation: Airports
  • Other Transportation: Railroads
  • Parcels
  • Political Boundaries
In preparation for identifying the requirements, use cases were identified for each layer. Participating counties and state and federal agencies identified what that layer means to their mission and what is necessary in order for that layer to serve the mission. The requirements for each layer are organized into four categories: inventory requirements; geometry and attribute requirements; edge-matching requirements; and alignment requirements.

To ensure consistent feature names, PAMAP uses the official names recognized by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names (BGN), as stored in the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) database. This enhances feature queries by name because the entire length of the feature shows up — regardless of how many data providers supplied portions of the feature — and similarly enhances cartographic labeling. Consistent feature names also improve coordination for emergency planning, emergency response, homeland security, census mapping, and other functions involving multiple jurisdictions. (Click HERE to obtain even more information about raster and vector requirements within the PAMAP Operational Plan.)

Planning the Payoff
The communication and collaboration that have been the hallmark of the PAMAP planning process have recently brought an unexpected payoff. PAMAP has been able to add light detection and ranging (LIDAR) acquisition to its orthoimagery contract. The simultaneous acquisition provides additional mapping capability to all participants at a cost savings, compared to separate acquisition. The leadership plan and the operational plan facilitated immediate integration of the new LIDAR data and resulting products into the program.

PAMAP has documented its open and comprehensive design process for building the Pennsylvania component of The National Map and has made both the documentation and the data available to the public over the Internet. The USGS vision is that The National Map will ensure that the nation has access to current, accurate, and nationally consistent digital data and topographic maps derived from those data. In Pennsylvania, that vision is well on its way to becoming a reality.

Learn More
Links to various PAMAP documents can be viewed at www.dcnr.state.pa.us/topogeo/pamap/. Prepared by Advanced Technology Solutions, Inc., the documents provide an explicit description and documentation of the desired relationships among business and management processes and geospatial technology. They define a framework in which to describe work activities and justify the investments of personnel, data, and applications.
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