New York State Office of Cyber Security
Geographic Information Systems Clearinghouse
State Agency Advisory Group Meeting Agenda
March 9, 2010
The meeting was held at the NYS Dept. of Ag & Markets in Colonie.
Attendees: 16 people, representing 10 State Agencies (detailed below).
Opening: Eric Herman, from the Thruway Authority, welcomed attendees, and started the meeting. He announced that the previous meeting’s notes are posted online, and that the primary focus of this meeting would be on uses of elevation data.
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List of Attendees and Roundtable Discussion of Elevation Data Needs/Uses.
- Eric Herman – NYSTA: The Thruway uses elevation data sporadically, for specific projects; New ESRI “terrain” data model for LiDAR works very well; Have used elevation to look at filling in ditches, finding drainage patterns, siting wind turbines, radio signal propagation, canal embankments, and identifying high points along the Thruway.
- Mike Martel – Ag & Markets: Similar uses to Thruway; Not much use; Division of Metrology (weights and measures) uses for gas storage areas to identify expansion of gases measures at different elevations.
- Catherine Barnes – DEC: Wetland mapping project right now (especially in forests).
- Barbara Cruden – DEC: Environmental permit reviews for viewed analysis; Lots of others at DEC can elaborate more on other uses.
- Dennis Wischman – DEC: Use elevation data for orthorectification.
- Gwen LaSelva – DOH: Not big users of elevation data, but has potential for spills & pollutants.
- Mark Giddings – DOH: Division of Nutrition does not currently have many uses.
- Anyée Fields – Thruway: Created Terrains; Elevation data for finding seasonal weather information system locations for weather station reports.
- Becca Newhall – DOS: Using mostly bathymetric data (many from existing nautical charts) and imagery data for offshore planning and siting wind turbines (which go to a certain depth); Also for looking at habitats.
- Todd Nelson – DCJS: Not using elevation data much now, but good for border protection or smuggling for individual police departments.
- Dan O’Brien – SEMO: Elevation data is useful for coordination and recovery efforts; Storm surge mapping; Slope is critical; USGS earthquake ShakeMap product results after an earthquake uses slope and soil types; National Weather Service and terrain as a factor for tornadoes; Ice (and other) storms are often affected by elevation.
- Tim Daly – DEC: Elevation data is core part of Flood Plain Mapping Program; Remediation program to model project sites; Dam safety program for dam break analysis; Implementing terrains as a means of distributing data; Flooding coordination & recovery; Storing all kinds of data in terrain format, which store all original data (big advantage), are very fast, and use pyramids – drawback is that many tools don’t use them.
- Mauricio Roma – OAG: Use elevation data to identify, among other things, surface water drainage patterns; Helps to determine possible directions of groundwater flow, contaminant migration, and the location of possible contaminant receptors.
- Tim Ruhren – CSCIC: Major component of orthorectification; Break lines can be very useful; LiDAR was first used as orthorectification component in 2009; Contours in orthoimagery application; Note that many agencies that use elevation data are not present: DOT, NYSERDA, DPS, OGS.
- Ricardo Lopez – DEC: (Note Ricardo will no longer be at DEC after April 1); Used for water/flood hazard determination done by contractors; LiDAR itself is not enough for drainage analysis – must enforce the hydrography and carve it into the DEM; Dam emergency management, state forest management (using LiDAR with and without vegetation); Impacts of sea level rise; Infrastructure risk with flooding.
- John Wingfield – NYPA: NYPA uses elevation data extensively: Viewshed analysis; Preliminary design and routing of transmission lines; Placement of wind turbines; engineering analysis; Shoreline erosion and maintenance; Clearance over terrain; Bathymetry with multi-beam sonar to determine volumes of reservoirs; Fishery analysis; Lake St. Lawrence modeling with bathymetry and elevation; Dam break analysis for impacted structure; Microwave siting; Emphasized the need to be able to rely on the data.
Update on 2010 Orthoimagery Collection Plans. Tim Ruhren discussed the status of the orthoimagery program. For 2009 imagery, Dutchess, Madison, Monroe, Oneida, Onondaga, Ontario, Putnam, Wayne and Westchester are available through the Interactive Mapping Gateway and direct download pages for Dutchess, Monroe, Putnam, Wayne and Westchester are now set up. The website should be updated soon to include download pages for the other counties. The area for the 2010 lot was reduced. DEC is funding LiDAR collection in northern Rensselaer County, and the Black River area in Jefferson County. Coordination for the imagery is very important, and Tim requested that people notify him if there are any large projects planned to help identify areas for orthoimagery in future years. He also mentioned a new project that Microsoft is working on with DigitalGlobe called Clear30. The plan is to produce nationwide imagery at 30cm resolution, available through Microsoft’s Bing website.
Events and Projects.
The group briefly discussed the 2009 NYSGIS Conference in Lake Placid, and the plans for the 2010 conference in Saratoga Springs October 24-26. Eric mentioned that the NYS GIS Association is now officially a working partner in the conference planning efforts. The keynote speaker for the event will be renowned remote sensing specialist Kass Green. There will be a Sunday Evening Reception at the National Museum of Racing, and Jack Knowlton, owner of 2003 Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner Funny Cide will speak at the Monday evening banquet. The group expressed interest in having a short meeting of the State Agency Advisory Group at the conference.
There was no new update on the status of the state’s proposed Enterprise Licensing Agreement with ESRI.
There were a couple of GISP certification items of note: The NYS Governor’s Office of Employee Relations will provide reimbursement of expenses related to initial GIS certification for PS&T employees. More information can be found at the website at:
http://www.goer.state.ny.us/Training_Development/PEF/CertLicenseExamFee/index.cfm; Also, the NYS GIS Association is seeking recognition of the GISP credential from the State Department of Education.
Eric mentioned that CSCIC was awarded a $30,000 grant from the FGDC to develop a business plan for NYS to develop a statewide parcel data layer. In the interim, Eric Shyer at DEC has created a combine parcel data file for the state, and Tom Hart at DOH has done the same for the ORPS parcel centroids.
Overview of State Elevation Data. Tim Ruhren discussed the fact that SEMO is getting funding from the Office of Homeland Security for information on buildings and assets. LiDAR is being considered for this project. This would provide a 3D perspective to critical infrastructure elements. He also mentioned that CSCIC is the lead agency for a DHS 3D data coordination grant project. CSCIC would be willing to take a larger role with LiDAR elevation data collected statewide and easier-to-consume products, and could possibly make more data available.
LiDAR Data from DEC.Ricardo Lopez mentioned that the state’s floodplain mapping program is being discussed between FEMA and DEC. If a plan is not worked out, DEC will not be able to help contribute to these projects and LiDAR data collection with the current budget. He mentioned that CSCIC’s success in working on local government coordination should be leveraged. The focus should continue to be on high quality specifications. The group also discussed the need to know what data is available in which locations, and that posting GIS polygon files to show locations with attributes that describe the caveats of LiDAR and other elevation data would be extremely useful. Availability could be dealt with separately. Tim mentioned that there are three primary categories of this data: Data owned by NYS; Floodplain data from federal funding (which DEC is authorized to distributed to the state); and data owned by locals, who retain distribution rights. John Wingfield mentioned that the US Army Corps of Engineers (ACE) flew bathymetric LiDAR of the upper Niagara River, and that ACE has good distribution of LiDAR data along coasts. The Center for LiDAR Information Coordination and Knowledge (CLICK) website at EROS (http://lidar.cr.usgs.gov/), allows users to download LiDAR datasets.
The National Hydrography Dataset from DEC. Tim Daly talked about the National Hydrography Dataset (NHD) stewardship program. This program is coordinated through USGS. It started at 1:100,000 scale, and has moved to a 1:24,000 scale product. DEC’s hydrography data product has become the NHD for our state, and per an official agreement with USGS, NYSDEC is the steward of this data, responsible for all maintenance. The new viewer of the National Map includes the NHD. Tim also mentioned that the USGS has a very good 6-minute long video introduction to the NHD at http://nhd.usgs.gov. The data is available as a map service from USGS for use in GIS application, and can also be downloaded as a file geodatabase. Tim also, mentioned that Google now uses the NHD in their maps.
There is currently an initiative for an “ortho update” of the ALIS data (currently the best statewide hydrography data source) for the NHD, to make this the official NYS hydrography dataset. Tim showed a status map, and mentioned that completion of the state is expected at end of summer. There are 1:100,000 scale, 1:24,000 scale, and local resolutions of the datasets. The NHD Plus provides additional information (such as catchments for each stream), and is complete for 1:100,000 scale data. DEC is looking at completing drainage networks, so they can do this for 1:24,000 scale data. Watersheds are also now complete, and will become part of the NHD, updating the existing HUC 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, &12 levels of data.
The next meeting is tentatively scheduled for June 15, 2010, from 9:30am-12:00pm at the NYS Thruway Authority. If you have any ideas for topics or would like to provide a demonstration at this meeting, please let us know. Any questions or concerns about any of these issues can be sent to the Advisory Group Chair, Eric Herman at the NYS Thruway Authority (518) 471-5890, or eric_herman@thruway.state.ny.us.