HR: 1340h
AN: IN33C-1194    [Abstracts]
TI: Standards Development for the U.S. National Geologic Map Database
AU: * Soller, D R
EM: drsoller@usgs.gov
AF: U.S. Geological Survey, 12201 Sunrise Valley Drive MS 926-A National Center, Reston, VA 20192 United States
AU: Berg, T M
EM: thomas.berg@dnr.state.oh.us
AF: Ohio Geological Survey, 2045 Morse Road, Bldg. C, Columbus, OH 43229 United States
AU: Stamm, N R
EM: nstamm@usgs.gov
AF: U.S. Geological Survey, 12201 Sunrise Valley Drive MS 926-A National Center, Reston, VA 20192 United States
AB: The U.S. Geological Survey and the Nation's state geological surveys (under authority of the Association of American State Geologists) are mandated by Congress to provide a National Geologic Map Database (NGMDB) of standardized geoscience information that can be used to address societal issues and improve our base of scientific knowledge. Over the past decade, the NGMDB project has addressed its mandate by providing: 1) basic information and services that enable users to find available geoscience information; 2) a venue for development of community-based standards that are promoting broader public use of geoscience map information and more effective interoperability among the Nation's geological surveys; and 3) a research and development environment in which we are building a distributed database system to archive and serve the Nation's geologic map information. The NGMDB is addressing its mission in an incremental fashion, by building "support" databases and standards, and by working toward the long-term goal of the distributed system. Products currently available to serve the geoscience community and the general public are: the U.S. Geologic Names Lexicon ("GEOLEX"), which is a standard reference for the Nation's stratigraphic nomenclature; the Geoscience Map Catalog and Image Library, which helps people find and view 70,000 published geoscience maps and related products; and various standards, which are the subject of this paper. In cooperation with other U.S. and Canadian agencies, and with the IUGS Commission for the Management and Application of Geoscience Information ("CGI"), the NGMDB project is defining standards that include: a science terminology; a conceptual data model; a physical implementation of the data model in ArcGIS; a FGDC-endorsed standard for map symbols and patterns and for descriptions of locational accuracy of geologic features in the field; and a GML-based exchange standard to promote interoperability among data providers to the NGMDB. These standards form the basis for the design of our online map database. Because it will be a distributed system managed among more than 50 agencies (each with different personnel skills, organizational culture, hardware and software platforms, funding constraints, and public and private user needs), the standards must accommodate these differences and yet enable the NGMDB database to function as if it were a single entity. The standards are now being tested in the NGMDB prototype database; this testing is aided by our new data-entry tool and ArcGIS implementation, which will allow our project partners to evaluate the database structure and science terminology and to make recommendations for improvement. Information and links to NGMDB databases and standards are available at http://ngmdb.usgs.gov/Info/.
UR: http://ngmdb.usgs.gov
DE: 9810 New fields (not classifiable under other headings)
DE: 9820 Techniques applicable in three or more fields
SC: Earth and Space Science Informatics [IN]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005