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Jesse: You're listening to episode 733 of A Very Spatial Podcast, March 10th, 2024.

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Hello, and welcome to A Very Spatial Podcast. I'm Jesse.

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Sue: I'm Sue. Barb: I'm Barb. Frank: And this is Frank.

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Jesse: And this week, There are a lot of things to talk about, but to bring Frank's

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loves together, he will begin by talking about, or is this, or is this Barb's?

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I, Barb: I put it up there, but if Frank knows about it, he can do it.

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Jesse: Well, no, no. Barb has an equal love of games to Frank.

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I just had assumed. I apologize. Especially right after National, International Women's Day.

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And now I'm cutting you off. It's making it even worse... Barb: So NASA has released a tabletop adventure that is about the Hubble

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telescope getting stolen by aliens.

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And I actually had to check this a few times to make sure this was in fact true.

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This wasn't just someone writing fanfic about NASA or, you know.

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Thinking, wouldn't it be cool if NASA did this? NASA has actually released a tabletop adventure officially

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featuring the Hubble telescope. So I think that all of us here, you know, should be excited.

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And I think we should play the lost universe.

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Frank: Yeah. and it's actually system agnostic, even though he keeps referencing D and D,

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which would suggest not system agnostic.

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Sorry, gaming nerd pedanticism kicking in.

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It's an unusual story. A dragon kidnapped a bunch of alien wizards and forced them to rip the tubble,

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a Hubble telescope out of our reality. Okay, so there's a lot of things going on there.

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One, a dragon kidnapped.

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A bunch of alien wizards, like,

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Jesse: yeah, normally count it Frank: backwards. Dragons, normally dragons are the bad guy or aliens are the bad guy, but now

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apparently the aliens aren't the bad guy.

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They're just. You know, slave labor.

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I don't know what it's just kind of a weird set up.

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Jesse: And the question is, is it, I assume it's also an alien dragon.

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Barb: Yeah. It's a space dragon. Yeah. Frank: Okay.

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Space dragon. So, and then it's, it's ripping the Hubble telescope out of our reality.

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So we're talking about multi dimensionality right

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there out of the gate. I'm just saying there's a lot going on here and I'm intrigued and I'm going to.

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Play it. I love this.

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The adventure depicts a group of faintly baffled researchers.

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Now, let's back up a second. Let's review here Space Dragon kidnapped alien wizards multidimensionality

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and they're faintly baffled. Sue: But they know about the wonders of the universe and

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that anything is possible. So they're only faintly baffled that they haven't figured it out.

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Jesse: They're rolling with it. Frank: Yeah. And they're out of the Goddard Space Flight Center, which

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is in Greenbelt, Maryland. So apparently everybody in Houston and Florida either don't know

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or like, yeah, that happens. It's just, it's a story here.

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Barb: It's a party of four to seven level seven to ten characters.

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So fairly large. Jesse: So head over to the science.

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nasa. gov page that's in the show notes and download it.

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Yes, Sue: it's all available online and free. Jesse: I guess, continuing with the somewhat space theme

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Sue: space adjacent. Jesse: Yeah. Methane sat has been launched.

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Methane sat is a, as you might imagine, a satellite that is measuring methane.

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It's actually a New Zealand project supported by the New Zealand

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space agency and developed by the nonprofit environmental defense fund.

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So it's there. It's measuring is.

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Going to be, I think, really interesting because the data is going

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to be available from their website.

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So again, just launched. So it's not completely on boarded yet.

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So data is not available. They do have some of the preliminary data that they

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captured in atmosphere by a plane.

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While they're testing everything, so if you want to go and get a look at

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what the data is going to look like, you can head over to the website.

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But right now, we're still waiting for the 1st data sets from the satellite

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to be uploaded to their website. Sue: I think it's important to note that while other satellites actually

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can measure or other sources can measure methane, what this is looking for is.

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Emitters, so sources of methane, and because it's, its orbit is 15 orbits

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per day, it can actually look at change across the course of a day.

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So I think that it's on a resolution that is not, not been there before.

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And so of course, when you're trying to figure out potentially how to mitigate

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methane release this could be really, really useful in, in taking a look

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at, you know, where the emissions are coming from, how they're changing, and

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maybe what can be done to reduce them. Barb: I was just going to say it's one.

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I was surprised it wasn't out of sky truth. And the second one is like Sue said, I think because it can detect small

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leaks, it's going to be really good about response time to things, which

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will be very good and important.

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Frank: I think methane is one of those gases that whenever I teach this in

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any sort of physical geography class or anything like that intro class,

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the students are always surprised that that's something to be worried about.

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That, that it's something to think about in terms of greenhouse

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gases and, you know, obviously there's no way to avoid it.

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Cow farts are how everyone seems to think about methane, but

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there are a lot of other things. Important sources of methane leaks that people just don't realize.

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Jesse: But to be fair, the animals are a major,

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Frank: I'm, I'm not saying I wasn't commenting on this article

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because all I could think about was I wonder if it's good enough to

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detect where all the animals are at. Jesse: It should be.

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Yeah. I mean, whenever you're talking about a field of dense, I mean, if you have

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spread out, but you know, a dense cluster, Frank: well, that's what I'm wondering.

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So I'm wondering if you can actually use this data to attract

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animals across, you know, planet. Sue: Or in a move for cow like propaganda, perhaps disprove that

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it's not as much as we thought. Frank: It's just one of those weird auxiliary things that popped in my head.

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It was like, you know, I wonder if you could like track or heard of

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giraffe methane using the satellite.

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Jesse: Yeah, because it depends on what the, the, the base value is.

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Frank: Yeah. I mean, you could track any wildlife, right?

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I mean, well, not any, I have to imagine a herd of bunnies, for example,

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would not show up on the satellite. Jesse: And it has to be something that's I just forgot what

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cows are called, ruminants? Yes.

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Ruminants. So something that is, you know, developing that gas in their stomach or stomachs.

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Frank: Yeah. Yeah. I don't, this is an area I know nothing about, but anyway, that

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was what I was thinking about. I was thinking about animal farts and get to track things that way.

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For good or bad. Jesse: I guess my linking thing is tracking things this time.

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Sue: Oh, and your, your choices of news item Jesse: of, of, of linking.

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Yeah, well, I mean, it was space, but yeah.

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So the NGA has a couple of news items this week that I wanted to pull out.

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The first one is they are significantly increasing their focus on commercial

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satellite data with a new Luno program.

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This does follow on the existing commercial satellite data acquisition

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program that's been going on for years, but this program is looking at spending

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290, 000, 000 versus the previous program, which was 29, 000, 000 over 5 years.

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So. Yeah, I mean, we're, we're talking about something that is a fairly

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substantial change and, you know, I'm teaching GEO at the semester.

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So a lot of what I've been talking about and a couple of classes is just the sheer

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shift and focus in some areas to the commercial industry and taking advantage

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of commercial data because we have lots and lots of commercial satellite systems.

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Up there now compared to five years ago, especially compared

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to 20 years ago, you know, just this year, volume of satellites.

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We're not just talking about GOI versus digital globe

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versus I just forgot Francis.

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Cause it's been bought so many times. I forgot spot spot.

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Yes. You know, whenever we were talking the late nineties, early two thousands,

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they were the only commercial. Now we have so many from, you know, full blown traditional satellites to

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multiple CubeSats swarm type things.

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So yeah, we have a lot out there, but I think a different environment than

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we were in before to take advantage of. Sue: Well, yeah, and in terms of investment in new technology, adoption,

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commercial, commercial entities are much more nimble and can throw, you know,

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put money at it and get things launched.

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So they can always be updating their products faster than a lot

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of government systems can do that. Barb: And this is still an augmentation to what they already use in house.

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It's just a, like you said, an investment in commercial satellite imagery

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and that those contracts will be. Coming out and they're looking for things like shipping, construction,

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energy, infrastructure a lot of support for Earth observation.

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Frank: I think this isn't somewhat reminiscent for me of the sort of

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GIS and society debate stuff where there was a lot of conversation

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about GIS being government top down.

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And it was because of the expense of it for the most part that GIS was expensive.

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Computers were expensive, all that sort of stuff. And as it became more broad, you know, that became less of a pressing I'm

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gonna put myself out there and say less of a pressing problem, I think,

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than it would have been 30 years ago or something like that, I kind of

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felt like the intelligence industry. Yeah.

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Apparatus that's probably, I was trying to give us something, not apparatus.

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The intelligence apparatus has expanded or is expanding a little bit behind the

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scope because of the expensive satellites of getting that stuff out there and any

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other remote sensing sort of things. But I mean, you know, there's a lot of this technology that

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is now more broadly available.

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I was going to use the word democratize, but I'm not sure if that's true, but

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it, you know, it's a little more broadly available and then they can start Picking

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out these pieces and making it a little more cost effective, more spread out.

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I'm not sure what I'm going for here, but it just reminds me of the GIS and society

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sort of basis of debate, how that's changing even at this technological scale.

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Sue: Well, I think the interesting thing at the end of kind of one of the articles

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that, that we were looking at is the.

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notation that sources have said that NGA envisions using Luno to kind of modify

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their business model a little bit. So rather than hire contractors, so the analysis of the data they get

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from various sources, right, goes on and in facilities that they, you

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know, manage through contractors. They're talking about NGA buying analysis as a service.

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And so, that's interesting, right? It might be more efficient, you say, right, the, the, the, I think it

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brings up one of the classic debates, right, of, of the geospatial world and

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data and all those things, right, is that data is collected when there's a

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reason to collect it, and you collect the data that Is for that reason.

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And so that's interesting in that if you move to a model where you're just

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getting the product from somebody, if they're a commercial entity, and

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there's a lot of data out there that maybe would be nice to have, but

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it's not going to be commercially viable for them to collect it.

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I mean, I think it's interesting who will then derive, drive a sort

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of what analysis is being done. So not just data is collected, but also then what analysis is done on that.

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So I think that's interesting. Barb: Yeah, and I think that goes, I know Frank mentioned the GIS and

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society debates, but I also know that there was that shift in the federal

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government when they did shift from federal worker, you know, employees to

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contractors and that was a big thing and there were a lot of debates about it.

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And I feel like this is going to bring up another debate.

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You're moving from contractors, which have, you know, still a lot of

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discussions about using contractors versus using federal employees.

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Like Sue said that that, you know, have a direct link to the data in the.

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that you're doing to now this service driven.

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Frank: And, you know, not only that, but they're not going to have

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a customer of one or two, right?

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So it's not just going to be for the NGA or any other, the three letter agencies.

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There's going to be, they're going to need other customers to stay in business.

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So the question becomes, how is this information going to be used?

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And now this, how's this analysis going to be used in such a way that.

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provides adequate information to the intelligence agencies, but

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does not provide the same degree of information to the other customers.

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Jesse: Well, and there's a lot here that, you know, NGA, we think of as

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intelligence, but not everything that they touch is secret, top secret, et cetera.

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Some of it's just. Data because data is data.

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And so, you know, doing things like agricultural forecasts or current

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natural hazards response or those type of things through imagery is

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something that I can see being part of the analysis of the service.

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I mean, we're already doing that to some extent. Whenever you look at what Max is doing or Airbus is doing in terms of their value

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added products on top of their, their imagery that they're already collecting.

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So it's just between You know, the big names who will definitely get part of

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this, but also some of the startups that are doing really interesting

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things with not the generative AI, but the traditional remote sensing

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AI that we've been using for decades.

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In terms of classification, things like that, but things that are getting

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better through deep learning and those type of machine learning algorithms and

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approaches as we get better and better training sets and larger and larger

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training sets as we keep creating.

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Frank: Yeah, I, I, you're, you're not wrong that a lot of the information

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that they're, they're making intelligence decisions or inferences

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about, or just Open source stuff or easily accessible stuff that just,

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you know, if you know, it's going to rain tomorrow and this, that, and the

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other thing, you can infer some things. So it, but it would be interesting to, I'm wondering if it makes it easier

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for counterintelligence to infer.

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Anyway, I I'm probably teasing at things that.

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Somebody much smarter than me has figured out already.

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I do have concerns about that. Is that if it's a commercial product, who else are they

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selling to and to what degree? Jesse: Everybody sell it to everybody's commercial product, but it's, you

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also have the fact that you use the term open source, which you have to

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be careful because open source and Intel is not the same thing as open

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source for us because open source for Intel is things like radio and TV.

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These are things I have to keep in mind this semester in this one hour, what

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I can and can't say in a certain way. Frank: Right.

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Well, you know, I get that, but related.

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Also launched a new national geo and operation center, which is going to be a

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transit, it doesn't say where it's located at, which is not a big surprise but

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it's a 24 seven operation center that's going to provide geospatial intelligence

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to the nation's policy makers. Now, this is one of those things that I think is great.

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And also you didn't have one already, if I'm honest.

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Sue: Well, actually they, they did. They kind of note that they did Did have it, so, but it's different now?

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Yeah. Newer and cooler. I Frank: was like, don't we have this?

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Sue: Yeah. That's what I'm assuming.

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Newer and cooler. Jesse: The original one, the one that's been around since NEMA's days,

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the pre NGA NEMA, is, was basically to watch and see what's going on.

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This new one, quote, delivers distinct geospatial information to military

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and national level decision makers. So yeah.

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So it's, it's. Now they're there to be on call, not just to find that things are happening

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and look at things, but to provide content briefings and things like that.

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So it's, it's, it's the map. It's formation information.

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Yeah. It's, it's the map. Our map story maps. Yeah.

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It, it is yeah. So many things to say about that.

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Frank: Well, this is interesting, you know, I wonder what degree NGA

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employs, you know, I know they have a lot of cartographers because they

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have to make maps very quickly and they have to make, you know, as

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accurately and clear as possible, but I'm wondering how many infographic

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specialists and stuff like that. They also use, I would imagine that would be a increasingly demanded product to go

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alongside of, or maybe in place of a map.

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Jesse: And I will tell you right now there is a document somewhere that tells

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you exactly how you have to convey it in these infographics because the amount

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of specificity there is about mapping in various documents through NGA and others

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for Intel purposes is just amazing. This is the symbol you will use for this every time that

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you're, you're creating this. Frank: I know somebody that used to do this for a living and they used arc map.

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And so a big chunk of what they told me they did was automated for the most part.

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So a lot of that stuff is just, you know, you didn't have a choice.

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It was like, Oh, that's this. Okay. Well, we're going to go ahead and put that symbol in there for you.

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So no, no avoiding any of that.

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You couldn't get that creative with it whatsoever, but.

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You know, you still found ways to be. I was told that they found ways to be somewhat creative within

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the constraints of clarity. Jesse: And, you know, clarity is important, especially whenever

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something is going on as quickly as some of these things do.

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So not having the choice sometimes helps you get to the Story faster,

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Barb: and it was noted that, you know, part of what they're doing is increasing

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interoperability by bringing the functions together, which makes sense.

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There's a shorter space between those functions.

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Frank: So, the question is, it's the National Geo operations center that in Gawk.

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Is that how you say it in G O C N G O C.

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You know, there's a non zero chance that people are just going to call the NGOC.

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Sue: But they own the night, that's what their motto was apparently

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at the end, they own the night.

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Barb: I like that, but I was trying to figure out where I'd heard it before somewhere.

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Frank: Because the night belongs to lovers. Sue: Stop it, because it was already in my head, so stop it.

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Jesse: And so We head to our last news item of the week, and that is

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the recent release of the National States Geographic Information Council,

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who released their every other year geospatial maturity assessment.

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And we did talk about that. Various things around this last time it came out.

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So I figured we should talk about it again.

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Now curiously, there is one state that we're all very familiar with

18:22

on the podcast that's not on there.

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Frank: Yeah. That's because the reason for that, and I'm kind of curious eyeballing, it looks

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like to me there's what I think was five states or so that aren't there if I'm,

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Sue: I think it was five. Yeah. Frank: Yeah. It looks like it.

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So you've got the states aren't, there are. What, New Hampshire, Georgia, South Dakota, Nevada, and West Virginia.

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And I can only speak for West Virginia. We know exactly what happened there.

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GIS state coordinator retires.

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Letter gets sent by NSGIC to the state coordinator.

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Everyone is letting his mail pile up wherever the heck it piles up.

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It takes a few weeks, months, months, I think it was months for the new

19:07

coordinator to get interviewed and hired and get on board and all

19:10

that sort of stuff like that goes through looking through the mail and

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says, Oh, they were asking for this X number of weeks or months ago.

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Too late now. So, you know, that was just one of those weird timing, unfortunate timing

19:24

things where the, the, the natural person in group to do it wasn't there.

19:29

In place within the state. I'm curious if anything like that happened to any of the other states, or if they

19:35

just consciously didn't take part, or they didn't know who to send it to.

19:38

Jesse: Any of those are possible. You know, there's, there's different things to talk about.

19:41

The grade range is, is one that it ranged from A's to D's and there

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was one A, multiple A minuses.

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There was one D no C minuses.

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Just jump straight to C. Oh wait, no. Okay. There are no C's, just C pluses and C minuses.

19:58

But most states were between A and B minus.

20:03

And that, that kind of tracks. I think it's a little inflated.

20:07

Kind of like my grades and my classes are. Because it's, it's one of those that if you turned in the homework,

20:12

you got part of the grade. So, you know, it is probably a little inflated from where we, Really should

20:17

think about what we're looking at for maturity, but I don't know.

20:21

What are some of the things we want to talk about in terms of either

20:24

details, methods, things they look at, or the general grades?

20:29

Barb: I was gonna say what's interesting is what they've added for this

20:33

report versus, you know, what was in it the last time and then what's

20:37

not being graded but is in there.

20:40

So hydrography is in there, but it's not being graded because of

20:44

the new initiatives initiative.

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So, you know, I think that's.

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And they do have a dashboard. So you can download the report or you can use the dashboard to look at information,

20:57

and they have all the different areas that are covered in the grading system.

21:02

Jesse: And you can also go to the report card. So the report card has state led themes of address.

21:08

Ca, ca, ca.

21:11

There we go. Cadastral data.

21:13

There we go. That makes me happier. Elevation.

21:15

Orthoimagery leaf off, transportation, next generation 911, then the federal led

21:22

themes of geodetic controlled, government units, and orthraimetry leaf on.

21:27

So, of course, leaf on is part of the FSA, Farm Service Agency

21:32

slash USDA data collection.

21:35

So, every state should have Access to orthometry on, there's a kind of

21:42

side note on that one for what was it?

21:45

Arizona? Frank: Well, it's, it's kind of interesting.

21:48

Well, yeah. I mean, how much leaf do they have, but it's kind of interesting because really

21:53

what they're grading on is what, how much it is available to the, you know,

21:58

out there, and I'm assuming that's. By the state, which seems a little weird to me.

22:04

I know West Virginia does publish the nape imagery But I think it

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isn't it available on what data.

22:10

gov or someplace like that also or yeah You know, you can just

22:12

download it from there directly So it was a little unusual to me that

22:17

they actually graded that at all. Barb: Well, that's a big part of What their mission is haven't worked with

22:23

this data before in a report that you know It is to make sure that it's

22:28

it's not They're inaccessible and, and usable by the groups in the state that,

22:33

and states and regions that need it. Jesse: Oh, I forgot there, there was another section of

22:38

coordination that was by itself. Frank: Yeah. So I mean, big chunk of this is data availability, but I do do like that.

22:44

They look at things like coordination, you know, at how you're working

22:49

as a, as a unit within the state, which is interesting.

22:54

Something I thought was fascinating.

22:56

Is that 23 states have a G.

22:59

I. O. which is a relatively I don't I'm not.

23:02

I don't think I've run into many G.

23:04

I. O. s in my wonderings about which would be geographic information officer.

23:10

Sue: Well, I mean, I think overall, like certain states You know, obviously

23:14

have some way to go with a lot of these things, but I think overall that

23:17

trend, right, increasing recognition of the importance of it and the real

23:22

effort and dedication as several of the states gave responses to their grades.

23:26

And, you know, 1 of the things you talked about in some of those where

23:28

it said, well, you know, you're talking about scarce resources, a

23:32

lot of cases, but resources are being dedicated to geospatial data and.

23:38

keeping it up to date and expanding what you don't have and stuff.

23:41

So I think that that's a positive. And, and so I think that the majority of States getting pretty decent grades is,

23:47

is evidence that we're making strides.

23:51

Jesse: Yeah. I mean, if we compare it to the year 2000, you know, where we had maybe a

23:55

quarter of the States had GIS at this kind of level, it's very different.

24:03

Barb: Yeah. They're, they're talking, especially with The NG911 that there are only

24:08

four states that reported no funding, which is down from 10, two years ago.

24:12

So I think that, you know, while there are still challenges that,

24:15

you know, that awareness is growing. And I think that the NSGIC report is a great tool to raise awareness.

24:21

It's something where there aren't really, you know, any bad grades.

24:25

You know, they explain how sometimes the grading, there are factors

24:29

beyond your control, but they're a good thing to use to show what

24:32

you've achieved in your state. You know, to talk about it and to show, you know, here's what's going on.

24:38

It's almost like a third party endorsement, a federal

24:40

endorsement of all the efforts. that are being made in the geospatial community in the states.

24:46

Sue: I think that's true, and to recognize still, you know, some challenges,

24:49

I mean, and when you look at these data sets, all of them are complex,

24:55

expensive, right, rapid, and some places, especially states that, you know,

25:00

are seeing a lot of development and a lot of change, right, there are also

25:02

data sets that have to be frequently updated in order to truly be useful.

25:07

And that's expensive to do. So the fact that as many states can, you know, I was surprised in the state with

25:12

themes, for example, of elevation, I was so surprised that a lot of states actually

25:16

did pretty good on that as an example. Jesse: It's weird because you know, the three DEP program, you kind of expect.

25:23

So I was surprised that wasn't under federal led themes, but a lot of the

25:26

data is coming from the state level and those states at the coast get a lot more

25:31

support because of Noah and the LIDAR.

25:34

process compared to some of the interior states, but, you know,

25:37

there's a lot of other work that goes on in those areas that hopefully help

25:42

support them in their acquisition.

25:44

Frank: Well, you know, I, I think that there's some confusion in the

25:48

way those report present some of this information of, I really think there

25:53

should be part of this is what state efforts are Exist as a, as distinctly

25:59

separate from the federal efforts.

26:02

And the reason I say that is because I feel like with a lot of these base level,

26:06

these framework layers, like elevation, like leaf on imagery, all that sort of

26:10

stuff, I kind of feel like that it would highlight fairly quickly to states and

26:16

to the federal government, how critical.

26:18

Federal funding and federal efforts on these late data layers are to

26:24

even existing at all, and that's somewhat implicit in all of these,

26:28

but I really wish it would be more explicit to say, okay, let's grade

26:32

this as a state level endeavor, as opposed to a federal state partnership.

26:38

And I'm wondering how these scores would change if we did that.

26:42

Well, I mean, elevation is a great example, right?

26:44

Absent three depth, you know, how many states would have.

26:48

Elevation at a level, no pun intended, at a level that.

26:52

You know, you would consider acceptable, I guess would be the term I would use,

26:56

Jesse: South Carolina on how can we be an F for a federal lead theme?

27:02

Never mind. For elevation data, we get an A-, but so much of that is dependent on

27:07

Noah's coastal program, which, you know, has been used to basically

27:12

collect The state in many ways.

27:15

So there you have that example of, it's a state led theme, but it is completely

27:22

on the back of a lot of data that's coming from, you know, other resources.

27:27

Frank: And, and there's, there's nuances here that make it hard to get that

27:29

ABC stuff that I think is important.

27:32

So let's look at South Carolina again on elevation.

27:34

The question is please describe in numbers and scope how the GIS

27:37

community and others in your state have leveraged LIDAR elevation data.

27:41

In support of a variety of disciplines, the answer given

27:44

was a LIDAR bill was passed. However, it is unfunded legislation.

27:49

While we have business needs for statewide elevation data, the most recent was two

27:52

three state collected in 2020 at QL two.

27:57

So that unfunded legislation is it, you know, how do you, how do you grade that?

28:03

You've got legislation, but there's no money behind it.

28:05

So. Is, you know, is it useful at all?

28:08

They even have the legislation at that level or at all.

28:11

Barb: I think in some ways, when I read the report, I think of it is

28:14

it's being pure reviewed pure graded.

28:17

But I mean, like, you know, pure grading. It's people that know what you do that.

28:21

They're going through and evaluating and you see that sometimes in their,

28:26

you know, responses and evaluation. And 1 of these is, you know, for transportation That they did acknowledge

28:32

that 1 of the reasons why transportation grades have gone down is actually that

28:36

the questions they're asking or more again, more nuanced and harder, you

28:41

know, their expectations are more. Since the, the past 2 other times grading cycles, so I thought you do have to read

28:49

the fine print to see how the scores are are being done to get a better idea of

28:54

than just looking at the grade itself. Because I think it sometimes tells you what's going on in your state

28:59

more than just did we do good? No, if there's a problem, why is it there?

29:04

Sue: Well, I agree. And to follow up with that too, it, it also reflects the, the change, right?

29:09

So the standard moves forward as, you know, you reach maturity, right?

29:13

The expectation that you're going to be at a certain level, that level is

29:17

going to get higher every time it's time to, you know, do an assessment.

29:22

So those who are behind potentially could fall further behind.

29:25

And if you just kind of rest on your, you know, you did really well like for

29:29

a while and got a bunch of stuff done, but if you don't keep up, then now you

29:33

yourself are going to fall behind too. So, updating kind of the standards and the questions I think is actually

29:38

a good thing because it reflects, you know, where we're going, like what's

29:41

that, you know, expectation, right? And the expectation for trends transportation, right?

29:44

To get the highest grade, you had to have, I think, 100 percent of your street

29:47

center lines or something like that. But that's it. Those are data sets have been around for a long time and

29:51

that's kind of an expectation. Unless you, and some states pointed out, you know, we have unique

29:56

conditions where we might have different jurisdictions or things like that

29:59

going on, but that's also a way to say, right, this is now the standard.

30:03

So, yes, maybe it's different, but I think, but again, I think

30:07

that that's actually a good thing. Frank: So I'm going to talk about the elections one, considering we

30:11

in the United States, we have a huge election that's coming up in November.

30:14

There's some interesting, to my mind, they appear to be contradictions

30:19

on the surface of, of it. So broadly speaking, what it says is that 32 of the 46 states or 47 states

30:30

answered no to the question that does your office have a formal relationship.

30:34

With your state elections director and they have defined what they

30:38

mean by foreign relationship and it's just administrative rules,

30:41

statute, whatever it may be from our, our agreement of services.

30:44

So the majority of them don't have a formal relationship with your elections.

30:48

And if you're unfamiliar with elections, it is incredibly geographic

30:53

and geospatial in, in nature because it comes from usually precinct

30:57

boundaries are usually the atomic unit.

30:59

Well, Arguably census boundaries, but certainly starting with precincts and

31:04

it sort of bubbles itself up to who gets to vote where, and that's how

31:07

you make your legislative districts. And that has everything to do with who represents you in that

31:11

particular district, as we all know, with the modified very

31:14

unit problem, gerrymandering, all that sort of stuff like that.

31:17

So it's interesting that the overwhelming majority of, you know,

31:21

state coordinators and state GIOs don't have a formal relationship

31:26

with their state election director.

31:28

However, whenever you go to.

31:31

The precincts boundaries tab.

31:33

I'm looking at the dashboard, by the way. That's how I'm looking at this stuff.

31:37

The question is, does your state manager have easy access to accurate current

31:41

statewide voting precinct boundary layer?

31:43

And. Almost half said yes.

31:46

So that says to me that either a, the, the layer is being produced by maybe

31:52

a third party or it's housed at the state elections, but they don't really

31:56

necessarily know anything about it or B they've got their own geospatial person

32:00

in house that is doing something similar, but there's no form of relationship there,

32:04

which seems really, I was, I was going to say weird, but maybe it's not weird.

32:08

Seems really unproductive or I think it would be a stronger Election system,

32:15

if they were more tightly related, maybe not coupled, but related.

32:19

I wanted to raise it because I wanted to highlight that as a

32:21

really interesting example of how you can tear into this report and

32:25

start seeing a little more nuances. If you start looking at the individual details.

32:29

Even, you know, in looking, for example, at elections.

32:31

So this, there's a lot of great stuff here is what I'm trying to say.

32:34

Sue: So Frank noted that he was using the dashboard.

32:36

If you go to the report, there's a little button there's actually a

32:40

very nicely done mapping dashboard of the results of the report where

32:44

you can see all the different themes. And there's a couple of them where I wished in the subtabs that they would

32:49

have kind of done individual questions, but that's, that's a minor thing.

32:52

But, but anyway, you can actually go instead of just looking at the, the text

32:56

of the report, you can actually see it mapped out in, in a nice little dashboard.

33:00

So I just wanted to, to make a note of that.

33:03

And the, the link is in the summary page in the show notes, you'll find a button

33:07

that just says, go to the dashboard. Barb: And I really liked the, the NSGIC credo, which is build one, share often.

33:13

And I think that's a lot of what.

33:16

You see, you know, going on, and this is the 3rd report that, you

33:20

know, states are working towards that, which is very commendable.

33:24

It's a lot being done. As we said, this is a maturity assessment and it really does show

33:29

the, the geospatial, you know, maturity that's going on in states.

33:33

We often talk about the maturity in industry, but this is the maturity

33:37

within, within the state level government,

33:40

Frank: though, I said that once again, I would like to highlight that more details

33:45

for anyone in district listening would be. Really amazing.

33:48

So I'm looking at the addresses. And the question is, does your state have a program for developing or maintaining an

33:53

authoritative statewide address database and overwhelming said yes, which is

33:56

great, but I happen to know in 1 state.

33:59

That's not in the survey that it exists.

34:02

So you could say yes, but I wouldn't necessarily the inference

34:06

from that is that it's a very widely acceptable accessible.

34:11

Easy process and and so I kind of feel like a little more devil in

34:15

the details would be awfully nice Jesse: and so if you're interested in how your state or any state did in this geeks

34:21

geospatial maturity assessment for 2023.

34:26

As we wait for the next one in 2025, head over to the link in the show notes,

34:30

onto the events corner, as always, we encourage you to check out these events

34:33

and others in your neighborhood, in your neighborhood, in your neighborhood,

34:38

Sue: or far away, if you like traveling, but first up is the

34:43

geospatial world forum, which will be May 13th through the 16th in

34:47

lovely Rotterdam in the Netherlands, Frank: June 11th through the 14th in Las Vegas, you can go to the ISPRS

34:52

technical commission to symposium.

34:55

Jesse: Focused on photogrammetry. Barb: So NACIS is taking place October 16th through 19th in Tacoma, Washington,

35:02

Jesse: Washington, the North American Cartographic Information Society.

35:06

Of course, if you'd like us to add your event to the podcast, send us

35:08

an email to podcast at very spatial. com. Sue: If you'd like to reach us individually, I can be

35:12

reached at Sue at very spatial. com. Barb: I can be reached at Barb at VerySpatial.

35:16

com. Frank: You can reach me at Frank at VerySpatial.

35:18

com, or you can follow me on all the social medias at Noja Par, except for

35:21

that one that I don't go to anymore. Jesse: And I'm available at Kind of Spatial, and of course, if you'd

35:25

like to find any of our contact information, head over to VerySpatial.

35:27

com slash contacts. Frank: As always,

35:30

Barb: we're the folks from very spatial. Jesse: Thanks for listening, and

35:32

Sue: we'll see you in a couple weeks. Music: Why?

35:59

So, show me the, show me the way home I can't go, can't go the way I know I'm looking

36:17

for, looking for the light Show me the way home Show me the way home Show me the way

36:27

Best to walk the line But my memories just don't memorize Blame it on a bad design

37:02

Show me that, show me that way, go, can't go the way I know, I've been

37:13

looking for, I've been looking for the light, show me that, show me that way.

37:23

Show me the way home Show me the way Tell me all my love Seems to be Tell me all

37:32

my love Just wondering I'm just wondering

38:10

Show me the, show me the way home Go the way I know Only people lie Home

38:19

Show me the way home Show me the

38:33

way