Key program achievements during fiscal year 2007

It has been a very good year for the NSDI Cooperative Agreement Program (CAP) with the completion of 31 projects which had been awarded during the 2005 and 2006 CAP seasons.  Funds totaling just over $2.5 million (federal share $1.2 million and agency in-kind match $1.3 million) were expended.  The results of the projects demonstrate their great diversity both in geography and in scope. 

• Over 27 metadata workshops were conducted that trained close to 400 individuals from across the United States in a wide variety of organizations.  Materials for on-line metadata training were developed by Virginia Tech and will be posted on the NBII portal when it is available.
• NSDI Clearinghouses were established, developed, and/or expanded for State of Virginia, local agencies in New York City, Idaho GIS community, North San Francisco Bay Initiative, State of Oklahoma, Japan’s Marine Information Research Center, National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration, and National Biological Information Infrastructure.
• Web Feature Services for national scale hydrography, political boundaries, and transportation framework data were established by GeoLeaders, LLC using the data models from the draft ANSI Framework Data Standard.
• Two projects developed and documented freely-accessible map client software that can accessing, visualizing, analyzing, and sharing framework data from Federal, State, and local data sources.
• 1. Integrated Mapping and Analysis Tool, http://victor.cira.colostate.edu/imat/
  2. Gaia, http://www.thecarbonproject.com/gaia.php
• Geospatial Strategic Plans for the States of Maryland, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, and New Hampshire were completed.
• Established or supported the multi-organizational collaboration to share geospatial information in a variety of communities in regions and organizations like the Southern Red River Basin, the California Invasive Plant Data Consortium, Coastal Maine, the Pacific Ocean area, Indiana, Missouri, Ohio, and Maine-New Brunswick (Canada) border.
• Web Mapping Services for Native names; Indiana orthophotography and elevation; Chicago Urban Area orthophotography; Idaho roads, structures, boundaries, and imagery; Benton County, Arkansas; and California’s Channel Islands Region GIS were established and are available via The National Map and registered in Geospatial One Stop.
• Missouri's local governments delivered a mirrored site for The National Map. 

Key program achievements during fiscal year 2006

• Three Train the Trainer Workshops conducted by grant recipients: USGS's National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII), the NOAA Coastal Services Center, and the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CEISIN) at Columbia University. In all, 34 metadata trainers were prepared to train larger groups.
• Creation of training opportunities for more than 330 people within city, county and Tribal government entities – including public health and emergency response organizations – by the NBII, the Merriam Powell Research Center at the University at Northern Arizona, the University of Idaho, the University of Indiana, Columbia University and the government of Westchester County, NY.
• Saving more than $8.5 million in staff time through the Minnesota Geographic Data Clearinghouse.
• Configuration and deployment of Web Feature Services (WFS) by Vermont, Rhode Island, Minnesota, North Carolina, and the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (Columbia University) to support NSDI Framework themes, including Governmental Units, Hydrography, and Transportation.
• Providing seed funding to Wisconsin to promote the advantages of a shared spatial infrastructure within that state.
• Helping the Tennessee Valley Authority provide access to its Aerial Photography Index via an OGC Web Map Service.
• Supporting South Carolina’s establishment of a user-friendly geospatial portal that is an outstanding return on investment.
• Helping the California Geographic Information Association bring together national, state, regional and local organizations to draft a comprehensive regionally-relevant, nationally consistent framework data plan. This provides the foundation for a California GIS Council data plan and will be used to promote the FGDC’s “Fifty States Initiative”.
• Under the leadership of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, completion of high-resolution hydrologic units, which were added to the National Hydrology Database.
• Helping the University of Oklahoma incorporate local data into the development of high-quality street centerline data.

2001 Program Evaluation

The NSDI CAP has been funding projects to further the National Spatial Data Infrastructure since 1994. In 2001 a report was prepared by the University of Buffalo that provided an evaluation of the FGDC's 1994 to 1999 NSDI Grants Program. The results were obtained from a postal survey of organizations that applied for FGDC metadata clearinghouse grants. The goal of the survey was to evaluate the effectiveness of FGDC's grants program. A further goal was to compare the characteristics of successful versus unsuccessful applicants, as well as non-applicants. Key findings include the following:

Among successful grant applicants:

• 95% indicated that the FGDC grants program had contributed significantly to the success of their metadata projects.
• post-FGDC-grant investment in project development/maintenance averaged $22,000 per annum per applicant.
• more than half of the grant recipients indicated that their FGDC- related project had created spillovers to other organizations (demonstration effects were positive).
• FGDC grants typically covered between 50-60% of project costs for most applicants.
• most applicants were from the government sector, with few from the private sector.
• FGDC grants were ranked highly in terms of their contribution to project success.
• most grant applicants (71%) were first-time applicants.
• all of the successful applicants have established web-based clearinghouses to support metadata dissemination.
• a majority of the organizations that were surveyed intend to apply for FGDC funding in the future.
• most applicants would have proceeded with their projects in the absence of FGDC support, albeit at a slower speed or at a reduced scope.
• 32% indicated that their project would not have proceeded without FGDC funding (most of these applicants operate with very small GIS units).
• the chief benefit of FGDC-funding is that it supports full-scale projects

Among unsuccessful grant applicants:

• unsuccessful applicants typically employed smaller numbers of GIS personnel than successful applicants (this contrast is statistically significant).
• approximately half of the organizations that were denied FGDC funding proceeded with some variant of their original proposal.
• because of their limited in-house resources (GIS expertise), unsuccessful applicants were more likely to seek outside help from professionals in other organizations, including private consultants, academics, and other collaborators.
• most of the unsuccessful applicants intend to apply for FGDC support in the future

Overall, the picture that emerged from the analysis was summarized as follows. First, FGDC grants contribute significantly to the development of metadata clearinghouses among successful applicants. The existence of a critical mass of in-house GIS specialists appears to be the chief discriminator between successful versus unsuccessful applicants. Second, projects that were supported by FGDC were in most cases associated with spillovers to other organizations (demonstration effects). In addition, virtually all of these projects have been supported by post-grant investment from within the recipient organization itself. Third, FGDC grants have improved the in-house technical capacity (or broadened the range of in-house activities) of many of the grant recipients. Fourth, all of the successful applicants have created metadata clearinghouses. A substantial majority of the successful applicants ranked the importance of FGDC support either highly or very highly. Finally, the main reason that eligible non-applicants failed to submit proposals was that they were unaware of the existence of FGDC grants.

The full report is available here (PDF format).

This information was also published in URISA Journal Volume 15, Number 2.

1997 Report on Impacts of the NSDI CAP

See the full report here (PDF format, 1.2mb) that describes the results from projects conducts from 1994 to 1996.