In October of 2008 the USGS and the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) formally announced their request for proposals to support the 2009 National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) Cooperative Agreements Program (CAP).  A total of over $1.3 million was made available to fund up to 26 innovative projects spread across seven geospatial data categories and are summarized below.  Each project will focus on ways to build new and improve existing geospatial data infrastructure necessary to effectively discover, access, share, manage and use digital geographic data.

The closing date for the 2009 NSDI CAP announcement was January 6, 2009.  The project awards are scheduled to be announced by USGS/FGDC contracts officer in February 2009 with obligated work to begin on each project no later than September 30, 2009.

• All proposals were submitted via  Grants.gov.
• Closing date: January 6, 2009
• Preview the full 2009 CAP Announcement is here (PDF format). 
• For background information about the NSDI CAP please see  Introduction to the Cooperative Agreements Program.
• Additional information available for the Frequently Asked Questions page.
• Eligibility Information
• • State or local governments, academia, private sector, non-profit and tribal organizations, as well as consortia of organizations are eligible to receive NSDI CAP funding.  Federal agencies are not eligible.
  • In some award categories recipients of awards within the past three years will not be eligible to receive a 2009 NSDI CAP award.  Please see the full announcement for further details.
• For more information please contact Gita Urban-Mathieux: burbanma [at] fgdc.gov or 703-648-5175.

Summary of 2009 Award Categories

Category 1: Metadata Trainer and Outreach Assistance provides assistance to organizations with NSDI expertise knowledge and experience in assisting other organizations with the training and implementation of metadata.

This category will award up to 4 cooperative agreements of up to $25,000 each with the recipient matching 50% of the award with funding or in-kind services.  Category Lead - Sharon Shin, sharon_shin [at] fgdc.gov.

Category 2: Behind the Portal - Use of GOS Map and Data Services
The Geospatial One-Stop Portal provides a human user interface to locate, visualize, and download domestic geospatial data. Because the GOS Portal, geodata.gov, supports standard formats and protocols, its catalog service interfaces allow search and retrieval of metadata on data, services, and other resource types referenced by URL that may be consumed by external clients such as desktop GIS, geo browsers, and other client software. Syndicated feeds of geospatial metadata based on a standing query can also be generated by the portal. In addition, the harvested GOS metadata are exposed for web crawlers and search engines to consume and provide exposure to a broader user community. Map and data services that are provided by publishers in GOS can be used by traversing the links exposed through these various methods, and not only through the traditional browser, but also through commercial and open-source clients to support diverse business processes.

The objective of this category in to promote the development and sharing of client or server-mediated applications (e.g. desktop GIS, decision support software, models, other portals) that can access and exploit the geospatial data and services referenced by GOS in support of a specific transferable and popular geographic or discipline requirement.

This category will award up to 4 cooperative agreements of up to $40,000 per project with the recipient matching 100% of the award with funding or in-kind services. Category Lead - Doug Nebert, ddnebert [at] fgdc.gov.

Category 3: Fifty States Initiative: Strategic and Business Plan Development in Support of the NSDI Future Directions Fifty States Initiative
Projects in the category will develop and implement statewide strategic and business plans that will facilitate the coordination of programs, policies, technologies, and resources that enable the coordination, collection, documentation, discovery, distribution, exchange and maintenance of geospatial information in support of the NSDI and the objectives of the Fifty States Initiative Action Plan.

This category will award up to seven cooperative agreements of up to $50,000 each with the recipient matching 50% of the award with funding or in-kind services. Category Lead - Milo Robinson, mrobinson [at] fgdc.gov.

Category 4: Enabling Use of Government Tabular Data in a Geographic Context
Abundant 'business' data within all levels of government include reference to a location by address, code, or coordinates. These data frequently reside in a database, spreadsheet, or file but may not have been used to create a map or to perform geographic analysis. In short, they are not being exploited by their owners as geographic data. The Office of Management and Budget’s Geospatial Line of Business identifies an inherent benefit in the ability to access, exchange, and visualize such loosely-georeferenced tabular information with other geospatial data for analysis and applications. As the conversion of such tabular data into "geo-enabled" data sets is not straightforward to the non-GIS community, the FGDC seeks collaborative development with a company to publish a shared public web service that can make geo-enablement easy and productive. The objective of this CAP Category is to develop, demonstrate, and operate a high-performance, public standards-based Web Service to create geospatial datasets automatically from tabular government data merged with geospatial features. Resulting data and services will allow the data to be discovered, accessed, and applied in its geographic context. A demonstration by the awardee of the process with at least three strategic Federal government data sets is also an expected outcome.

This category will award one cooperative agreement of up to $150,000 with the recipient matching 50% of the award with funding or in-kind services. Category Lead - Doug Nebert, ddnebert [at] fgdc.gov.

Category 5: Building Data Stewardship for The National Map and the NSDI will assist organizations and consortia to develop stewardship agreements and capabilities that provide long term maintenance of transportation geospatial information that serves Federal, State, Tribal, regional and local community needs. Participation is sought from those organizations with existing transportation data and services considering long-term maintenance of the data that is of interest to The National Map and its users. Funds may help participants overcome impediments to participation and improvements to their data and services as part of the NSDI.

Primary needs for transportation data are updates for features, attributes, and geometry of roads, railroads, trails and airports in The National Map.  The data will be part of a national data inventory of consistent, seamless, integrated data that is continuously improved through the incorporation of data updates from the data community. 

This category will award up to four cooperative agreements of up to $50,000 each with the recipient matching 100% of the award with funding or in-kind services. Category Lead - Paul Wiese, pmwiese [at] usgs.gov.

Category 6: FGDC Standards Development and Implementation Assistance and Outreach (excluding Metadata Standards) will provide funding to organizations to assist in the development of and/or implementation of standards in the FGDC standards program of work other than those for metadata (see category 1 above). This category can provide support that will assist in advancing a draft standard through the FGDC standards process or implementing an FGDC-endorsed standard.  In many cases, there are few, if any, materials that can be used to guide others when implementing an FGDC-endorsed standard in their organization.  Without materials that document best practices, provide experienced advice, and new techniques, an implementing organization has a steep learning curve.  This category can provide materials that provide step-by-step assistance, or at least, a roadmap for implementing FGDC-endorsed standards.

This category will award up to two cooperative agreements of up to $25,000 each with the recipient matching 50% of the award with funding or in-kind services. Category Lead - Julie Binder Maitra, jmaitra [at] fgdc.gov.

Category 7: Demonstration of Geospatial Data Partnerships across Local, State and Federal Government
The vision for the NSDI includes the integration of all levels of government including the processes for local data to feed into State holdings, which then feed into Federal programs such as The National Map.  This category will support the further development and documentation of partnerships and processes to implement this nested approach for one or more data themes of NSDI using The National Map.

This category will award up to four cooperative agreements of up to $75,000 each with the recipient matching 50% of the award with funding or in-kind services. Category Lead - Tracy Fuller, tfuller [at] usgs.gov.