ASPRS Aspires to Preserve Geospatial Data
March 26, 2009 -- Photogrammetry is:
- The process of checking the grammatical correctness of photo captions
- An updated version of the telegram
- Obtaining reliable information about physical objects and the environment by recording, measuring and interpreting images and patterns of electromagnetic radiant energy and other phenomena
Correct answer: C. The 75th anniversary annual meeting of the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing considered digital stewardship issues from the perspective of the NDIIPP Geospatial Multistate Archive and Preservation Partnership.
ASPRS has over 7,000 international members working in the areas of photogrammetry, remote sensing, geographic information systems and supporting technologies. Remote sensing techniques are used to gather and process information about an object without direct physical contact.
The information and data generated by ASPRS members provides input into thousands of digital mapping applications, used by millions of people, including the current wave of consumer-friendly mapping applications. The explosive growth of these tools makes the preservation of the underlying data even more important.
These factors make ASPRS meetings an ideal forum to discuss the NDIIPP GeoMAPP project. GeoMAPP is exploring ways to expand the capabilities of state governments to provide long-term access to these types of geospatial data. The project is working closely with geospatial and archival staff in multiple states to identify, preserve and make available data with ongoing value.
Building awareness of the preservation issues facing digital geospatial data is a large part of the GeoMAPP mission. This brought GeoMAPP representatives Cindy Clark from the Automated Geographic Reference Center of the state of Utah and Butch Lazorchak from the Library of Congress to the ASPRS conference to present information on the project, and to encourage the photogrammetric community to consider the technical and social problems related to the preservation of remote sensing data.
Slides from the presentation are available (PDF, 1.04 Mb).
