The GDW is a complex assortment of servers, networks, storage, data, software and people that logically and physically have been overlaid on existing USDA IT infrastructure and business practices. It is composed of 2 main data warehouses located at the APFO in Salt lake City, UT and at NCGC in Fort Worth, TX. The two data warehouses are populated by on going production operations which occur at each of the two data centers. Each warehouse provides fail-over capabilities reciprocally. Current data volumes are in excess of 15TB and growth is occurring by two terabytes per year.

An operational Geospatial Data Warehouse will provide more effective program delivery by providing an authoritative, trusted source of imagery and other geospatial data for Service Center Agencies (SCA). The GDW will reduce the delivery time of current imagery acquired for use in farm programs. It will facilitate the delivery of the data to cost share partners that are critical to minimizing costs for FSA, and ensuring the long term success of the of USDA image acquisition programs. The GDW will enable compliance to current mandates that include making data acquired or developed by SCA available to the general public.

The APFO and NCGC data centers are charged with managing several USDA imagery programs. APFO also contracts for, manages and delivers imagery for USDA Forest Service as well as other federal agencies. Administration of these programs requires robust data management facilities and procedures, expertise in image collection and organization, effective quality assurance measures, and the capability of delivering the data in formats that meet customer requirements.

For each state, the most recent year of NAIP Imagery DOQQs is available on an ArcGIS server. The state based services can be added into ArcGIS Desktop by adding http://gis.apfo.usda.gov/arcgis/services to the Add ArcGIS Server connection.

For detailed instructions on accessing the NAIP state based image services in ArcGIS Desktop 9.3 (and above) via APFO’s ArcGIS Server , click here for (PDF File) &