Jesse: You're listening to episode 733 of A Very Spatial Podcast, March 10th, 2024.
Hello, and welcome to A Very Spatial Podcast.
I'm Jesse.
Sue: I'm Sue.
Barb: I'm Barb.
Frank: And this is Frank.
Jesse: And this week, There are a lot of things to talk about, but to bring Frank's
loves together, he will begin by talking about, or is this, or is this Barb's?
I,
Barb: I put it up there, but if Frank knows about it, he can do it.
Jesse: Well, no, no.
Barb has an equal love of games to Frank.
I just had assumed.
I apologize.
Especially right after National, International Women's Day.
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
telescope getting stolen by aliens.
And I actually had to check this a few times to make sure this was in fact true.
This wasn't just someone writing fanfic about NASA or, you know.
Thinking, wouldn't it be cool if NASA did this?
NASA has actually released a tabletop adventure officially
featuring the Hubble telescope.
So I think that all of us here, you know, should be excited.
And I think we should play the
lost universe.
Frank: Yeah.
and it's actually system agnostic, even though he keeps referencing D and D,
which would suggest not system agnostic.
Sorry, gaming nerd pedanticism kicking in.
It's an unusual story.
A dragon kidnapped a bunch of alien wizards and forced them to rip the tubble,
a Hubble telescope out of our reality.
Okay, so there's a lot of things going on there.
One, a dragon kidnapped.
A bunch of alien wizards, like,
Jesse: yeah, normally count it
Frank: backwards.
Dragons, normally dragons are the bad guy or aliens are the bad guy, but now
apparently the aliens aren't the bad guy.
They're just.
You know, slave labor.
I don't know what it's just kind of a weird set up.
Jesse: And the question is, is it, I assume it's also an alien dragon.
Barb: Yeah.
It's a space dragon.
Yeah.
Frank: Okay.
Space dragon.
So, and then it's, it's ripping the Hubble telescope out of our reality.
So we're talking about multi dimensionality right
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.
Play it.
I love this.
The adventure depicts a group of faintly baffled researchers.
Now, let's back up a second.
Let's review here Space Dragon kidnapped alien wizards multidimensionality
and they're faintly baffled.
Sue: But they know about the wonders of the universe and
that anything is possible.
So they're only faintly baffled that they haven't figured it out.
Jesse: They're rolling with it.
Frank: Yeah.
And they're out of the Goddard Space Flight Center, which
is in Greenbelt, Maryland.
So apparently everybody in Houston and Florida either don't know
or like, yeah, that happens.
It's just, it's a story here.
Barb: It's a party of four to seven level seven to ten characters.
So fairly large.
Jesse: So head over to the science.
nasa.
gov page that's in the show notes and download it.
Yes,
Sue: it's all available online and free.
Jesse: I guess, continuing with the somewhat space theme
Sue: space adjacent.
Jesse: Yeah.
Methane sat has been launched.
Methane sat is a, as you might imagine, a satellite that is measuring methane.
It's actually a New Zealand project supported by the New Zealand
space agency and developed by the nonprofit environmental defense fund.
So it's there.
It's measuring is.
Going to be, I think, really interesting because the data is going
to be available from their website.
So again, just launched.
So it's not completely on boarded yet.
So data is not available.
They do have some of the preliminary data that they
captured in atmosphere by a plane.
While they're testing everything, so if you want to go and get a look at
what the data is going to look like, you can head over to the website.
But right now, we're still waiting for the 1st data sets from the satellite
to be uploaded to their website.
Sue: I think it's important to note that while other satellites actually
can measure or other sources can measure methane, what this is looking for is.
Emitters, so sources of methane, and because it's, its orbit is 15 orbits
per day, it can actually look at change across the course of a day.
So I think that it's on a resolution that is not, not been there before.
And so of course, when you're trying to figure out potentially how to mitigate
methane release this could be really, really useful in, in taking a look
at, you know, where the emissions are coming from, how they're changing, and
maybe what can be done to reduce them.
Barb: I was just going to say it's one.
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
leaks, it's going to be really good about response time to things, which
will be very good and important.
Frank: I think methane is one of those gases that whenever I teach this in
any sort of physical geography class or anything like that intro class,
the students are always surprised that that's something to be worried about.
That, that it's something to think about in terms of greenhouse
gases and, you know, obviously there's no way to avoid it.
Cow farts are how everyone seems to think about methane, but
there are a lot of other things.
Important sources of methane leaks that people just don't realize.
Jesse: But to be fair, the animals are a major,
Frank: I'm, I'm not saying I wasn't commenting on this article
because all I could think about was I wonder if it's good enough to
detect where all the animals are at.
Jesse: It should be.
Yeah.
I mean, whenever you're talking about a field of dense, I mean, if you have
spread out, but you know, a dense cluster,
Frank: well, that's what I'm wondering.
So I'm wondering if you can actually use this data to attract
animals across, you know, planet.
Sue: Or in a move for cow like propaganda, perhaps disprove that
it's not as much as we thought.
Frank: It's just one of those weird auxiliary things that popped in my head.
It was like, you know, I wonder if you could like track or heard of
giraffe methane using the satellite.
Jesse: Yeah, because it depends on what the, the, the base value is.
Frank: Yeah.
I mean, you could track any wildlife, right?
I mean, well, not any, I have to imagine a herd of bunnies, for example,
would not show up on the satellite.
Jesse: And it has to be something that's I just forgot what
cows are called, ruminants?
Yes.
Ruminants.
So something that is, you know, developing that gas in their stomach or stomachs.
Frank: Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't, this is an area I know nothing about, but anyway, that
was what I was thinking about.
I was thinking about animal farts and get to track things that way.
For good or bad.
Jesse: I guess my linking thing is tracking things this time.
Sue: Oh, and your, your choices of news item
Jesse: of, of, of linking.
Yeah, well, I mean, it was space, but yeah.
So the NGA has a couple of news items this week that I wanted to pull out.
The first one is they are significantly increasing their focus on commercial
satellite data with a new Luno program.
This does follow on the existing commercial satellite data acquisition
program that's been going on for years, but this program is looking at spending
290, 000, 000 versus the previous program, which was 29, 000, 000 over 5 years.
So.
Yeah, I mean, we're, we're talking about something that is a fairly
substantial change and, you know, I'm teaching GEO at the semester.
So a lot of what I've been talking about and a couple of classes is just the sheer
shift and focus in some areas to the commercial industry and taking advantage
of commercial data because we have lots and lots of commercial satellite systems.
Up there now compared to five years ago, especially compared
to 20 years ago, you know, just this year, volume of satellites.
We're not just talking about GOI versus digital globe
versus I just forgot Francis.
Cause it's been bought so many times.
I forgot spot spot.
Yes.
You know, whenever we were talking the late nineties, early two thousands,
they were the only commercial.
Now we have so many from, you know, full blown traditional satellites to
multiple CubeSats swarm type things.
So yeah, we have a lot out there, but I think a different environment than
we were in before to take advantage of.
Sue: Well, yeah, and in terms of investment in new technology, adoption,
commercial, commercial entities are much more nimble and can throw, you know,
put money at it and get things launched.
So they can always be updating their products faster than a lot
of government systems can do that.
Barb: And this is still an augmentation to what they already use in house.
It's just a, like you said, an investment in commercial satellite imagery
and that those contracts will be.
Coming out and they're looking for things like shipping, construction,
energy, infrastructure a lot of support for Earth observation.
Frank: I think this isn't somewhat reminiscent for me of the sort of
GIS and society debate stuff where there was a lot of conversation
about GIS being government top down.
And it was because of the expense of it for the most part that GIS was expensive.
Computers were expensive, all that sort of stuff.
And as it became more broad, you know, that became less of a pressing I'm
gonna put myself out there and say less of a pressing problem, I think,
than it would have been 30 years ago or something like that, I kind of
felt like the intelligence industry.
Yeah.
Apparatus that's probably, I was trying to give us something, not apparatus.
The intelligence apparatus has expanded or is expanding a little bit behind the
scope because of the expensive satellites of getting that stuff out there and any
other remote sensing sort of things.
But I mean, you know, there's a lot of this technology that
is now more broadly available.
I was going to use the word democratize, but I'm not sure if that's true, but
it, you know, it's a little more broadly available and then they can start Picking
out these pieces and making it a little more cost effective, more spread out.
I'm not sure what I'm going for here, but it just reminds me of the GIS and society
sort of basis of debate, how that's changing even at this technological scale.
Sue: Well, I think the interesting thing at the end of kind of one of the articles
that, that we were looking at is the.
notation that sources have said that NGA envisions using Luno to kind of modify
their business model a little bit.
So rather than hire contractors, so the analysis of the data they get
from various sources, right, goes on and in facilities that they, you
know, manage through contractors.
They're talking about NGA buying analysis as a service.
And so, that's interesting, right?
It might be more efficient, you say, right, the, the, the, I think it
brings up one of the classic debates, right, of, of the geospatial world and
data and all those things, right, is that data is collected when there's a
reason to collect it, and you collect the data that Is for that reason.
And so that's interesting in that if you move to a model where you're just
getting the product from somebody, if they're a commercial entity, and
there's a lot of data out there that maybe would be nice to have, but
it's not going to be commercially viable for them to collect it.
I mean, I think it's interesting who will then derive, drive a sort
of what analysis is being done.
So not just data is collected, but also then what analysis is done on that.
So I think that's interesting.
Barb: Yeah, and I think that goes, I know Frank mentioned the GIS and
society debates, but I also know that there was that shift in the federal
government when they did shift from federal worker, you know, employees to
contractors and that was a big thing and there were a lot of debates about it.
And I feel like this is going to bring up another debate.
You're moving from contractors, which have, you know, still a lot of
discussions about using contractors versus using federal employees.
Like Sue said that that, you know, have a direct link to the data in the.
that you're doing to now this service driven.
Frank: And, you know, not only that, but they're not going to have
a customer of one or two, right?
So it's not just going to be for the NGA or any other, the three letter agencies.
There's going to be, they're going to need other customers to stay in business.
So the question becomes, how is this information going to be used?
And now this, how's this analysis going to be used in such a way that.
provides adequate information to the intelligence agencies, but
does not provide the same degree of information to the other customers.
Jesse: Well, and there's a lot here that, you know, NGA, we think of as
intelligence, but not everything that they touch is secret, top secret, et cetera.
Some of it's just.
Data because data is data.
And so, you know, doing things like agricultural forecasts or current
natural hazards response or those type of things through imagery is
something that I can see being part of the analysis of the service.
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
added products on top of their, their imagery that they're already collecting.
So it's just between You know, the big names who will definitely get part of
this, but also some of the startups that are doing really interesting
things with not the generative AI, but the traditional remote sensing
AI that we've been using for decades.
In terms of classification, things like that, but things that are getting
better through deep learning and those type of machine learning algorithms and
approaches as we get better and better training sets and larger and larger
training sets as we keep creating.
Frank: Yeah, I, I, you're, you're not wrong that a lot of the information
that they're, they're making intelligence decisions or inferences
about, or just Open source stuff or easily accessible stuff that just,
you know, if you know, it's going to rain tomorrow and this, that, and the
other thing, you can infer some things.
So it, but it would be interesting to, I'm wondering if it makes it easier
for counterintelligence to infer.
Anyway, I I'm probably teasing at things that.
Somebody much smarter than me has figured out already.
I do have concerns about that.
Is that if it's a commercial product, who else are they
selling to and to what degree?
Jesse: Everybody sell it to everybody's commercial product, but it's, you
also have the fact that you use the term open source, which you have to
be careful because open source and Intel is not the same thing as open
source for us because open source for Intel is things like radio and TV.
These are things I have to keep in mind this semester in this one hour, what
I can and can't say in a certain way.
Frank: Right.
Well, you know, I get that, but related.
Also launched a new national geo and operation center, which is going to be a
transit, it doesn't say where it's located at, which is not a big surprise but
it's a 24 seven operation center that's going to provide geospatial intelligence
to the nation's policy makers.
Now, this is one of those things that I think is great.
And also you didn't have one already, if I'm honest.
Sue: Well, actually they, they did.
They kind of note that they did Did have it, so, but it's different now?
Yeah.
Newer and cooler.
I
Frank: was like, don't we have this?
Sue: Yeah.
That's what I'm assuming.
Newer and cooler.
Jesse: The original one, the one that's been around since NEMA's days,
the pre NGA NEMA, is, was basically to watch and see what's going on.
This new one, quote, delivers distinct geospatial information to military
and national level decision makers.
So yeah.
So it's, it's.
Now they're there to be on call, not just to find that things are happening
and look at things, but to provide content briefings and things like that.
So it's, it's, it's the map.
It's formation information.
Yeah.
It's, it's the map.
Our map story maps.
Yeah.
It, it is yeah.
So many things to say about that.
Frank: Well, this is interesting, you know, I wonder what degree NGA
employs, you know, I know they have a lot of cartographers because they
have to make maps very quickly and they have to make, you know, as
accurately and clear as possible, but I'm wondering how many infographic
specialists and stuff like that.
They also use, I would imagine that would be a increasingly demanded product to go
alongside of, or maybe in place of a map.
Jesse: And I will tell you right now there is a document somewhere that tells
you exactly how you have to convey it in these infographics because the amount
of specificity there is about mapping in various documents through NGA and others
for Intel purposes is just amazing.
This is the symbol you will use for this every time that
you're, you're creating this.
Frank: I know somebody that used to do this for a living and they used arc map.
And so a big chunk of what they told me they did was automated for the most part.
So a lot of that stuff is just, you know, you didn't have a choice.
It was like, Oh, that's this.
Okay.
Well, we're going to go ahead and put that symbol in there for you.
So no, no avoiding any of that.
You couldn't get that creative with it whatsoever, but.
You know, you still found ways to be.
I was told that they found ways to be somewhat creative within
the constraints of clarity.
Jesse: And, you know, clarity is important, especially whenever
something is going on as quickly as some of these things do.
So not having the choice sometimes helps you get to the Story faster,
Barb: and it was noted that, you know, part of what they're doing is increasing
interoperability by bringing the functions together, which makes sense.
There's a shorter space between those functions.
Frank: So, the question is, it's the National Geo
operations center that in Gawk.
Is that how you say it in G O C N G O C.
You know, there's a non zero chance that people are just going to call the NGOC.
Sue: But they own the night, that's what their motto was apparently
at the end, they own the night.
Barb: I like that, but I was trying to figure out where
I'd heard it before somewhere.
Frank: Because the night belongs to lovers.
Sue: Stop it, because it was already in my head, so stop it.
Jesse: And so We head to our last news item of the week, and that is
the recent release of the National States Geographic Information Council,
who released their every other year geospatial maturity assessment.
And we did talk about that.
Various things around this last time it came out.
So I figured we should talk about it again.
Now curiously, there is one state that we're all very familiar with
on the podcast that's not on there.
Frank: Yeah.
That's because the reason for that, and I'm kind of curious eyeballing, it looks
like to me there's what I think was five states or so that aren't there if I'm,
Sue: I think it was five.
Yeah.
Frank: Yeah.
It looks like it.
So you've got the states aren't, there are.
What, New Hampshire, Georgia, South Dakota, Nevada, and West Virginia.
And I can only speak for West Virginia.
We know exactly what happened there.
GIS state coordinator retires.
Letter gets sent by NSGIC to the state coordinator.
Everyone is letting his mail pile up wherever the heck it piles up.
It takes a few weeks, months, months, I think it was months for the new
coordinator to get interviewed and hired and get on board and all
that sort of stuff like that goes through looking through the mail and
says, Oh, they were asking for this X number of weeks or months ago.
Too late now.
So, you know, that was just one of those weird timing, unfortunate timing
things where the, the, the natural person in group to do it wasn't there.
In place within the state.
I'm curious if anything like that happened to any of the other states, or if they
just consciously didn't take part, or they didn't know who to send it to.
Jesse: Any of those are possible.
You know, there's, there's different things to talk about.
The grade range is, is one that it ranged from A's to D's and there
was one A, multiple A minuses.
There was one D no C minuses.
Just jump straight to C.
Oh wait, no.
Okay.
There are no C's, just C pluses and C minuses.
But most states were between A and B minus.
And that, that kind of tracks.
I think it's a little inflated.
Kind of like my grades and my classes are.
Because it's, it's one of those that if you turned in the homework,
you got part of the grade.
So, you know, it is probably a little inflated from where we, Really should
think about what we're looking at for maturity, but I don't know.
What are some of the things we want to talk about in terms of either
details, methods, things they look at, or the general grades?
Barb: I was gonna say what's interesting is what they've added for this
report versus, you know, what was in it the last time and then what's
not being graded but is in there.
So hydrography is in there, but it's not being graded because of
the new initiatives initiative.
So, you know, I think that's.
And they do have a dashboard.
So you can download the report or you can use the dashboard to look at information,
and they have all the different areas that are covered in the grading system.
Jesse: And you can also go to the report card.
So the report card has state led themes of address.
Ca, ca, ca.
There we go.
Cadastral data.
There we go.
That makes me happier.
Elevation.
Orthoimagery leaf off, transportation, next generation 911, then the federal led
themes of geodetic controlled, government units, and orthraimetry leaf on.
So, of course, leaf on is part of the FSA, Farm Service Agency
slash USDA data collection.
So, every state should have Access to orthometry on, there's a kind of
side note on that one for what was it?
Arizona?
Frank: Well, it's, it's kind of interesting.
Well, yeah.
I mean, how much leaf do they have, but it's kind of interesting because really
what they're grading on is what, how much it is available to the, you know,
out there, and I'm assuming that's.
By the state, which seems a little weird to me.
I know West Virginia does publish the nape imagery But I think it
isn't it available on what data.
gov or someplace like that also or yeah You know, you can just
download it from there directly So it was a little unusual to me that
they actually graded that at all.
Barb: Well, that's a big part of What their mission is haven't worked with
this data before in a report that you know It is to make sure that it's
it's not They're inaccessible and, and usable by the groups in the state that,
and states and regions that need it.
Jesse: Oh, I forgot there, there was another section of
coordination that was by itself.
Frank: Yeah.
So I mean, big chunk of this is data availability, but I do do like that.
They look at things like coordination, you know, at how you're working
as a, as a unit within the state, which is interesting.
Something I thought was fascinating.
Is that 23 states have a G.
I.
O.
which is a relatively I don't I'm not.
I don't think I've run into many G.
I.
O.
s in my wonderings about which would be geographic information officer.
Sue: Well, I mean, I think overall, like certain states You know, obviously
have some way to go with a lot of these things, but I think overall that
trend, right, increasing recognition of the importance of it and the real
effort and dedication as several of the states gave responses to their grades.
And, you know, 1 of the things you talked about in some of those where
it said, well, you know, you're talking about scarce resources, a
lot of cases, but resources are being dedicated to geospatial data and.
keeping it up to date and expanding what you don't have and stuff.
So I think that that's a positive.
And, and so I think that the majority of States getting pretty decent grades is,
is evidence that we're making strides.
Jesse: Yeah.
I mean, if we compare it to the year 2000, you know, where we had maybe a
quarter of the States had GIS at this kind of level, it's very different.
Barb: Yeah.
They're, they're talking, especially with The NG911 that there are only
four states that reported no funding, which is down from 10, two years ago.
So I think that, you know, while there are still challenges that,
you know, that awareness is growing.
And I think that the NSGIC report is a great tool to raise awareness.
It's something where there aren't really, you know, any bad grades.
You know, they explain how sometimes the grading, there are factors
beyond your control, but they're a good thing to use to show what
you've achieved in your state.
You know, to talk about it and to show, you know, here's what's going on.
It's almost like a third party endorsement, a federal
endorsement of all the efforts.
that are being made in the geospatial community in the states.
Sue: I think that's true, and to recognize still, you know, some challenges,
I mean, and when you look at these data sets, all of them are complex,
expensive, right, rapid, and some places, especially states that, you know,
are seeing a lot of development and a lot of change, right, there are also
data sets that have to be frequently updated in order to truly be useful.
And that's expensive to do.
So the fact that as many states can, you know, I was surprised in the state with
themes, for example, of elevation, I was so surprised that a lot of states actually
did pretty good on that as an example.
Jesse: It's weird because you know, the three DEP program, you kind of expect.
So I was surprised that wasn't under federal led themes, but a lot of the
data is coming from the state level and those states at the coast get a lot more
support because of Noah and the LIDAR.
process compared to some of the interior states, but, you know,
there's a lot of other work that goes on in those areas that hopefully help
support them in their acquisition.
Frank: Well, you know, I, I think that there's some confusion in the
way those report present some of this information of, I really think there
should be part of this is what state efforts are Exist as a, as distinctly
separate from the federal efforts.
And the reason I say that is because I feel like with a lot of these base level,
these framework layers, like elevation, like leaf on imagery, all that sort of
stuff, I kind of feel like that it would highlight fairly quickly to states and
to the federal government, how critical.
Federal funding and federal efforts on these late data layers are to
even existing at all, and that's somewhat implicit in all of these,
but I really wish it would be more explicit to say, okay, let's grade
this as a state level endeavor, as opposed to a federal state partnership.
And I'm wondering how these scores would change if we did that.
Well, I mean, elevation is a great example, right?
Absent three depth, you know, how many states would have.
Elevation at a level, no pun intended, at a level that.
You know, you would consider acceptable, I guess would be the term I would use,
Jesse: South Carolina on how can we be an F for a federal lead theme?
Never mind.
For elevation data, we get an A-, but so much of that is dependent on
Noah's coastal program, which, you know, has been used to basically
collect The state in many ways.
So there you have that example of, it's a state led theme, but it is completely
on the back of a lot of data that's coming from, you know, other resources.
Frank: And, and there's, there's nuances here that make it hard to get that
ABC stuff that I think is important.
So let's look at South Carolina again on elevation.
The question is please describe in numbers and scope how the GIS
community and others in your state have leveraged LIDAR elevation data.
In support of a variety of disciplines, the answer given
was a LIDAR bill was passed.
However, it is unfunded legislation.
While we have business needs for statewide elevation data, the most recent was two
three state collected in 2020 at QL two.
So that unfunded legislation is it, you know, how do you, how do you grade that?
You've got legislation, but there's no money behind it.
So.
Is, you know, is it useful at all?
They even have the legislation at that level or at all.
Barb: I think in some ways, when I read the report, I think of it is
it's being pure reviewed pure graded.
But I mean, like, you know, pure grading.
It's people that know what you do that.
They're going through and evaluating and you see that sometimes in their,
you know, responses and evaluation.
And 1 of these is, you know, for transportation That they did acknowledge
that 1 of the reasons why transportation grades have gone down is actually that
the questions they're asking or more again, more nuanced and harder, you
know, their expectations are more.
Since the, the past 2 other times grading cycles, so I thought you do have to read
the fine print to see how the scores are are being done to get a better idea of
than just looking at the grade itself.
Because I think it sometimes tells you what's going on in your state
more than just did we do good?
No, if there's a problem, why is it there?
Sue: Well, I agree.
And to follow up with that too, it, it also reflects the, the change, right?
So the standard moves forward as, you know, you reach maturity, right?
The expectation that you're going to be at a certain level, that level is
going to get higher every time it's time to, you know, do an assessment.
So those who are behind potentially could fall further behind.
And if you just kind of rest on your, you know, you did really well like for
a while and got a bunch of stuff done, but if you don't keep up, then now you
yourself are going to fall behind too.
So, updating kind of the standards and the questions I think is actually
a good thing because it reflects, you know, where we're going, like what's
that, you know, expectation, right?
And the expectation for trends transportation, right?
To get the highest grade, you had to have, I think, 100 percent of your street
center lines or something like that.
But that's it.
Those are data sets have been around for a long time and
that's kind of an expectation.
Unless you, and some states pointed out, you know, we have unique
conditions where we might have different jurisdictions or things like that
going on, but that's also a way to say, right, this is now the standard.
So, yes, maybe it's different, but I think, but again, I think
that that's actually a good thing.
Frank: So I'm going to talk about the elections one, considering we
in the United States, we have a huge election that's coming up in November.
There's some interesting, to my mind, they appear to be contradictions
on the surface of, of it.
So broadly speaking, what it says is that 32 of the 46 states or 47 states
answered no to the question that does your office have a formal relationship.
With your state elections director and they have defined what they
mean by foreign relationship and it's just administrative rules,
statute, whatever it may be from our, our agreement of services.
So the majority of them don't have a formal relationship with your elections.
And if you're unfamiliar with elections, it is incredibly geographic
and geospatial in, in nature because it comes from usually precinct
boundaries are usually the atomic unit.
Well, Arguably census boundaries, but certainly starting with precincts and
it sort of bubbles itself up to who gets to vote where, and that's how
you make your legislative districts.
And that has everything to do with who represents you in that
particular district, as we all know, with the modified very
unit problem, gerrymandering, all that sort of stuff like that.
So it's interesting that the overwhelming majority of, you know,
state coordinators and state GIOs don't have a formal relationship
with their state election director.
However, whenever you go to.
The precincts boundaries tab.
I'm looking at the dashboard, by the way.
That's how I'm looking at this stuff.
The question is, does your state manager have easy access to accurate current
statewide voting precinct boundary layer?
And.
Almost half said yes.
So that says to me that either a, the, the layer is being produced by maybe
a third party or it's housed at the state elections, but they don't really
necessarily know anything about it or B they've got their own geospatial person
in house that is doing something similar, but there's no form of relationship there,
which seems really, I was, I was going to say weird, but maybe it's not weird.
Seems really unproductive or I think it would be a stronger Election system,
if they were more tightly related, maybe not coupled, but related.
I wanted to raise it because I wanted to highlight that as a
really interesting example of how you can tear into this report and
start seeing a little more nuances.
If you start looking at the individual details.
Even, you know, in looking, for example, at elections.
So this, there's a lot of great stuff here is what I'm trying to say.
Sue: So Frank noted that he was using the dashboard.
If you go to the report, there's a little button there's actually a
very nicely done mapping dashboard of the results of the report where
you can see all the different themes.
And there's a couple of them where I wished in the subtabs that they would
have kind of done individual questions, but that's, that's a minor thing.
But, but anyway, you can actually go instead of just looking at the, the text
of the report, you can actually see it mapped out in, in a nice little dashboard.
So I just wanted to, to make a note of that.
And the, the link is in the summary page in the show notes, you'll find a button
that just says, go to the dashboard.
Barb: And I really liked the, the NSGIC credo, which is build one, share often.
And I think that's a lot of what.
You see, you know, going on, and this is the 3rd report that, you
know, states are working towards that, which is very commendable.
It's a lot being done.
As we said, this is a maturity assessment and it really does show
the, the geospatial, you know, maturity that's going on in states.
We often talk about the maturity in industry, but this is the maturity
within, within the state level government,
Frank: though, I said that once again, I would like to highlight that more details
for anyone in district listening would be.
Really amazing.
So I'm looking at the addresses.
And the question is, does your state have a program for developing or maintaining an
authoritative statewide address database and overwhelming said yes, which is
great, but I happen to know in 1 state.
That's not in the survey that it exists.
So you could say yes, but I wouldn't necessarily the inference
from that is that it's a very widely acceptable accessible.
Easy process and and so I kind of feel like a little more devil in
the details would be awfully nice
Jesse: and so if you're interested in how your state or any state did in this geeks
geospatial maturity assessment for 2023.
As we wait for the next one in 2025, head over to the link in the show notes,
onto the events corner, as always, we encourage you to check out these events
and others in your neighborhood, in your neighborhood, in your neighborhood,
Sue: or far away, if you like traveling, but first up is the
geospatial world forum, which will be May 13th through the 16th in
lovely Rotterdam in the Netherlands,
Frank: June 11th through the 14th in Las Vegas, you can go to the ISPRS
technical commission to symposium.
Jesse: Focused on photogrammetry.
Barb: So NACIS is taking place October 16th through 19th in Tacoma, Washington,
Jesse: Washington, the North American Cartographic Information Society.
Of course, if you'd like us to add your event to the podcast, send us
an email to podcast at very spatial.
com.
Sue: If you'd like to reach us individually, I can be
reached at Sue at very spatial.
com.
Barb: I can be reached at Barb at VerySpatial.
com.
Frank: You can reach me at Frank at VerySpatial.
com, or you can follow me on all the social medias at Noja Par, except for
that one that I don't go to anymore.
Jesse: And I'm available at Kind of Spatial, and of course, if you'd
like to find any of our contact information, head over to VerySpatial.
com slash contacts.
Frank: As always,
Barb: we're the folks from very spatial.
Jesse: Thanks for listening, and
Sue: we'll see you in a couple weeks.
Music: Why?
So,
show me the, show me the way home I can't go, can't go the way I know I'm looking
for, looking for the light Show me the way home Show me the way home Show me the way
Best to walk the line But my memories just don't memorize Blame it on a bad design
Show me that, show me that way, go, can't go the way I know, I've been
looking for, I've been looking for the light, show me that, show me that way.
Show me the way home Show me the way Tell me all my love Seems to be Tell me all
my love Just wondering I'm just wondering
Show me the, show me the way home Go the way I know Only people lie Home
Show me the way home Show me the
way