Appendix D. Glossary of Abbreviations and Terms — Federal Geographic Data Committee

ACWI	Advisory Committee on Water Information
AIP	Architecture Implementation Pilot
ANSI	American National Standards Institute
API	Application Programming Interface
ATWG	Architecture and Technology Working Group
BLM	Bureau of Land Management
CAP	Cooperative Agreements Program
CKAN	Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network
CIO	Chief Information Officer
CSDGM	Content Standard for Digital Geospatial Metadata
CSW	Catalog Service for the Web
Data-CORE	Data Collection of Open Resources for Everyone
DHS	U.S. Department of Homeland Security
DOI	U.S. Department of the Interior
DOQQ	Digital Orthophoto Quarter Quadrangle
EPA	U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
EROS	Earth Resources Observation and Science Center
ESA	Ecological Society of America
FedRAMP	Federal Risk and Authorization Managment Program
FGDC	Federal Geographic Data Committee
FSA	Farm Service Agency
FWS	U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
GAO	Government Accountability Office
GEO	Group on Earth Observations
GeoCloud	Geospatial Cloud
GEOSS	Global Earth Observation System of Systems
GIS	Geographic Information System
GML	Geography Markup Language
GPS	Global Positioning System
GSA	General Services Administration
GSDI	Global Spatial Data Infrastructure
GWG	Geospatial Intelligence Standards Working Group
GWML	Ground Water Markup Language
ICSU CODATA	International Council for Science’s Committee on Data for Science and Technology
IENC	Inland Electronic Navigation Charts
ifsar	interferometric synthetic aperture radar
INCITS	International Committee for Information Technology Standards
INSPIRE	Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community
ISO	International Organization for Standardization
IT	Information Technology
lidar	light detection and ranging
LU/LC	Land Use/Land Cover
MWG	Metadata Working Group
NAIP	National Agriculture Imagery Program
NASA	National Aeronautics and Space Administration
NCGMP	National Cooperative Geologic Mapping Program
NDOP	National Digital Orthophoto Program
NED	National Elevation Dataset
NGA	National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
NGAC	National Geospatial Advisory Committee
NGDA	National Geospatial Data Asset
NHD	National Hydrography Dataset
NOAA	National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
NPS	National Park Service
NRCS	Natural Resources Conservation Service
NSDI	National Spatial Data Infrastructure
NVC	National Vegetation Classification
NWI	National Wetlands Inventory
O&M	Observations and Measurements
OGC	Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc.
OMB	Office of Managment and Budget
OSTP	Office of Science and Technology Policy
OWS	Open Web Services
PLSS	Public Land Survey System
ROI	Return on Investment
SAOGI	Senior Agency Official for Geospatial Information
SDI	Spatial Data Infrastructure
SSWD	Subcommittee on Spatial Water Data
3D	Three-dimensional
3DEP	Three-dimensional Elevation Program
UHDWG	Users/Historical Data Working Group
USDA	U.S. Department of Agriculture
USFS	U.S. Forest Service
USGEO	U.S. Group on Earth Observations
USGS	U.S. Geological Survey
WaterML	Water Markup Language
WBD	Watershed Boundary Dataset
WCS	Wetlands Classification Standard
WFS	Web Feature Service
WMS	Web Mapping Service
XML	Extensible Markup Language

Success Story
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Capitalizing on Joint Agency Coordination
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Challenge: Since the inception of The National Map, roads data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing (TIGER) system have been an important component. The data are produced as part of the decennial Census program and are published in the public domain. In 2009, when the USGS began producing US Topo maps from The National Map data, TIGER was expected to be the source for roads features. However, initial investigations demonstrated that significant editing would be required. Consequently, the USGS purchased a license to use commercial roads data on US Topo maps and in The National Map viewer until such time that a suitable national, public domain dataset could be found. Since that time the Census Bureau has initiated several programs to improve the accuracy of the TIGER roads data, and with the USGS has forged a partnership to make TIGER data available via The National Map.

Action: In 2011, the Census Bureau and the USGS commissioned an interagency team to evaluate the use of TIGER as the primary source for roads data in The National Map. The goal of the group was to articulate requirements that support the USGS’ use of TIGER data as the roads layer for The National Map and to evaluate TIGER against these requirements.

Result: The interagency team documented requirements for representation and attribution of roads features for both TIGER data and The National Map. While some minor differences continue, the team found a significant amount of commonality in the requirements, especially for the most critical features: interstate highways and local roads.

The team evaluated how well the Census Bureau’s 2012 TIGER/Line^® data met the requirements of The National Map. The findings showed that the quality of TIGER data has significantly improved since 2009, and subsequent update operations including the Census Bureau’s Geographic Support Services Initiative (GSS-I) activities will continue to improve the data. As a result, USGS and Census Bureau management accepted the team’s recommendation that TIGER data be adopted as the roads source for The National Map. A series of interagency teams have been formed to address implementation issues and a Memorandum of Understanding is being developed to document the roles and responsibilities of a long-term joint effort to use TIGER roads data in The National Map, including the US Topo maps.

This joint agency coordination effort capitalizes on the return on Federal investment in geospatial data by reducing costs and ensuring that users of The National Map have access to public domain data.

Appendix D