NSGIC Recap
The National States Geographic Information Council (NSGIC) meets twice a year to coordinate geospatial leadership and advance best practices across the discipline. Each state is invited (48 currently participate) and NSGIC meetings provide an excellent opportunity to learn from our peers, show off the State of Indiana’s successes, and contribute to the project of a National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI), among other topics.
This year at NSGIC we learned a lot, including the importance of data quality for NextGen 911 during widespread disaster (with compelling examples from North Carolina's response to Hurricane Helene), efficiency increases due to the use of artificial intelligence at the US Census Bureau, and about new datums and the 2022 update to the State Plane Coordinate System. We also heard from our peers across the country about some familiar themes, including the power and capability of the broader geospatial community and challenges like staffing and budgets.
The IGIO was very active in presenting at the NSGIC annual meeting this year. State GIO Marianne Cardwell was a participant on three panels, two focused on strategic plans, and one focused on addressing. Marianne’s commentary focused on our strategic plan successes, our current work to update our strategic plan, and the importance of our implementation plans and program roadmaps. These efforts have furthered our goal to be intentional in our efforts to serve the State of Indiana. Marianne also presented on a panel about addressing along with officials from the US Census Bureau and the US Department of Transportation, highlighting the role of the State’s Data Harvest program in providing data for the National Address Database, and how Indiana’s SEED grant program is helping to improve address data accuracy in our State.
Our office also presented on our longstanding Imagery & Elevation programs, focusing on the State’s efforts to make our raster data products from these programs align with Open Data Standards to be Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR). Shaun Scholer, our Imagery & Elevation Subject Matter Expert, presented with Associate Professor of Civil Engineering from Purdue University, Dr. Jinha Jung, on the various platforms and datasets available, including Purdue’s Digital Forestry lidar portal, and the Data2Science platform.
Matt Evans, our Data Harvest Subject Matter Expert, presented about the quality of our free Statewide Geocoder, which is very accurate when compared with commercial products. The State of Indiana Geocoder is built using data from Indiana’s Data Harvest Program using authoritative information provided by all of Indiana’s communities. Matt presented about the more than 2.7 million address locations that our analysis compared with ESRI’s world geocoder. While both geocoders performed well, neither was perfect, and the IGIO’s geocoder placed many more addresses on correct streets than ESRI’s geocoder did. Check out the full report about this analysis here.
NSGIC was a very useful experience for our team and provided a great opportunity to share and learn from our peers across the country.