Surveying, Mapping and GIS

The National Geodetic Survey, in keeping with quite a few innovations and revelations to coincide with their 100th anniversary, has unveiled a copy of their 10-year plan, and are soliciting comment:

During the last year, NGS has spent considerable effort refining its mission, vision and strategy for the future. The result of this effort is the NGS 10 year plan. Because any plans for the future will affect the NGS stakeholders and the general public, NGS is releasing this plan in draft form for a public comment period lasting until March 31, 2007. NGS is interested in hearing all feedback on the proposed plan over the next few weeks. NGS will also discuss and take comments on the 10 year plan at the ACSM conference in St. Louis. This will take place during the first half (8:30 a.m. - Noon) of the "National Geodetic Survey and Partners" meeting on Sunday, March 11.

Please note that this document is in draft form. At this time NGS is seeking comments on the content of the plan. Once those comments have been received and incorporated into the plan the document will undergo a professional editorial review to address administrative (spelling, punctuation, etc.)
issues. Following the public comment period, NGS will consolidate all feedback and issue a final copy of the 10 year plan some time in April 2007.

Click here to download the draft of the NGS 10 year plan.
Click here to go to the comment template for providing feedback on the plan.Comments will be mailed to the NGS 10 year plan working group.

"...the gravimetric geoid used in defining the NSRS should have an absolute accuracy less than 1 centimeter anyplace at any time."

"NGS will publish all coordinates of defining points of the NSRS with an epoch tag and will furthermore publish velocities relative to that epoch-tagged set of coordinates."

"NGS will therefore publish all coordinates and velocities of NSRS defining points in both the most recent official U.S. Datums and the most recent realization of the International Terrestrial Reference Frame (ITRF). Furthermore, NGS will provide simple transformation tools between all historic and current datums and reference frames used by NGS, in 4 dimensions if possible."

and...

"NGS will validate local capacity for accurate positioning through direct interaction with a county geospatial representative and evaluation of that county’s access to the NSRS."

Thanks to John Halleck for pointing some of these out, to pique everyone's interest. Some very lofty goals indeed...