National Elevation Dataset (NED) Interim Delivery Mechanism--Phase One

Author: Michael W. Steuck
Organization: EROS Data Center

EROS Data Center
Sioux Falls, SD 57198
USA

Phone: 605-594-6539
Fax: 605-594-2592
steuck@edcmail.cr.usgs.gov

Since the completion of the National Elevation Dataset (NED), an interim delivery mechanism has been
designed to produce on-demand seamless NED products. The existing capability consists of a series of manually initiated ArcInfo AMLs. The geographic coordinates of a minimum bounding box are used to clip the NED data and also the spatial metadata polygon coverage. This data is then placed on media and shipped in the desired format. Format options include Gridfloat, a floating point binary file; band interleaved by line (BIL), an integer binary data file, and ARCGRID, an ArcInfo proprietary format. The shipping media for NED is CD-R. For each area processed, a readme text file is generated and written to the data directory, describing the data and metadata with format-specific and data location information.

Processes currently under development are FTP delivery access and automated start-up text files for customer order and order handling of large amounts of data. For large orders, automatic subdivision of data to fit on the media will be provided. With the development of ArcIMS, the goal is to completely automate the ordering and generating processes.