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Track: Federal Systems
Heidi Johnson
Strategic Environmental Assessment Division
N/ORCA1
1305 East-West Highway
Silver Spring, MD 20910
Telephone: 301-713-3000 x202
Fax: 301-713-4384
E-mail: heidi.johnson@noaa.gov
Peter Grose, W. Russell Perry, Nipa Parikh
Using GIS to Access National Ocean Service's Digital Data Products
Defining Issue: The National Ocean Service (NOS) within NOAA is one of the three primary federal mapping agencies responsible for mapping the coastal zone and national geodetic control. Historically, access to NOS data has been in traditional forms to traditional users (subject matter specialists) from separate sources. These data sets include many of the most important products generated by NOS, most of which are not readily available: photography from NOS coastal surveys, raster images of topographic sheets from coastal surveys, outlines of smooth sheets and availability of digital soundings from hydrographic surveys, images of raster nautical charts, Environmental Sensitivity Index maps, sites of geodetic control markers, and locations of tide gauges and water level measurements. There is an increasing need to provide NOS data to nonsubject matter specialists such as the coastal resource management community, state and local governments, and the general public. These important and growing user groups
have difficulty in locating and accessing NOS data because access services are fragmented and products are not in an immediately usable form. GIS Solution: The Strategic Environmental Assessment Division of the Office of Ocean Resources Conservation and Assessment developed a platform-independent application to provide digital one-stop access to NOS product data. This service is designed to locate and deliver products that answer questions and can be used immediately rather than data that must be subsequently processed by the user. Methodology: The Spatial Index and Map Finder application provides the user with an operational service for locating, understanding, determining availability, previewing, and accessing a wide variety of NOS generated digital data. Functions include: interactive spatial query to identify availability of data, access to descriptions and examples of data offerings, delivery of FGDC Clearinghouse Metadata (at the data theme level), spatial filters to view most recent data, and
hot links to available digital products such as raster images or data sheets. Software: This application was developed using ArcView Version 3.0 and Avenue. Data products and metadata reside within an Oracle database accessed through SQL. By summer of 1997, this project will be expanded to an Internet service through Visual Basic, MapObjects, and the Internet Mapping Service.
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