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Streamlining Environmental and Planning Processes (NCRST - SEPP)

NCRST - SEPP Research: Data Resources & Applications

For the I-69 SIU 9 project, a broad-reaching data collection activity in a central part of the project. This effort will comprise collection of best available data, data sets from statewide data acquisitions, data from federal and state sources as well as data from local, county, and MPO sources. A central aspect of this effort is identifying appropriate data types and demonstrating methods whereby spatial data may be of effective use to streamlining environmental and planning processes in transportation projects.

Effective Use of Data and Technologies: A core aspect of delivering meaningful results to practitioners from this project. GIS and remote sensing data can be complex and require advanced software for analysis and mapping. Aspects of effective use include the following areas:

  • Documenting practices for early collection, acquisition, documentation, and exchange of remote sensing and spatial information useful to transportation corridor planning and EIS processes. Documenting the acquisition of multi-source, multi-scale data from federal, state, and local sources has resulted in compilation of a white paper on this topic as well as a data dictionary that documents CRS&SI data sets that were used on the project and are of practical use in similar projects.

  • Investigating and documenting new technologies for spatial data delivery and information content exchange. Of note, a new technology of significant interest to the Advisory Panel to be highlighted in this project is the GeoPDF. A study area basemap has been prepared in GeoPDF format for download. Users should download the GeoPDF Toolbar that "turns Adobe Reader into a powerful geospatial application that gives users the ability to view, manipulate and update mapping data while leveraging Adobe collaboration capabilities to share information with others in the field and at home base." The plug-in is free and enables rich exchange of data, interim products, effective feedback/markup, and collaborative results. For this project, the use and distribution of GeoPDFs will provide a set of standard products to enable sharing of data, visualization, alternatives comparison, and evaluation of results.

Project Data Documents

Master Data Dictionary for Project
The compilation of multi-source, multi-scale data for the project required investigating sources of federal, state, and local data sources. Integrating these data and evaluating which data sets are appropriate for varying purposes require thorough evaluation and documentation of data sources. The task of compiling a data collection of this sort requires approaches that are different than standard data dictionary compilation because the degree of data documentation varies tremendously from federal data which are create for wide distribution and well documented to local data which are created for local and internal use and are frequently not well documented nor are metadata requirements well established for local data sets.
<Abstract> <Data Dictionary Document>

Effective Use of Spatial Data
Major exchanges of data with MPO and County GIS departments provided extensive high quality local data for identification of future development planning, higth resolution image data, and local zoning. Statewide data sets were available for high-resolution orthophotography and for GIS layers such as municipal boundaries, hydrology, soils, street centerlines, and others. Federal data were extremely useful for orthophotography for the entire study area as provided by USDA NAIP and USGS DOQQ data. Other useful federal data inlcuded National Hydrography Data (NHD), National Elevation Data (NED), Census TIGER Data, and many other data sets documented in the data dictionary.
Abstracts, presentations, draft white papers and articles are in preparation.

Commercial Data Partners & Providers
Commercial sources of data used in the project were limited. No remotels sensed data were budgetd or acquired with project funding for the I-69 SIU 9 research project activity.

Spatial Data Resources
Spatially registered EIS map plates.
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