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Electric Energy T&D - Index

Electric Energy T&D - EE Magazine March / April 2009 - Index

Dangermond: GIS is already deeply
entrenched in both the business and
societal dimensions of everyday life. It is
used extensively in planning and managing
infrastructure, disaster response and
economic development as well as increasing
efficiency; advancing science, conserving
nature and the environment; improving
human health; and enhancing security – just
to name a few of the most prominent ones.
The creation of a National GIS would change
everything from how we reason about national
issues to how we organize, communicate and
share information. It would also encourage
and enable working, acting and reacting
to business challenges in a systematic and
scientific way. Moreover, a National GIS
would provide a uniform foundation for
developing more holistic, analytical and
quantitative approaches to problem-solving
resulting in visual solution sets that can be
easily understood and interpreted by a much
broader set of users.
EET&D: That all sounds quite interesting,
but can you offer some specific examples of
how and where it might be used?
Meehan: The potential applications are
endless, but traditional GIS applications such
as land parcels, wildlife habitats, topographic
data, satellite and photogrammetric imagery
and elevation data would probably be among
the first to derive benefits almost immediately.
Just having all of those kinds of information
in one place would yield huge economies of
scale and efficiency at substantially all levels
of the public and private sectors. And building
a National GIS would immediately stimulate
economic activity, very quickly creating more
than 4,000 high-tech and support jobs. It
would also provide an invaluable information
resource for getting stimulus infrastructure
projects up and running much faster than
might otherwise be possible.
EET&D: Job creation is, of course, a very
important issue these days. Could you be
more specific about the kinds of jobs you see
coming out of this effort?
Meehan: Yes. We think that besides 500
senior-level GIS positions, something on the
order of ,500 geospatial analysts and 5,000
data collection and mapping technicians
would be needed. We would also see the
creation of some 16,000 support positions
as the initiative moves forward.
EET&D: So what is needed to put such a
capability in place?
Dangermond: Clearly, the implementation
of such an ambitious undertaking will require
much more than just data and technology.
Vision and leadership on several levels will
be paramount to success as will the need for
getting the right people into the right places
early in the process. From a cost standpoint,
we’re looking at less than $1.5 billion, which
by today’s standards, is actually a fairly
modest figure.
EET&D: How long would you expect it to
take to put a National GIS in place?
March-April 2009 Issue I
The 2009 Automation/IT Leadership Series
Dangermond: That really depends in
part on how we approach the task from an
organizational leadership standpoint. The
Secretary of the Interior – the lead agency for
geospatial is currently leading this initiative,
but another alternative would be the creation
of a national GIS trust fund. It would be
inappropriate to try to put a timeline out
there until that path is determined since it
would almost certainly be wrong.
EET&D: Any final comments on how this
might all play out from this point forward?
Dangermond: Clearly we’re at a
crossroads on multiple levels at this point
in our history. We’ll need to bring together
every technological tool at our disposal if
we’re going to turn the corner and return to
prosperity sooner rather than later. A National
GIS is clearly one of those technological tools
that has the potential to expedite that process
and significantly improve the outcomes.
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