National Research Council Calibrates Research for The National Map

This is an add-on to the news on the USGS GIScience report published in this blog. On 22 Jan, 2008 USGS issued a press release on the report.

The main points to be noted out pertaining to the report are:

• The National Map is being developed by the USGS as a trusted, nationally consistent geospatial framework to serve a broad range of uses by scientists, communities, government officials, and the public.
• To accelerate the incorporation of partner data into national databases, the NRC study calls for further research to advance automated integration, fusion, and generalization of data at widely varying scales, resolutions and qualities.
• The report also calls for new high priority research in user-centered design of Web map interfaces, re-invention of topographic maps in electronic form, and robust data characterization that conveys geographic context.

Another impressing point of the news report is the one of the recommendations of the report that the NRC study recommends additional research to transform The National Map database into a geographic knowledgebase. This long term effort would enable knowledge discovery and analysis to, in the words of the report, go "far beyond the typical mapping portal" to "deliver enormous power to The National Map application and lead to its clear differentiation from other web-based products.

The news release can be accessed over here