The Metropolitan Washington Council of Government’s CIO Committee’s Subcommittee for GIS has received a grant from the United States Department of Homeland Security for establishing the National Capital Region Geospatial Data Exchange (NCR GDX). Regional Chief Information Officers and Geographic Information System Managers have identified a need to produce, maintain and share a set of common operating data across the Maryland-Virginia-DC region.
The purpose of this project is to build a system and procedures that facilitate the secure, flexible and standardized sharing of critical mapped information by all National Capital Region (NCR) partner jurisdictions and agencies.
The primary goals of our project are to:
- Provide access to viewer-independent geospatial information for the NCR.
- Inventory available data and data gaps.
- Create a user interface, indexing service and work processes for sharing so states, local jurisdictions, and other NCR partners will be able to submit their geospatial data.
- Promote the use of live, web services as a means to discover and consume geospatial data.
- Become a trusted source of data for existing situational awareness applications (Google DC, INDEX, ISAVE, VIPER, WebEOC, and others).
- Develop tools within COTS GIS packages for GIS analysts to quickly publish their trade craft to the region.
- Allow all of the above to be done securely within parameters established by data providers.
The GIS managers have selected the KCI Associates of DC / PhotoScience joint venture team, with the team including Touchstone Consulting Group and TechGlobal, Inc. The Team brings us a working software product called Virtual USA that was created by the Department of Homeland Security’s Command, Control, and Interoperability Division. Virtual USA is open source software that is being utilized in several regions of the country to provide a cost-effective capability for securely and easily sharing user published geospatial data across jurisdictional boundaries and between all levels of government. The Virtual USA open source platform will be customized for the National Capital Region.
Visit the National Capital Region Geospatial Data Exchange (NCR GDX) for additional information.