Life West of the Border:
GIS Clearinghouse
Activities in Illinois
or…
Serving Gourmet Data
on a Fast Food Budget
Rob Krumm
Illinois State Geological Survey
krumm@isgs.uiuc.edu
Who Let This Guy In?
• Why am I here, resident of the Land of Lincoln,
attending the Indiana GIS Meeting?
• History of working with staff members from the
Indiana Geological Survey
• Interested in GIS program activities in many states
• Hoping to convince some of you to attend a meeting
of the Illinois GIS Association
• Jill twisted my arm
• Shapiro’s Deli
Presentation Outline
• Information about the ISGS
• Information about the Illinois Natural Resources
Geospatial Data Clearinghouse
• A recent project – historical aerial photography
• What’s in store – future directions
Illinois State Geological Survey
• Founded in 1905 – located in Champaign, IL
• A research and service agency – affiliated with
University of Illinois – about 200 staff members
• Emphasis on environmental concerns & mineral
resources
• Human interaction with near-surface geology
e.g., waste disposal, groundwater, construction
materials, geologic hazards & much more
• Historic and continued interest in mineral resources –
oil & gas, coal, sand & gravel, limestone
• Provide information - publications, maps, GIS data
GIS data, GIS data, run field trips, outreach efforts
• Visit us on the web -- www.isgs.uiuc.edu
Organizational Challenges
• Our work needs to be driven by societal relevance
and as such, focus of work changes
• Geologic/topographic/hydrologic information needs
to be integrated with other information -- land use
planning, habitat analysis, wetland restoration,
engineering data, etc.
• In a relatively short time, field activities & map
production have transitioned from manual
techniques to the digital environment – GIS, GPS,
field-based computing, digital databases, desktop
publishing, the web
Organizational Challenges
• Some of our clients expect to find everything they need on the
web, and they want it now (or yesterday)
• Evolution of GIS use within the organization
• Early on, we rode the crest of the GIS wave – a relatively
small group of users generated some exciting results
• As the user community expanded, so has the software
offering – many staff are interested in many applications
• A continued, internal need for user education, training, the
development of standards (getting people to pay attention
to the standards, etc.)
• Coordination of efforts and management of digital data
resources
• More data on-line means a huge impact on network
computing, the continued need for more disk space, robust
servers, increased demands on back-ups, PC & server
upgrades, etc.
Projects & Applications
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Coal resources & mined areas
Oil & gas development maps
Carbon sequestration
Regional seismicity & earthquake hazards
Aquifer mapping, groundwater protection
Geologic quads - 1:24,000
Map production
Providing digital databases as deliverables
GIS Data Clearinghouse & more
Illinois Clearinghouse
www.isgs.uiuc.edu/nsdihome
Clearinghouse Milestones
• Illinois NSDI node registered July 1, 1997
• Initial data catalog complete May, 1998
• Statewide and County ArcInfo export files
• USGS DRG data access complete Dec., 1999
• USGS DOQ data access complete Feb., 2002
• Historic Aerial Photo Archive on-line
Aug., 2003
• Clearinghouse development is driven by
project-specific contract funding
Illinois Clearinghouse
Milestones
• Over 1 Terabyte of data downloaded by the
5-year anniversary on July 1, 2002
• For Jan. 1 through Dec. 31, 2004
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average of 311 unique visitors per day
average of 2,970 page views per day
average of 500 DOQs downloaded per day
average of 10.5 GB of data downloaded per day
• More than 556,000 users since July ’97
Illinois Clearinghouse
Milestones
• DOQ Image Service named Geography Network
3rd Place Winner, July 2001
ESRI & National Geographic
• Illinois named 2001 Digital State Survey
2nd Place Winner in GIS/Transport. category
Center for Digital Gov’t
• 2002 Digital State Survey – tied for 1st Place
with Arizona in GIS/Transport. Category
• Clearinghouse favorably cited in multiple
press releases from Governor’s office
(former Gov. Ryan…)
Historical Aerial
Photography Project
• The oldest statewide historical aerial photography
for Illinois was acquired 1936 to 1941
• Film negatives were destroyed by the National
Archives in the 1980s
• The overall collection consists of about 30,000
photographic paper prints
• A fabulous collection!
• Project was initiated to scan the photos, convert to
images and provide on-line access
• A keen interest to preserve this collection
Historical Aerial
Photography Project
• Photography was acquired by county
• Prints are organized by flight line, film
roll number, and exposure number
• On-line file access for 45 counties
• Don Luman (Mr. Remote Sensing), Dee
Lund, Sheena Beaverson & Robert
White worked on this project
• Additional funding is required to
complete the remainder of the state
Historical Aerial
Photography Project
• Access Illinois Historical Aerial Photography by
Interactive Map
• Digital versions of ILHAP photographic paper prints
are available by county as MrSID compressed files,
which can be saved to your desktop
• The .sid files may be viewed either with a Web
browser, after the installation of a plug-in, or an
image viewer
• LizardTech (MrSID Plug-Ins & Viewers) available
free of charge
Historical Aerial
Photography Project
• Provided on-line - Instructions for downloading
Historical Aerial Photography in MrSID format;
a screen shot of the Interactive Mapping Web
Interface; and descriptions of the navigational
tools of the Interactive Mapping Web Interface
• Web browser must have Frames and JavaScript
enabled
• Best viewed using Internet Explorer
HAP – Project Areas
Historic Aerial
Photography:
45 Counties
ArcIMS interface
Illinois Clearinghouse
HAP Project
• Historic aerial photographs provide a
‘snapshot in time’ reference for the landscape
of Illinois in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s
• Photos can be compared to newer maps,
aerial photography or satellite imagery to
address issues such as landscape change,
urban sprawl, agricultural practices,
vegetation change, historic landuse patterns
Illinois Clearinghouse
• The Clearinghouse didn’t happen overnight
• Perhaps the most visible result of a 20-year
investment in GIS technology by ISGS, Illinois
Natural History Survey, Illinois State Water Survey,
Illinois State Museum & others
• Many people contributed to the data sets that are
on-line – present and past employees of the state
scientific surveys and other agencies
• Also, map-driven access via ArcIMS
• ILOIL application – oil & gas well data
• ILWATER – access to water wells & other data
• These applications are very popular and taxing our
existing infrastructure as well
Illinois Clearinghouse
What’s in Store?
• 2005 statewide DOQ update
• A follow up to a similar effort based on
’98-’99 photography
• The ’98-’99 project helped put the Illinois
Clearinghouse on the map
• The first time that DOQs for the state
were available on-line
2005 DOQ Update
• So far, a lot of enthusiasm for the 2005
DOQ program, just very little funding
for distribution
• The planes are in the air!
• A huge hurdle in front of us
• State budget is in a world of hurt
• Lack of stable funding for data
acquisition, GIS program coordination
2005 DOQ Update
• A huge effort with multiple data products
• ’98 – 99 product was 1 m resolution/b&w
for the entire state
• ’05 products to include natural color imagery
in the six-county Chicago urban area (1.0
ft.) and b&w imagery for remainder of the
state (0.5m)
• A tremendous amount of data
• An expectation that the data will be
available on-line
2005 DOQ Update
• Funding needed to support staff, application
development, server, disk storage, etc. – estimated
costs are about $400,000 (over 2.5 years)
• A tremendous challenge
• Response: It can’t possibly cost that much.
• ’98-’99 DOQ effort required $280,000
• Reminder: project staff are supported by contracts and
grants. No long-term funding from the State of Illinois.
• A continuous education process to inform people about
the level of effort & costs involved
• For ’05 cost of data acquisition ($2,204,000) will be
less than the costs of the ’98-’99 effort
• Shouldn’t data distribution costs also be less?
• Nice web applications look easy, so they must be easy
to design, get the data on-line, etc
Future Efforts
Expand The Data Catalog
• Making more data readily available is a great goal;
what are some of the issues?
• Long-term funding is needed to address future
data purchases
• Age of data sets is a real concern
• Emphasis on priority data sets – talking with users,
determining what’s needed, what datasets will
serve the needs of the user community?
• Elevation data – LIDAR
• Updated roads data
• Updated floodplain/flood hazard maps
• Maps concerning groundwater resources
Thank You
Consider a road-trip to attend meetings of the
Illinois GIS Association - www.ilgisa.org
Next Meeting – April 21 & 22 in Springfield, IL
-- Mapquest - 3 hrs. 18 min. -- 211.35 miles,
Indianapolis to Springfield
Visit the Illinois Clearinghouse at
www.isgs.uiuc.edu/nsdihome/
Questions & comments – please email me
at krumm@isgs.uiuc.edu