National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s Standards
Written by Chad on March 30th, 2007This PDF from the NGA is an interesting read if you want to know how the US Government wants to keeps it’s data formatted and served. One thing you will notice that is absent from this document: Google Earth’s KML. They want to use open standards and WMS, WFS and GML are in.
The NSG Functional Manager endorsed a set of key specifications known collectively as the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) 1.0 baseline.
Here is a list of the Open Standards they are endorsing:
- Web Features Service (WFS)
- Web Map Service (WMS)
- Web Map Context (WMC)
- Web Coverage Service (WCS)
- Geography Markup Language (GML)
- Styled Layer Descriptor (SLD)
- Catalog Services (CS-W)
- Filter Encoding Specification (FE)
- ISO 19115 Geographic Information – Metadata
- ISO 19119 Geographic Information – Services
- NSG Feature Data Dictionary and NSG Feature Catalog
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Not to nit-pick. But the pdf doesn’t reflect the entire US govt. Only NGA and maybe as an extension partial DoD.
It has no effect on other entities in the US govt. USDA/NRCS has their own standards. Heck within one agency, each sub-agency can have different standards.
Not to say, other agenies can’t work together and have same/similar standards. But one agency has no bearing on another. Unless people in the govt get smart and work together instead against each other. It never ceases to amaze me the back-stabbing and such.
KoS
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I like this blog because it teaches me about World Wind. I am a huge fan of NWW and use it every day in my job.
I wish you would concentrate more on World Wind and not take every opportunity, no matter how small or irrelevant, to criticize Google Earth.
So the NGA hasn’t yet adopted KML? Shocking! How will Google survive! Your previous post snipes at Google with vague, unverifiable references to the UK Military not liking Google Earth. I have a four-year-old who displays more maturity than this.
You are providing a valuable service to the NWW community. Google Earth will not go away any time soon. NASA and Google have different missions. NASA’s is just as important as Google’s. Please rise to the challenge.
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GIS Neutrality…..I don’t speak for Chad. But Google just sucks big hairy donkey b@#$s. Regardless what they do or invested in.
There is a small matter of free-speech. If Chad wants to rip or talk alittle negatively about Google, he can to his hearts content.
If you don’t like it, stop reading.
KoS
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I would put more faith in this document if NGA distributed data in any of these formats. Right now the “geospatial” intelligence products they distribute are usually JPEGs with no georeferencing. Great for PowerPoint, bad for intelligence decision making. I see three formats used in NITF, shapefile, and KML. There is doctrine, then there is reality. Most of the three letter agencies are starting to run Google Earth Fusion, as a result KML will become a defacto standard, regardless of what some doctrine writer locked in an office in DC says.
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I’m still attempting to get past the disconnected rant and figure out how it is that you’ve forgotten who has a shiny new facility built on NASA grounds… Oh, that’s right – Google.
Aside from that, the rant doesn’t at all mirror reality in Google’s use in the government sector – across all agencies. I think you should do a little more reading prior to jumping to these kinds of conclusions.
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*sits back and watches the uninformed opinions fly*
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