The Military Engineer ? No. 66665 Legacy Enables Future Applications By Joseph F. Paschall, GISP, PMP, M.SAME, and William C. Padgett, GISP, M.SAME The USACE Mobile District has undertaken the monumental task of cataloging the geospatial products of coastal districts nationwide and integrating them into an enterprise-wide geo-database. Water Planning & Management F or more than a century, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) has employed a vast array of en- gineering products in support of water management and navigation projects to help create our nations waterway in- frastructure and enable safe navigation. The earliest engineering charts used in our expansion and development were made of linen, parchment and paper. Later, computer-based technologies enabled architectural-grade draw- ings to be stored digitally on disks and tapes. More recent advancements en- able current products to be examined in relation to other associated data lay- ers within a geographical information system (GIS) and stored on local hard drives and servers. However, until now many of these historical geographic as- sets remained within the districts where they had been created—in some cases more than a century hence—in archa- ic formats dif?cult to use in a modern work environment. Under the guidance of the USACE Navigation Business Line, the USACE Mobile Districts Spatial Data Branch initiated a USACE coast-wide effort to catalogue an enormous volume of navi- gation and coastal data products from the 21 coastal districts around the coun- try, and link them into an integrated data-sharing framework that can be accessed by USACE staff and viewed by the public. The resulting contract, funded under the American Recov- ery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and awarded in summer 2009 to Northrop Grumman, will result in a product that will catalogue a rich archive of USACE products, greatly increase the amount of legacy information available for con- sideration in designing future projects and provide a mechanism for accessing the current state of project elements. Enhanced Efficiency The requirements of the Navigation & Coastal Databank (NCDB) program USACE districts maintain innumerable computer- aided design and drafting ?les, which were the premier geospatial products for planning for decades. These ?les still provide critical source data for local projects, but require signi?cant effort to digitize and database before they can become enterprise assets. Image courtesy USACE
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