A state agency, a UW system school, and a statewide association from Wisconsin were all included as recipients in this year’s round of Cooperative Agreement Program (CAP) funding from the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC).
The FGDC of the USGS National Geospatial Program Office, sponsors the CAP to promote the technologies, standards, best practices and organizational collaboration vital to data integration, partnerships for data investment and speedy delivery of geospatial products to support government.
This year, funding totalling $1,200,000 was given to 36 organizations nationwide in four funding categories. Along with Wisconsin, Indiana also received three awards followed by Minnesota, Illinois, and Ohio – all with one – meaning 1 in 4 projects went to Great Lakes states this year.
While Wisconsin had no recipients in the Metadata Training and Outreach category for which there were 10 awardees, we had one each in the remaining categories. UW-Milwaukee’s Center for Advanced Spatial Information Research (CASIR) with Dr. Zhong-Ren Peng as primary investigator received a Category 2 award under the Establishing Framework Data Services category to enable transportation network data as OGC web feature services. The Wisconsin Land Information Association (WLIA) was awarded a Category 3: Geographic Information Coordination grant to look at strategic planning for coordination in the state. And the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources will look at integration of DNR hydrography data in the National Hydrography Dataset (NHD) as part of the Category 4: Geographic Information Integration and Analysis program.