Research and Development

Item Description (opportunities/risks) Resource Needs (time/$)
Add GNIS secondary points to the database and apply our changes from the 2012-2013 contract to the secondary points. Any feature that appears in more than one 7.5-minute quadrangle is supposed to have a secondary point associated with it for each quadrangle. This data is not available in bulk from USGS – you may see the secondary points for one feature at a time on the GNIS web site. The USGS has so far ignored our requests for the data. We do have a copy of the database dated 1/21/2012, but it is in a format that will make it difficult to preserve the point sequence for linear features, and it won'’'t contain any updates USGS has made since then. It will take approximately 40 hours to design the secondary point database and load the GNIS data. Approximately 80 hours will be needed to incorporate the changes we made to the secondary points for the 2012 grant into the secondary point database and to document a process for doing this each time an update to the secondary points are received from USGS.
Add Board of Geographic Names decision dates to the database. This would let us know which features the BGN has actually made decisions on, as opposed to features that have just been entered because they appear on maps. This information is in the 1/21/2012 database and would be easy to bring up to date. About 20 hours.
Add GNIS citations and insertion dates to the database. The USGS has a citation for every record saying where (such as USGS maps, National Inventory of Dams, phone books, other specific maps, etc.) it came from and when the record was entered into the database. We have this data, but need to build a look-up table for the citations (over 90 percent of the records have an identical, very long, citation that says it came from an unspecified USGS map). About 20 hours.
Get the USGS scanned document archives and make them available The USGS has scanned all of its historic documents and correspondence regarding Board of Geographic Names decisions and linked them to the features they apply to. These are available from the USGS web site, but it would be nice to have our own copy for easier access, for when the site is down, and in case the USGS is ever unable to continue serving the data. Approximately 80 hours to obtain the files, organize them, and set up a mechanism to distribute them.