Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/117518
NEWSLINK New Members Join National Geospatial Committee Outgoing Interior Secretary Ken Salazar named 13 men and women to serve on the National Geospatial Advisory Committee (NGAC), a panel that makes recommendations on federal geospatial policy, management issues and development of the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI). Members include Robert F. Austin, the manager of enterprise application integration for the city of Tampa, Fla. Austin was reappointed to a second term and will serve as chair of NGAC. Member David DiSera, chief technology officer at business/technologyservices firm EMA Inc., also was reappointed to a second term. The committee, which was established in 2007, now has about 30 members. Newly appointed members of the committee include Talbot J. Brooks of Delta State University in Mississippi; Keith Clarke of the University of California, Santa Barbara; Steve Coast, principal architect for Bing Maps at Microsoft; Matthew Gentile of Deloitte Financial Advisory Services LLP; Frank Harjo, GIS coordinator for the Muscogee (Creek) Nation; Michael Jones, Google chief technology advocate; Jack H. Maguire, planning and GIS manager for Lexington County, S.C.; Carolyn J. Merry of The Ohio State University; Roger Mitchell, senior vice president at MDA Information Systems Inc.; Michele Motsko, director of the National Center for Geospatial Intelligence Standards at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency; and Douglas Richardson, executive director of the Association of American Geographers. "We are pleased to welcome this distinguished set of new members to the National Geospatial Advisory Committee," said Assistant Secretary of the Interior Anne Castle, chair of the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC), a coordinating body for NSDI. "NGAC's inclusion of a broad range of perspectives—governmental, tribal, private sector and academic—enables it to provide valuable advice to federal agencies on the most pressing geospatial issues, and helps us make better progress toward our goal of seamless integration and accessibility of geospatial data." FGDC GE Partners with Google for Utilities Applications A map shows the distribution of more than 1,800 continuously operating reference stations that provide Global Navigation Satellite System data for defining and maintaining the National Spatial Reference System. The system is the foundation for NSDI, which will be a point of focus for the National Geospatial Advisory Committee and its new members. 8 G E O W O R L D / M A R C H 2 O 1 3 General Electric (GE) agreed to use Google Maps data for GE's Smallworld applications geared toward users in electrical, telecommunications and gas industries. "Millions of people are already familiar with Google Maps as seen on their computer screens in the office or on mobile devices in the field," said Bryan Friehauf, product-line leader for software solutions in GE's Digital Energy operations. "Now we're able to bring that familiarity to our Smallworld products so that our customers can use a platform that's completely customized for their assets and networks." The arrangement ultimately should aid GE's utility clients in providing end-user customers with better information, such as outage-restoration times, while allowing utility clients to manage assets more efficiently.