igic.org

Scott Morlock, Supervisory Hydrologist, USGS Indiana Water Science Center reports that a portion of USGS's ARRA stimulus funds have been allocated for new LiDAR data collection of 9 Indiana study areas. These areas are part of a project to do flood inundation map libraries at USGS streamgages and collocated National Weather Service flood forecast points.

The location of the nine study areas are shown on the map above (#2 - #10), and are currently estimated to be between 240 – 295 total square miles. The study areas consist of:

#2. Elkhart River and contiguous flood plain within the community of Goshen, Elkhart County
#3. Elkhart River and contiguous flood plain within the community of Elkhart, Elkhart County
#4. Iroquois River and contiguous flood plain within the community of Rensselaer, Jasper County
#5. Tippecanoe River and contiguous flood plain within Tippecanoe, White, and Carroll Counties
#7. East Fork White River, Flatrock River, and Driftwood Rivers and contiguous flood plains in and within 5 miles of the community of Columbus, Bartholomew County
#6. Wabash River and contiguous flood plain within the community of Terre Haute, Vigo County
#8. White River and contiguous flood plain within the community of Spencer, Owen County
#9. White River and contiguous flood plain within the community of Seymour, Jackson County
#10. White River and contiguous flood plain within the community Newberry, Greene County

Indiana was awarded the funds because this project involved flood hazards and is highly leveraged with regard to fund sources. David Nail, USGS Geospatial Liaison to Indiana reports that an additional countywide LiDAR study area is under consideration for Orange County, IN. Jim Sparks, State of Indiana GIO, stated that he is very interested in getting the word out about these upcoming LiDAR project sites to our other local, state and federal government partners as it may help us uncover additional funding sources to leverage and expand the geographic extents of the current USGS project areas.

The USGS has not yet indicated when the stimulus funds will be released and the work started, but we assume within the next 12 months.

The Indiana Department of Transportation has provided University Information Technology Services (UITS) at Indiana University uncompressed NAIP 2008 Indiana quarter quad images.

You can visit http://www.indiana.edu/~gisdata/statewide/08naip.html for more information on the Indiana NAIP 2008 dataset and how to download the data.

ESRI ArcGIS desktop display tips can be found at
http://webhelp.esri.com/arcgisdesktop/9.3/index.cfm?id=3148&pid=3143&topicname=About_setting_default_raster_display_options

From PC World.com

The U.S. plans to make more than 100,000 data sources available by the end of next week on its data.gov site, in what may be the real start of government's effort to share its vast database with the world.

Data.gov has been open for business for about two weeks but with fewer than 100 data sources available it's now just a teaser of a site.

Data.gov is cataloging data and presenting it in standard formats, such as CVS or XLS, or Keyhole Markup Language (KML) used in Google Earth and XML, among others. In many cases, agencies will develop widgets and other tools make the data accessible and interesting. A simple example is the FBI's Top Ten Wanted widget.

But the real test will be public adoption. Federal CIO Vivek Kundra said the effort to build out data.gov is "a very high priority" because he believes it has the potential of "unlocking the innovation and tapping into the ingenuity" of the private sector as well as Americans generally. Users will also be able to rank data sets on their utility, usefulness, and ease of access.

Over time, the U.S. will continue to expand the data sets, as well as add tools to help users extract and work with government data.

------------
Data.gov - GIS data:

www.data.gov/catalog/geodata

On June 29, 2009, NASA and Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) announced the release of the ASTER Global Digital Elevation Model (GDEM). ASTER (Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer) is an imaging instrument flying on Terra, a satellite launched in December 1999 as part of NASA's Earth Observing System (EOS).