Minutes for October 12, 2023
Call to Order – 10:00am
Attendees
Ex-Officio Members
MSDIS – Thomas Vought – p
NSGIC/OA-ITSD – Tracy Schloss – p
USGS – David Nail – pp
State members
MDA – Jacque Walters – p
DNR – Zackary Becker – p
Economic Development – Amelia AuBuchon – p
MDC – Tim Bixler – p
MOARNG – Wiley Howell – p
MoDOT – Colin Duewell – p
OA Planning and Budget – Matt Hesser – p
Cooperating Members
BCFPD – Jason Warzinik – p
City of Jefferson – Buster Schrage – p
Mid-MO RPC – Jennifer Bowden – p
MO 911 Board – Brian Maydwell – p
MU Extension/CARES – Chris Barnett – p
Northwest Missouri State – Ming-Chih Hung – p
Sanborn – Brad Arshat – p
Surdex – Steve Kasten – p
GISCI – Tony Spicci – p
US ACE St. Louis – Jennifer Backer – p
USDA-NRCS – Katie Philbrick – p
Washington University – Mollie Webb – p
Wilson & Co. – Derek Smith – p
City of Springfield – Nathan Huggins – p
City of Branson – Curtis Copeland – p
Other Attendees
Caitlin – Allstate Engineering
Travis Tomson – MSPS
Navjot Kaur
Joe Eckman – ESRI
Jack King – Surdex
Tara Vansell – Lindenwood University
Approval of Minutes – Motion was made and seconded to approve the meeting minutes from the September meeting. Motion passed unanimously.
MGISAC Administration
OGI Report – Events section on website updated with the GIS Day open house, November 15th at the Truman Building in Jefferson City. Going to have display and hands-on stuff. Mobile GIS trailer will be on-site for GIS day. The event is geared toward GIS professionals more than students.
OA has had some hiring and staffing changes. 1 vacancy for SEMA that the job posting will be sent to MSDIS for posting soon. This staffing gap has also created a gap in membership on the council.
New $3m decision item to expand office for GIS infrastructure. This will expand staff and add an ESRI enterprise license to support the same agencies supported by ITSD, and get about $500k in funding for MSDIS. OA’s budget is posted https://oa.mo.gov/sites/default/files/FY_2025_Office_of_Administration_Budget_Request.pdf
Broadband mapping has RFP out. Got awarded to Sanborn yesterday. Work can start October 25th. AppGeo was absorbed by Sanborn. Will subcontract with Connected Nation per current regulations for grants they have to us the FCC address database but they are working on cleaning it up. In January or February they will release the state map and offer a challenge process on our map. $1.7 billion was allocated to MO so it’s important to get correct information to get these funds spent.
NASA working on Earth Observatory map. Wanting to know who is using their content. Sent survey to MoDOT and USGS. If you are using it let Tracy know so she can forward you the survey. There was also correspondence from NOAA with interest on the National Geodedic survey.
MSDIS Report – September 2023
Updated Data
MSDIS did not receive any vector data updates in September. We are collaborating with the Office of Geospatial Information to establish a better workflow for sharing updated datasets to the clearinghouse As with all new processes, there have been some bumps in the road. Once this process is sorted out, though, we are confident that the data shared out from MSDIS will more closely match the original copies held by OGI.
New LiDAR Data
– Boone County 2022
MSDIS has received the new (and exceedingly cool) QL0 LiDAR for Boone County. We are in the process of preparing the data for deployment, but the rollout has been delayed by an unusually high number of meetings for an otherwise nondescript September and several district mapping requests.
MSDIS General News
We were really pleased to visit our friends in Cape Girardeau for the 2023 Southeast Missouri GIS Symposium. It was great to catch up with old acquaintances and get some face-to-face time with so many people we have only ever interacted with via Zoom and email. We also really enjoyed getting a chance to hear about some of the awesome work going on in SEMO.
While we did not get to attend in-person (it turns out that getting to South Dakota is unexpectedly expensive), we did attend the 2023 MAGIC Clearinghouse Summit via Zoom. For those unaware, the Clearinghouse Summit is an opportunity for the GIS clearinghouse managers from the MAGIC states to get together to share notes, bounce ideas off one another, discuss emerging concerns, and plan for the future. Even though we were only there as a face on a screen, it was (as it always is) awesome to see everyone, hear about their successes, and share some stories of the progress being made in Missouri.
MSDIS Downtime
No downtime was reported during September 2023, however there was an Imagery Server disruption on 02 October 2023. We received an email from our colleagues at MoDOT at 2:18 PM that image services were unresponsive. On investigation, we were able to confirm the problem and restarted the server. On restart, services were still offline and the server itself appeared to be unreachable. After more digging, it seemed as though the server had somehow lost its URL binding and, while still technically accessible, was only operational by using the server’s name as the host address. We re-entered the administrative password into both ArcGIS Server Administrator and the ArcGIS Server Web Adaptor in an effort to re-establish the proper bindings. After several extremely panicked minutes of waiting, both the server and its services began functioning as intended.
We have enlisted the aid of the Mizzou Division of IT to investigate possible causes for this outage. At this point, we are told that no changes were made to the server before the outage and that they saw no administrative warnings. We have made notes on the situation and continue to investigate on our own.
Treasurer’s Report – Expenses from SEMO was $600 plus some for some awards. $7.75 fee by MU is something we apparently should have been paying all along but only just now got caught. They’ve had a lot of fiscal turn over and passing around. Total balance of $38,883.33.
Membership Report – No change. 34 current members, 18 quorum. 3 vacancies – Boone, SEMA, and Lee’s Summit.
By-Laws Report – No pending changes or edits. Recommendation to add date or version history to the online copy of the by laws that is available for download.
Discussion Topic
Spear Phishing – Very specific phishing cyber security attempts being utilized. The more information we have out online the more tailored the phishing attempts can be made. They are getting harder to catch. We send a lot of stuff out across the listserv so stay vigilant. Trust.arcgis.com is ESRI’s security information site that can help you secure your resources.
Committee Reports
Data Development – Working on SEMO Lidar project. That’s the oldest in the state. Taking about how to apply for USGS grant and how to select vendor to outsource some of the assistance. Need to update aerial contract as well. Trying to submit by October 20th. Updated scope is to have USGS do the work for 6% of the grant. Saves MGISAC members time and the grant will cover it. Looking to get a couple million dollars. Jeffcitymogis.maps.arcgis.com is the dashboard that goes into areas of interest and project breakdowns. It would be a two-year spend down on the funds. Would like to get more commitment funds. Reach out to Tim or Zack if your entity wants to partner funds. This will be QL1 Lidar. Once ARPA runs out we will be faced with a choice whether to fund Lidar, imagery, or hydrography. Will have to prioritize because we won’t be able to afford it all. Illinois does have a long-term Lidar program. Good to talk to them about how they keep it funded.
Education – Tuesday was subcommittee meeting with a presentation Map Maker by ESRI in partnership with National Geographic. Official launch is on GIS day in November. This will take over for Geo Inquiries. Doesn’t require a username and password. Has toggle between 2D and 3D that has been useful for students.
Lindenwood GIS has exhibitor space for those interested for their GIS day event. Students are welcome to attend. Open House in morning. Presentations mid-morning. Tuesday November 14th.
Missouri is an official participant in the Arc GIS Online Competition. Next meeting will have a presentation on GIS Ethics.
MU has GIS day event November 17th.
Legislative – Met last week about reintroducing last session’s legislation. Still looking for input on language. The makeup of the representation was a source of discussion. Once we can finalize language then we can send to Representative Taylor. Pre-filing is in December. Send comments or questions to Tony.
Outreach, Communication, and Marketing – Website has had some updates. Events are getting updated. News had been updated along with membership section. Some contact information has been removed for privacy issues. Twitter and LinkedIn accounts were deleted. Still have facebook.
NG911 – Working on RFPs. Qualified vendor list should come out soon. Sanborn finishing up the last call outs on the imagery and will put together SIDS soon.
Liaison Reports
NSGIC – Conference was at the end of September in New Orleans. Full schedule NHD and 3DEP program was talked about a lot. MO was called out for being early to look at EDH. New basemap initiative called Overture for developer engagement. This would be an open source basemap. A lot of private companies on board so far such as ESRI, Amazon, Microsoft, and TomTom. Starting with roads, buildings, places, and administrative boundaries. Addresses would be a future priority.
Election results were President – Ken Nelson. Board – Leland Pierce, Mark Yacucci, and Dennis Pederson which were all who we voted for as a state.
NSGIC has not-for-profit arm called National Geospatial Collaborative that is a 501c3 that will allow them to apply for and administer grants. One example from the past this would have rectified is the Geo-enabled elections initiative. There would have been funding to continue this, had there been a path to accept grant funding.
Feds spent $93 million tying our hands to using Cost Quest address data. We want to put pressure on them to use our National Address Database instead. Our own NAD can be better data.
New data guidelines from World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Current web search engines don’t search geospatial datasets, only metadata. New guidelines can be found here. https://www.w3.org/TR/sdw-bp/
MAGIC – Clearinghouse workshop was a success. Registration will open soon for conference April 15th – 18th at the Embassy Suites River Market Area in Omaha. Several other conferences at the same time.
Cooperating Agency Reports
USGS – 7 counties will be available around May next year.
MSPS – New representative is Travis Tomas.
Open Discussion
DOD network is trying to move out of file sharing environment into the cloud such as OneDrive which doesn’t play nice with GIS data and the way ArcGIS attaches to data.
Adjournment – 12:26 pm