Hello All,
I am Juan Cancel, Chief Data Analyst at the Seminole Tribe of Florida Tribal Historic Preservation Office (STOF-THPO). I wanted to talk to everyone that is participating in the FGDC Cultural Resource Work Group. As you all may know everyone participating in the work group needs to choose a task group that they may want to participate in. The tasks groups have specific goals and are very well elaborated by the documents supplied by Deidre McCarthy, the NPS GISP that is heading up the work group. I will add that information to this forum, as it goes into great detail about each group, and I will also list the six different groups with their most simplistic, basic functions (based on what Deidre has written) of each group as follows:
1) Creation of Geo-Spatial Data Task Group
Identifying the geometries (points, lines, polygons) representing the cultural resources.
Key term: Geometry
2) Linking Geo-Spatial Data to Attributes Task Group
Linking descriptive attribute information that represent those cultural resources.
Key term: Attributes
3) Security of Sensitive Data Task Group
Identify how sensitive cultural resources data is secured to purposefully exchange it and incorporating security as part of data exchange.
Key term: Security
4) Feature Level Metadata Task Group
Identify the associated info in the data transfer process (e.g. projection type, creator of the data, etc.), and make sure the data is conveyed appropriately.
Key term: Metadata
5) Existing Standards, Protocols and Authorities Task Group
Identify and utilize any existing procedures and standards that have already been created in cultural resource data sharing.
Key terms: Protocols & Standards
6) Work Plan Task Group
Identify action steps that need to be integrated in the other groups on the short & long term goals.
Key terms: Action steps
Within these groups, group leaders will be identified and I will post these as soon as they become available. They will manage the task groups priorities with short-term and long-term goals. The task groups need to schedule time to accomplish the goals in each group.
Important: Please make sure that if you are in the work group to e-mail Deidre McCarthy which task group you would like to participate in.
I know many tribes have concerns with particular task groups, but as a suggestion based on completing the over arching goal of cultural resource geospatial standards, I suggest we consider splitting up tribes up to participate in at least one of every group. For example, Paul Backhouse and I from the STOF-THPO will participate in the Attribute Task Group as we have much concern in creating the tabular architecture and how much detail is put into the description of the fields. If each tribe in the working group participates in at least one task group we can also discuss in the forum what concerns we have and how tribal involvement is considered for each facet of creating these geospatial standards for cultural resources.
We will also need input from the peer group individuals, so please clearly mark which group are you concerned with. As stated earlier, please inform Deidre of which task group you would like to participate. Thanks for your time and please sign-up and reply with any ideas you all may have.
Juan J Cancel
