American Samoa GIS User Group meeting
April 8, 2003
Venue: Department of Commerce Conference Room

1. Introduction(s) – New GIS staff
Troy Curry arrived in Samoa one week ago to start a two-year contract as a GIS Planner in the Department of Commerce. Troy has an extensive background in remote sensing: spectral classification, feature extraction and land-cover change. Troy graduated from University of Maryland with a masters in geography and has since worked as a GIS professional for organizations such as NASA and DOD. Welcome aboard Troy!

2. GIS DAY Review (SDI)
Basically discussed the follow-up to GIS Day, particularly concerning the drafting of an executive order for the SDI. Mark Hayward @ ASPA is waiting for a copy of the executive order drafted for the formation of the Delta Consortium (a territorial committee established to coordinate IT efforts of agencies in American Samoa). Mark, Kevin Cronk (DOC), Will White (DMWR) and other interested parties will review the document and likely use it as a template for drafting the SDI Executive Order. After review and deciding upon a plan of action the group will approach Henry Kappel (attorney at the Governor’s Office) to get professional help for creating the executive order.A system for updating the image inventory, data dictionary, and GIS data repository were also discussed. Several ideas were proffered, but a consensus was not reached. For the time being Mark Hayward will keep the data repository updated on a ~1 month basis and Kevin Cronk will continue updating the image inventory on an ad-hoc basis. Perhaps Will White or Eddie Vaouli (NPS) will take responsibility for data dictionary updates?

3. ESRI FIG Grant classes
David Kulberg provided details concerning the FIG grant that was awarded to ASCC. ESRI has given 100 free on-line courses to ASCC to be used to increase GIS capacity in the territory. Courses are offered for both ArcView 3.x and ArcGIS 8.x. Contact David for further details if you or any of your staff members are interested in taking a course. David urged the User Group to take advantage of these free courses.

4. CSC/PSC Trainings (metadata & remote sensing)
A two-day intensive metadata training will be given at ASCC prior to the All-Islands Managers Meeting in August, 2003. Dates for the training will either be July 30-31 (Wed.-Thurs.) or July 31-Aug 1 (Thurs.-Fri.). Trainers, coming from the Coastal Services Center (NOAA) in South Carolina, will lead participants through the entire process, starting with data collection using GPS units and ending with writing the metadata for the final product.

Pacific Services Center in Honolulu, Hawaii has inquired into the need and level of interest in the Territory for remote sensing training. Judging from the response from the User’s Group it seems that there is a need and high level of interest. This training may take place after the All-Islands Meeting in August. Dates and other details will be shared with the group when established.

5. Imagery Status
The Group’s efforts to acquire new imagery continue. Richard Davis is scheduled to make a last effort to collect imagery in May. Jack Barcelona may still be an option, but there may still be issues with acquiring insurance to make the trip to Am. Samoa.

Another possibility that has recently surfaced is to coordinate with agencies involved in collecting remotely sensed data for other island-nations in the South Pacific. Sherry Mann will be meeting representatives from FAO (Food and Agricultural Organization) in Apia towards the end of the month to pursue this option. In addition, the director of SOPAC (South Pacific Geo-science Commission) will be visiting the Territory next month and this may open more doors for acquiring imagery. Mark Hayward will be arranging a meeting at ASPA on May 25th at 10:00 a.m. between the SOPAC director and interested members of the User’s Group.

6. Marine Mapping Initiatives
Will White provided the group with updates on marine mapping initiatives.
Will informed the group that the benthic habitat characterization work for Tutuila was now available on the web (via http://sag1.nos.noaa.gov/Website/AS_Tutuila/). Field work to ground truth the Manu’a IKONOS images will be collected at the beginning of May and it is expected that a draft habitat map will be available soon after that. Will also discussed the on going NOAA contract (awarded to STI-Hawaii) to classify the IKONOS imagery to a finer resolution than the current work (currently the product resolution is 1-acre minimum mapping unit). It is expected that a product will be available within the next 18 months.

Other developments include deriving the shallow water bathymetry for the near-shore areas, which are not covered by the multi-beam data. This project will be conducted in collaboration with Kevin Cronk (DOC) and Ken Cochran (CSC Intern in Saipan) using the IKONOS data. It is hoped that there will be areas of overlap with the deep-water bathymetry so that the IKONOS derived product can be validated (in collaboration with OSU).

Finally, early in 2003 the NOAA Coral Reef Ecosystem Investigation group (Based out of Honolulu) will again be visiting the territory to undertake further multi-beam and ground discrimination surveys.

7. FTP & Clearinghouse Servers
The FTP server at ASPA is up and running, though experiencing some technical difficulties during the last few days. The American Samoa GIS databank is available on the server and will be updated by Mark Hayward.

Coastal Services Center has shipped a Linux server with GIS data clearinghouse node software to the AS Dept. of Commerce. This will be set up in addition to the FTP server running at ASPA.

Furthermore, David Kulberg and Mark Hayward are attempting to acquire funds to set up a central data repository at the college (ASCC). If the proposal goes through there would also be funding to hire an IT professional to maintain the server and train a counterpart that could continue maintenance into the future.

In addition to clearinghouse and ftp servers, there is now the potential for establishing an interactive mapping service using IMS as a qualified GIS professional is now on island (Troy Curry). Of course, funding will be needed, but there are a few options.

8. Agencies Updates??

Land Grant College (ASCC): Sherry Mann reported that Land Grant would soon be acquiring a new plotter. Eric Hanson announced the beginning of scientific seminar series that will be taking place at the college on the last Thursday of every month at 3:00 p.m. The first session will be held April 24th and will be presented by Don Vargo. All interested persons are welcome.

Institute of Technology (ASCC): David Kulberg announced that ArcGIS 8.x will be taught during the fall semester at the college. The transition has been made and ArcView 3.x will no longer be taught, though short sessions might be arranged if agencies still express interest.

Coastal Management Program (DOC): Kevin Cronk reported that the updated roads map for the Eastern District of Tutuila is expected to be completed soon. Additionally, the county and village boundary files have been updated (spatial adjustment and shoreline updates) for both Tutuila and the Manu’a islands and will be released to the US Census Bureau and the general public in the near future. Furthermore, Matthew Allen reported that a GPS business survey is being conducted with Dion Teo from the statistics division in DOC. All businesses on Tutuila are being GPSed with attribute information.

This meeting was attended by the following agency representatives: