Minutes from ASGIS User Group Meeting August 5, 2003
Lupelele Room at the Tradewinds Hotel

1. Quickbird Imagery: Lisa Levien joined us via telephone to give us particulars on the imagery initiative (I apologize that we could not get Ron Salz in on the meeting as we had only one phone line – will get you in next time Ron). The present situation is that imagery will be purchased for American Samoa, CNMI, Guam, and Palau at a cost of ~$78,000, which has been reduced by $10,000 through a special arrangement made by Lisa – thanks Lisa! Both ASPA and Land Grant have offered to contribute $5,000 and ASCMP is looking into supplying another $3,000-4,000. The Quickbird imagery has a 60 centimeter (2 foot) resolution and will be available in a GeoTiff and NIFT 2.0/2.1 format. The data will be available to all federal, state and local government entities. Although not discussed at the meeting, the requested digital elevation models (DEMs) and ground control points (GCPs) can be supplied by ASCMP, providing that the GCPs used for the IKONOS are sufficient.

2. ASCC/FIG Grant Courses: David Kulberg provided information concerning courses available at the college and on-line. David will be teaching Getting to Know ArcGIS in the fall semester at ASCC on Mondays/Wednesdays from 2:30 to 4:00 and AutoCAD on Tuesdays/Thursdays from 2:30 to 4:00. In addition, many seats for free on-line ESRI courses (acquired through the FIG grant) are still available through the Institute of Technology at ASCC. Simply contact David via email kulbergd@rocketmail.com or by phone @ 699-4520 for listing of available courses and to arrange getting the codes for taking the course.

3. Status of New GIS Assistant at ASCMP: Darcee Killpack from Pacific Services Center in Honolulu attended the meeting and informed the group of the status of the new Assistant that will be assigned to ASCMP to replace Kevin Cronk. The contract will be awarded again to ECO (Environmental Careers Organization), who will put out the announcement and hopefully have the new Assistant hired by January of 2004.

4. Updated IKONOS for Manu’a Islands: New imagery was acquired this year (2003) from Space Imaging for the Manu’a Islands as the original data had excessive cloud cover. Erik Hund from Coastal Services Center, South Carolina, (who was also present at the meeting) geo-referenced the imagery with existing ground control point data and supplied us with a copy. Additional GCPs were collected in Ta’u in June to reduce the error, but due to problems with differential correction of the raw GPS data, the geo-referencing of the imagery has not been updated. Also, roads and buildings data were collected and will be processed to form updated data layers once the differential correction problem is sorted out.

5. Metadata Server Status: the metadata server finally arrived from CSC and has been set up at ASDOC with the help of James Byrne from CSC (also in attendance from South Carolina). There is still quite a bit of quality control work to do before the data will be online. We also hope to have all the GIS data from the databank available through this server.

6. GPS/GIS/Metadata and Remote Sensing Trainings: Trainers came from CSC to conduct the two GPS/GIS/Metadata workshops at ASCC during the week of July 29 to August 1. There were roughly 15 participants per session (one taught in the ArcView 3.3 platform and the other in ArcGIS 8.3) and the sessions went quite well. We thank Josh Murphy for his time and effort, for building local capacity and teaching local residents how to create metadata, thus relieving Kevin of his metadata duties. Furthermore, as this report is going out late, I would like to offer many thanks to Mark Finkbeiner and Shan Burkhalter (both from CSC) who wrapped up the remote sensing training today. Attendance was low, but many participants commented that this was the best training to date, in terms of newly acquired knowledge and applicability in the workplace.

7. The Mass Exodus and Future of the ASGIS User Group: Unfortunately, several GIS professionals have left or are leaving the island soon. A hearty tofa to Mark Hayward who departed early August and to BJ Bukata, Eliana Biardi, and Will White who will all be departing at the end of the month. Due to the mass exodus, many responsibilities will now (at least, for the time being) fall upon the shoulders of the remaining GIS pro, Troy Curry. Troy has already worked things out with Mark Hayward to access/maintain the FTP server at ASPA, with Will White to take up the reigns of the ASGIS web site, and with Kevin Cronk to take over the ASGIS List Serve. In addition, Troy will be burdened with carrying out/keeping alive the major projects undertaken by the lot. I’m sure he will be very open to anyone that can lend a helping hand. We sincerely hope he can withstand the pressure until the next wave of GIS professionals arrives on the scene.