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Summary: A Shared National Resource
Pages 1-10

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From page 1...
... Geodetic observing systems provide a significant benefit to society in a wide array of military, research, civil, and commercial areas, including sea level change monitoring, autonomous navigation, tighter low flying routes for strategic aircraft, precision agriculture, civil surveying, earthquake monitoring, forest structural mapping and biomass estimation, and improved floodplain mapping (see Figure S.1 for a few examples of these applications)
From page 2...
... (C) A landslide near Flathead Lake, Montana, revealed through the obscuring tree coverage using airborne LiDAR data collected by the NSF National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping (NCALM)
From page 3...
... . In response to this charge, the committee made a series of focused recommendations in the body of this report for upgrading and improving specific elements of the infrastructure, for enhancing the role of the United States in international geodetic services, for evaluating the requirements for a geodetic workforce for the coming decades, and for providing national coordination and advocacy for the various agencies and organizations that contribute to the geodetic infrastructure.
From page 4...
... Thus, as new observing systems come online, they are designed to depend on the existence of the underlying shared infrastructure. In the broadest sense, the geodetic infrastructure includes a wide suite of ground-, air-, and space-based geodetic observing systems and their support structures; systems and standards for geo detic data analysis and combination; computational facilities and procedural structures for analysis and combination of global data sets; and archival and distribution systems for geodetic data and data products.
From page 5...
... This analysis is coordinated by international services and provides consistent precise data products, such as Earth-orientation parameters (rotational speed and direction of Earth's spin axis) and information on GNSS satellite orbits and clocks.
From page 6...
... geodetic infrastructure. Playing a leading role enables the United States to exert a strong and lasting influence on standards and practices for the global geodetic network and data products.
From page 7...
... investigators in the activities of these services. Specifically, a long-term national commitment to the primary global geodetic product -- the International Terrestrial Reference Frame -- would ensure continuity and stability of the reference frame, and the many geodetic observing systems that depend on it.
From page 8...
... It would achieve this mission by: • maintaining, modernizing, and augmenting the geodetic infrastructure; ; • coordinating the scientific and technical requirements and applications across stakeholders, including federal and state agencies, the scientific community, and commercial and public users; • selecting a primary provider and clearinghouse agent for data products, such as raw instru mental data, tracking data, and the necessary metadata; • coordinating the production and dissemination of data products, especially when the utiliza tion of identical products by most or all end-users would be demonstrably beneficial or, in some instances, critical (for example, orbit information for precise navigation) ; • supporting emerging geodetic technologies, such as geodetic imaging, and developing the associated tools and data sets to support these technologies; • fostering fundamental research and education focused on technological and theoretical developments, ongoing deployments, and novel uses of precise global geodetic infrastructure; and • functioning as the lead U.S.
From page 9...
... Recommendation: A quantitative assessment of the workforce required to support precise geodesy in the united States and the research and education programs in place at u.S. universities should be undertaken as part of a follow-up study focused on the long-term prospects of geodesy and its applications.


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