TECHnology
Section titled “TECHnology”- Working on Geoportal footer links
August 2024 Program Update
Monthly Highlight: Priority Project Matrix
Section titled “Monthly Highlight: Priority Project Matrix”This year, the BTAA-GIN has adopted a new Priority Projects model to streamline our work and focus on the most impactful goals. We began by collecting 17 project suggestions, which we prioritized using a matrix that considered factors such as project ownership, volunteer availability, DEIA relevance, time commitment, and difficulty. This matrix, inspired by the Minnesota Geospatial Advisory Council’s workflows, helped us assess each project’s likelihood of success. We then had team members vote on the importance of each project, creating a value score. By multiplying the likelihood of success by the value score, we categorized the projects into five high priority, six medium, and six low priority. Each committee has been assigned multiple projects, with some tasks designated for dedicated workgroups and others for individuals, including the Product Manager and a new hire.
The projects, along with their priority, owner, and status, are publicly available on our GitHub project board.
Program Activities
Section titled “Program Activities”Program Management
Section titled “Program Management”- Program Team meeting featured Lightning Talk “Ephemeral Geospatial Data: An Impending Digital Dark Age” related to a forthcoming article.
- Conducting interviews for new Program and Outreach Coordinator position.
- New graduate student research assistant for metadata processing hired and began orientation.
Committees and Workgroups
Section titled “Committees and Workgroups”
Community Engagement
Section titled “Community Engagement”- Published Important documents filter tool
- Updated website to announce that next BTAA GIS Conference will be in spring 2025
Knowledge
Section titled “Knowledge”- Held meeting with Community Engagement co-chairs to determine shared priorities
Coordination
Section titled “Coordination”- Reviewed Geodata Pilot progress and scope
- Planned Program Team meeting topics
Geodata Pilot Workgroup
Section titled “Geodata Pilot Workgroup”- Implemented a staging area using Box
- Added several test datasets to dev Geoportal
FAST for Subject Terms Workgroup
Section titled “FAST for Subject Terms Workgroup”- Held kickoff meeting
- Analyzing the collection of map records for current adherence to a thesaurus.
BTAA Geoportal
Section titled “BTAA Geoportal”Top internal search keywords
Section titled “Top internal search keywords”- ganborn
- geology
- lake superior
- university buildings
- europe map
- rainbow trout
- yemen
- striped bass
- greece
- york county, pennsylvania
Collections
Section titled “Collections”Total records as of September 1, 2024: 98,560
August Harvesting Activities
Section titled “August Harvesting Activities”| Task | Records added | Records retired |
|---|---|---|
| Illinois Geospatial Data Clearinghouse 02a-01 Q3 2024 | 0 | 0 |
| MN GeoCommons 05a-01 August 2024 | 1 | 0 |
| PASDA 08a-01 Q3 2024 | 21 | 0 |
| Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center Open Data 08f-01 Q3 2024 | 0 | 0 |
| 2024-08-06 Scan ArcGIS Hubs | 183 | 59 |
| 2024-08-13 Scan ArcGIS Hubs | 122 | 113 |
| 2024-08-20 Scan ArcGIS Hubs | 98 | 36 |
| 2024-08-27 Scan ArcGIS Hubs | 64 | 54 |
| Humanitarian Data Exchange 99-1400 reharvest Q3 2024 | 463 | 0 |
| Add Ohio parcels | 1 | 0 |
| Harvest Olmsted County, MN 05b-27109 | 10 | 0 |
Development
Section titled “Development”-
Development in August primarily revolved around the GeoBlacklight Summer Community Sprint, which focused on upgrading backend frameworks in anticipation of releasing a new major version (5.0).
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Excessive bot/AI web scraping traffic crashed our development Geoportal and UMN Web Development had to spend extra time to block the crawlers.
Next Steps
Section titled “Next Steps”Projects that are currently in progress or up next include:
- Create or update policies and disclaimers for the Geoportal
- Continue the Geodata Pilot
- Kickoff three new workgroups: implementing FAST subjects; Scalable Approaches; Service Models
Refer to our Priority Projects board for more details.