Comprehensive and authoritative baseline geospatial data content is crucial to the nation and to the . Geological Survey (USGS). To maintain its prominence, realize its potential, and fulfill its mission to develop and distribute these national data assets in a fast-moving information technology environment, USGS needs a coordinated geographic information science (GIScience) research presence that provides the scientific underpinning for these operations and exerts leadership in research that is critical to serving USGS’s unique role. USGS founded its Center of Excellence for Geospatial Information Science (CEGIS) in 2006 to perform this task
