As we close out the 2023 calendar year, we are heading into a big 2025 for the surveying industry in the United States. Over the last couple of decades, the National Geodetic Survey (NGS) has been working on modernizing the National Spatial Reference System, which they describe as being “a consistent coordinate system that defines latitude, longitude, height, scale, gravity, and orientation throughout the United States.” The new modernized system is expected to be completed in 2026, with beta versions available in the coming year. The extent to which surveyors and other geospatial professionals will be affected by the new NSRS will depend somewhat on their specific scope and organizations, but everyone in the country will feel at least some effect.
Over the course of this past year, Geo Week News has been covering this upcoming change from a variety of angles, talking to representatives at NGS as well as the Geospatial Center for the Arctic and Pacific (GCAP), which received a grant to assist with this modernization work. For the most part, this coverage has revolved around some of the technical aspects of the work, including its effects on bathymetric surveying as well as the increased importance GNSS will play in this new system.
In speaking with representatives from both organizations throughout the year, though, it’s become clear that working on the technical aspects of this shift is far from the only heavy lift involved in the project. Arguably as importantly, there has been a lot of work going into educating the industry about the changes that are coming and finding ways to simply raise awareness of the changes. That’s one of the focuses for Caixia Wang, an associate professor and chair at the geomatics department with the University of Alaska-Anchorage and part of GCAP, and she told Geo Week News that it starts with general education.
“I think the idea is that we want to first understand the need in continuing education in geomatics from a broader audience. We started with a survey on this kind of discussion, and distributed that to not just the students and faculty, but the industry in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest. We started just to try and understand the need, and then we are going to build our initiatives based on those present needs first.”
That survey is the same one that Oregon State’s Chase Simpson mentioned in a webinar with Geo Week News earlier this year. Anyone in the geospatial industry is welcome to fill that out here.
Everybody Geo Week News spoke with about this education and outreach noted that conferences are the best way to get this information in front of the various professionals. Galen Scott, Constituent Resources Manager with NGS, tells Geo Week News that the organization has a “NSRS Modernization Engagement Strategy” team, and a big part of their work is heading to a variety of conferences within the industry to get the word out. That, of course, includes Geo Week along with a myriad of others throughout the year, ranging from broad geospatial-focused shows to those targeting more specific industries, such as the transportation sector.
All of those different specific industries being affected by this modernization effort presents a challenge for this outreach work, though. Michael Olsen, a Professor of Geomatics with Oregon State University, talked about this with Geo Week News.
“We’re trying to bring the surveying community and all of these different organizations together,” he said. “They can be very fragmented, but with a lot of overlap in terms of what they’re doing, though each organization has their different focus. At the Surveying and Geomatics Conference that we hosted at OSU this past June, we had a panel at the end of really trying to have that hard conversation: How can we put aside these turf wars that have happened in the past and really be part of the same thing?”
Beyond attending industry events, these organizations are still looking for other ways to build awareness of this major change. According to Scott, the level of awareness is still lower to where NGS would like to see. He says that one of the big strategies he and his team are working with is what he calls “force multipliers.” He notes that they can realistically only speak to so many people, so they are relying on other people to then get the word out to their networks, creating something of an exponential growth of awareness.
Regardless of the relative lack of awareness now, the modernized NSRS is coming and Scott doesn’t believe there is any value to delaying in order to build more of that awareness. Instead, he says those who are paying attention and are immediately ready for the change will be able to reap serious early benefits.
“There’s value to be derived from it immediately. Once we release it, it’s going to make a major difference for large-scale surveying and mapping firms. There are going to be people who have been paying attention that can jump on it, and those who haven’t heard about it, they’ll hear about it. It’ll take them some time to transition, but eventually, they’ll start to reap those benefits as well.”
Looking more long-term, this could also be an opportunity to change the way the geospatial and surveying communities deal with things like continuing education, according to Oregon State’s Ezra Che.
“There are some challenges in the whole workflow and how things work in the industry,” Che told Geo Week News. “We have to get the stakeholders. They’ll hire surveyors, and they’ll trust the surveyors they hire and the software they use. They don’t have any liability on those, because the surveyor signs off on those so the surveyor is responsible. But the surveyor, all they need is the license and to get a license. They don’t necessarily get the latest updates of everything – the tools, the method, the datums, including the NSRS, because it’s upcoming. Some of those important aspects are not in the feedback loop within the industry.”
That gets to the crux of the challenge for these groups that are looking to get the word out about this modernized NSRS. It could be time to look at more sustainable changes to help the industry keep up with other changes coming down the line that could affect their workflows. In the meantime, more pressing to this specific issue around the modernized NSRS, look out for representatives from NGS and/or GCAP at any geospatial-focused conference over the next year – including Geo Week in February – as they will be happy to answer any questions or address any concerns around this effort, and help professionals get ready for the upcoming shift.
