In October 2009, the UGS established the NGTOC with offices in Rolla, Missouri and Lakewood, Colorado. The Center's mission is to provide leadership and world-class technical expertise in the acquisition and management of trusted geospatial data, services, and map products for the Nation.

Since that start date the NGTOc has been very successful and has accomplished a tremendous amount of work as the operational Center supporting the USGS National Geospatial Program.

Some of the accomplishments of the NGTOC since 2009 include:

• Published 185,961 US Topo and 182,727 Historic Topographic Map Collection (HTMC) products using (r)evolutionary systems; along with writing and publishing associated product standards and specifications. 
• Published 9,841 (first-ever at) 1:25,000-scale US Topo products for Alaska. 
• Published more than 1 million square miles of lidar point cloud data along with updating the seamless 3D Elevation Program (3DEP) layers and publishing 1 m Digital Elevation Models (DEM) and Original Product Resolution DEMs. 
• Created and edited the National Hydrography Dataset; integrated it with the Watershed Boundary Dataset; created numerous NHD software tools for use by both USGS and partners to maintain this information; worked with partners and contractors to nearly complete the NHDPlus Beta HR data for CONUS as well as providing training for many partners and customers of hydrography data. 
• Designed and implemented one of the first government-sponsored volunteer-based mapping projects in the world: The National Map Corps (TNMCorps). More than 1,800 volunteers have edited more than 450,000 points with an average of over 300 points edited daily. 
• Worked with partners to manage high quality public domain transportation data, including roads, railroads, airports, and recreational trails.
• Scanned Board on Geographic Names case records and examined and attached 82,000 to Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) records.
• Modified 222,386 GNIS records.
• Implemented the landform polygon collection tool and accepted 70,543 polygons into the database.
• Developed and implemented delivery systems which have evolved from a simple early map viewer to multiple viewing and download platforms pulling data, products, and services – including multiple cached base map services – from a commercial cloud environment.
• Achieved significant growth in dollars awarded in Geospatial Products and Services Contracts (GPSC) tasks per year from $5.5 million in 2009 to over $115 million in 2019. This growth is largely due to an increase in reimbursable funding - major partners have included the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), and numerous States for the 3DEP.
• Operationalized the USGS Center of Excellence for Geospatial Information Science (CEGIS) research including hydrography generalization; multiscale representation; and high-performance computing (HPC) processing.
• Shared research and project work with the industry by writing publications, giving conference presentations; and hosting visitors from Australia, Spain, Netherlands, and China.  
• Investigated, researched, and analyzed to turn new requirements into model changes and product designs; facilitated the creation and update of geospatial standards and specifications that meet industry needs; instituted governance processes to ensure better enterprise decision making; continually improved our workflow processes and systems to enable very high-volume production goals every year;  and supported national database operations ensuring data integrity and preservation.
• Transitioned the Systems Development Branch to use agile development teams and methods. 
• Modernized IT Infrastructure, moving to a much faster lease-procurement cycle for equipment. Also consolidated equipment to a shared data center, enabling a dedicated fast network connection between the Rolla and Lakewood sites for work efficiencies. 
• Provided world class customer support through 500+ hours of technical training to customers and partners; responding to 10,000+ customer service emails; fulfilling numerous requests for bulk data deliveries; and creating numerous custom map products in response to special requests or natural hazards.    

If you are able, please join us on November 13, which is also National GIS Day!

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