To address the national lack of geodetic expertise and to further strengthen relationships and collaborative efforts between NOAA and its sister agencies in the fields of geodesy, geology, geophysics and geomatics, a Geodesy Community of Practice was established in 2023. This government working group is comprised of geoscience researchers from NOAA, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), National Geo-Intelligence Agency (NGA), and the US Geological Survey (USGS) who share two main goals: strengthen relationships within the geodesy community and increase the geodetic expertise in the U.S.
The four federal agencies discuss various research topics that each agency is doing and how the other agencies can complement these efforts. Together, the federal agencies have identified more than 30 academic centers within the United States that are also grant recipients of one of the agencies, such as the NOAA Geospatial Modeling Grant or NGA’s GEO-ESCON. During these meetings, the Community of Practice working groups discussed the challenges of recruiting students, conducting geodetic and geophysical research, and maintaining faculty in their departments. By listening to their concerns, members in the working groups realized the importance of a shared community. Through these working groups, the federal agencies used the network of academic partners and structured them by geographic region to enable collaboration. Each network is having virtual meetings, discussing funding opportunities to support the academic centers (including funds for recruited students and faculty), and exploring potential participation in national and international scientific forums.
The outcomes of the above-noted collaboration among the academic partners and the governmental agencies of NOAA, NASA, USGS, and NGA were more professional opportunities for both government and academia alike in the field of geodesy and geomatics. As a result of our close partnership, the NOAA’s National Geodetic Survey (NGS) has also committed to providing access to materials and beta versions of its tools and services (e.g., processing data and reference system transformation) for academic researchers and their students, to better prepare students for their academic and/or professional careers (https://alpha.ngs.noaa.gov/).
Through the Community of Practice, key issues that were identified with the respective governmental stakeholders identified challenges that required multiple inter-agency coordination activities and support in research. The expected outcomes for creating common challenges among the members of the Geodesy Community of Practice agency, will:
Examples of some of these challenges include:
Geometric reference system
Geopotential reference system
Reference Frames and height relationships
Satellite Geodesy
Education and training