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What We Do

By Center of Excellence for Geospatial Information Science (CEGIS)

The USGS Center of Excellence for Geospatial Information Science  (CEGIS), the basic research group for the National Geospatial Program, researches and develops solutions and innovations  for The National Map as part of the National Spatial Data Infrastructure, the emerging Geospatial and GeoSemantic Web. CEGIS researchers are Federal scientists in the USGS that lead collaborative research projects involving other Federal researchers and academic affiliates from the university environment. CEGIS research is supported through the National Geospatial Technical Operations Center and results of the research  often become operational components for The National Map, its products and services, such as US Topo.

CEGIS research in electronic topographic mapping, generalization for cartographic display and hydrological modeling, and application of HPC to geospatial data processing, particularly lidar, has led to operational capabilities in these areas. CEGIS research continues in these areas as well as in the areas of geospatial data integration and geospatial semantics and ontology for topographic data representation and use which are leading to new capabilities and processes in artificially intelligent systems and maps as knowledge bases.