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Federal Trail Data Standard

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not applicable

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not applicable

OBJECTIVES

These new standards would be created to meet the following objectives:

Describe a consistent and universal way to express the content of a trail data set or data element.
Codify some commonly used discrete units of trail information, referred to as trail elements or attributes, and thereby provide standardized terminology and definitions to alleviate inconsistencies in the use of trail elements and to simplify the documentation process.
Provide a method for documenting the content of trail information in order to facilitate trail data exchange and offer a migration path from legacy formats to standards-compliant ones.
Provide a statement of best practices for trail data content and data transfer.
Recognize, as a practical matter, that different users may require different levels of standardization.

SCOPE

Trails of all kinds, including Congressionally and Secretarially designated trails, are strongly recognized by the public and governmental agencies as important recreational and cultural resources. The National Park Service (NPS), the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), and the United States Forest Service (USFS) have worked for many years with each other and with States, local governments and trail organizations to promote and develop trails for the benefit of the public. Basic Federal trail authoritie s are found in the National Trails System Act of 1968, as amended (16 USC 1241-1251). Heretofore, there have been no universal standards within the United States for trail terminology and data attributes. However, inter-jurisdictional projects, promotion, and management all suggest the need for universal data standards.

Heretofore, there have been no universal standards within the United States for trail terminology and data attributes. However, inter-jurisdictional projects, promotion, and management all suggest the need for universal data standards. Trail data are used for administrative, wayfinding, emergency response, research, marketing, mapping, GIS, routing and navigation, and many other purposes. The NPS is not aware of any data content standards developed for trails generically. One exercise in this project will be to verify that this is true with state trail programs. In the absence of such standards, it is impossible to tabulate and summarize information about any inter-jurisdictional trail system, let alone the National Trails System as a whole. New FGDC Trail Data Standards would cover the core set of questions and data attributes identified in the draft Interagency Trail Data Standards (ITDS) Version 2 for trails of all kinds, and include attributes that address circumstances special to National Historic Trails and National Scenic Trails. They would not cover all possible trail data, but concentrate on interjurisdictional management and administrative trail data needs. New standards would apply only to trails within the United States, including all U.S. territories and outlying possessions.

English-language trail data, the FGDC Trail Data Standard could be implemented with the standard ASCII character set. To facilitate reproduction in the widest variety of media, the standards would be composed with the standard ASCII character set, even at the cost of simplifying the representation of certain non-English words. Other character sets, such as Unicode, are required to correctly represent trail data in other languages. The character set should be specified in the file- level metadata for any trail file.

The FGDC Trail Data Standards would fundamentally be a descriptive data storage and data processing standard. It is not intended to be an implementation guide for the development of a standards-compliant trail database. The standards would be textual descriptions and not include formal data models or Unified Modeling Language (UML) diagrams. These would serve as general guides to a standard database design. There are many ways to implement databases and applications, and the best way depends on local circumstances, rules, requirements, and regulations.

Implementation rules can be established and maintained in various ways, and it would be beyond the scope of the FGDC Trail Data Standard to provide specific guidance as to which way might be best under given circumstances. Subsequent to the acceptance of these standards, an implementation guide or use cases that concentrate on various data models, relationships, best practices, and implementation strategies could be developed as a companion to the standards if additional resources become available.

The FGDC Trail Data Standard would be intended for use within and among Federal, State, regional, and local government agencies, nongovernmental sectors, and the general public.

Project history

Document	Date	Custodian
Proposal	2007/02/01	FGDC Standards Working Group
Committee draft	2007/11/29	FGDC Standards Working Group
Comments by Julie Binder Maitra	2008/01/09	FGDC Standards Working Group
Comments by Sharon Shin	2008/01/10	FGDC Standards Working Group
Public review draft	2008/05/19	FGDC Secretariat