Other staff are in “All Hands on board” with implementation, says Brett Howe, former head of the Geodetic Services Department at NGS, who decided to retire at the end of April. Despite the dedicated personnel, Howe says that the loss of many high -level management with decades of experience and institutional knowledge means that the agency cannot afford further cuts.
“If we are able to hire some people, we will still have problems achieving time for time 2025 and 2026 [for the rollout]But we will be able to make it work, “he says.” If there are further cuts or we are unable to do ours [National Spatial Reference System] Modernization plan, and then we reach a year and a half, and we lose more people – either because of other dismissals, or simply retire – then I think we have real trouble. I wonder how we function as an agency.
“This time ongoing NSR modernization plans are still in line with dates in notification of the federal register,” said Gillespie. “NGS will issue basic data and support for testing and feedback products in 2025.
The fate of NG under the Trump administration is unclear. The NOAA budget proposal from the White House Management and Budget Office sent to the Agency in April reduces the budget at the National Ocean Service, which houses NGS by more than half. The 2025 project does not mention NG by name, but requires the transfer of NOAA research options to other agencies.
“We do not speculate about things that may happen in the future,” said Gillespie, when asked about potential upcoming changes in the agency. “Noaa will continue to provide information about the weather, forecast and warnings and conduct research in accordance with our public safety mission” –
A acute decline in the number of staff in NGS is the end of a long decline in geodesy practice in the USA. In 2022, a group of leading geodetic experts is the author paper About what they called the crisis of the “Gesy” USA “, describing in detail how other world powers have invested in surveying in the last three decades, while the US has fallen funding and training. China has invested particularly in the creation of more geodesy: the country has completed from 9,000 to 12,500 geodesy students, many of which are employed by the government. graduated with advanced geodetic degrees from American universities over the past decade.
This, as the authors say, contributed to the rapid overtaking of the US in geopolitative technologies and disciplines. Nowhere is it clearer than in the Chinese satellite navigation system, Beidou, which was profit The accuracy of the GPS system in the USA. In 2023, the US Government Advisory Council on GPS found in the note That GPS is now “very worse” to Beidou.
Like other cuts of public sciences carried out under the Trump administration, losses from blows to this agency can be significant. 2012 analysis He stated that every taxpayer dollar spent on the NGS coastal mapping program returned $ 35 to the benefit, while 2019 report He stated that the NGS program, which models gravitational fields, would provide USD $ 4.2 to USD 13.3 billion within 10 years. The private sector is also largely based on public data provided by NGS. Some analyzes predict that the geospatial economy will grow 1 trillion dollars until the end of the decade. Experts say they are even more crucial, how they have an updated spatial reference system in the US, as well as institutional knowledge about basic science on how to measure and understand our land.
Many industries “relate to the fact that positioning high accuracy”, which is associated with advanced geospatial technology, says Doyle: “They do not understand the basics of science. Now you have all these people striking buttons and the acquisition of numbers, and only a petite percentage of them really understands what the numbers mean and what one set of numbers relates.