Summary

The “Natural Resources, Water and Climate, Agile Software Delivery Call Order” (Odin ART) spans two value streams: Core Natural Resources Information Systems and Water and Climate Information Systems. These systems provide data, tools, web, and geospatial services to internal and external users, supporting resource inventory data and services for conservation planning and land management.

Problem and Solution

Several challenges currently plague the state. First, the National Soils Information System (NASIS) suffers from a complex, distributed, and outdated architecture. A dedicated dynamic soils property and soil health database is currently lacking to store data required by the 2018 Farm Bill. Geospatial Services are experiencing capacity and performance issues with growing demand and the need to support higher resolution data. The Water and Climate Information System (WCIS) relies on over 30 interconnected, interdependent applications, with some systems decades old. WCIS has issues with leveraging new telemetry formats, manual and error-prone QA/QC processes, and outdated technology.

Xentity was tasked with developing, enhancing, modernizing, and maintaining NRCS’ resource inventory, dam inventory and monitoring, and geospatial systems. We improved the delivery and quality of soils data by modernizing the NASIS and related components (e.g., Soil Survey Geographic Database (SSURGO), Web Soil Survey (WSS). Xentity also created a Dynamic Soil Properties Hub to collect site-specific soil properties and soil health data. Also, Xentity modernized the authoritative Geospatial Services Platform components like the Geospatial Archive and GeoPortal. Furthermore, we modernized systems supporting automated data collection, validation, forecasting, and quality control of water and climate data. Finally, Xentity improved the curation and delivery of plant lists through the PLANTS online data system.

Outcome and Benefit

As mentioned before, Xentity’s efforts improved the delivery and quality of soils data. Also, our Dynamic Soil Properties Hub helped to collect site-specific soil properties and soil health data. Through developing, enhancing, modernizing and maintaining NRCS’ resource inventory, dam inventory and monitoring, and geospatial systems, we have provided several benefits. First, we have improved the delivery and quality of soils data (tabular and geospatial), products and services. Also, we improved the effectiveness of conservation practice implementation and contributed to an existing soil knowledgebase. Finally, we improved the delivery of geospatial data and services, as well as the delivery of water and climate data. This allows groups like NASIS, WCIS and NRCS to operate on a more modernized resource inventory and architecture, helping them to deliver their own objectives.