Trails of all kinds, including Congressionally and secretarially-designated trails, are strongly recognized by the public and governmental agencies as important recreational and cultural resource corridors. 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.
Universal trail data standards will enable national, regional, state, and trail-level managers and the public to use mutually understood terminology for recording, retrieving and applying spatial and tabular information. Data standards will make it easier for trail information to be accessed, exchanged and used by more than one individual, agency or group. Ease in sharing data increases the capability for enhanced and consistent mapping, inventory, monitoring, condition assessment, maintenance, costing, budgeting, information retrieval, and summary reporting for most internal and external needs.
The collection, storage, and management of trail-related data are important components of everyday business activities in many Federal and State land-managing agencies, trail organizations, and businesses. From a management perspective, trails data must often mesh closely with other types of infrastructure, resource, and facility enterprise data. For the public using paper maps, the internet, GPS or other instrumentation, standard data formats enable users to consistently and predictably identify specific trails and a core set of corresponding information. Today, digital trail data are a necessity throughout a trail data management life-cycle, from trail planning through design, construction, operation, and maintenance. Automating, sharing, and leveraging trail data through a widely-accepted standard can provide a variety of important benefits:
- Efficiency – creating and gathering trail data that are standardized and readily usable.
- Compatibility – compiling data from one project or discipline that can be compatible with other applications;
- Consistency – using the same standards, meshing data produced by one organization with that developed by another;
- Speed – hastening the availability of data through a reduction in duplicative efforts and lowered production costs (Applications can be developed more quickly and with more interoperability by using existing standards-compliant data);
- Conflict resolution – resolving conflicting trail data more easily if compliant to the same standards;
- Reliability – improving the quality of shared trail data by increasing the number of individuals who find and correct errors; and
- Reusability – allow maximum reuse across agencies and support objectives of E-Government (E-Gov) initiatives and enterprise architecture.
URL: | https://www.nps.gov/gis/trails/ |
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Related Keywords
- Department of Agriculture (USDA Forest Service)
- Department of Interior
- Existing Trail
- Federal Agency
- Federal Program
- Federal Wilderness Area
- FTDS: Federal Trail Data Standards
- NPS: National Park Service
- Trail
- Trail Class
- Trail Constructed Feature
- Trail Facility
- Trailhead
- Trail Setting
- Trail Surface
- Trail Tread
Related Section Numbers
- Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 (with amendments issued through 2008), (1)
- 36 CFR Part 1191 ABA Accessibility Guidelines, Outdoor Developed Areas - Preamble, (3)
- 36 CFR Part 1191 ABA Accessibility Guidelines, Outdoor Developed Areas, (3)
- ABA Accessibility Standard for GSA Facilities Pocket Guide, (2)
- 2013 Forest Service Outdoor Recreation Accessibility Guidelines (FSORAG), (1)
- 2013 Forest Service Trail Accessibility Guidelines (FSTAG), (5)
- Accessibility Guidebook for Outdoor Recreation and Trails, (4)
- Outdoor Developed Areas: A Summary of Accessibility Standards for Federal Outdoor Developed Areas, (1)
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