Prepared by

The Cultural Resource Geographic Information System Facility
Heritage Documentation Programs
National Park Service

Background:
Historic Preservation programs throughout the Federal government rely on cultural resource geospatial information to comply with preservation laws, regulations, and guidelines. There are many established laws and implementing regulations that call for the collection and maintenance of inventory information. Geospatial information such as coordinates, addresses, boundaries, footprints, etc. are used in Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) to identify the location of cultural resources that are within a project and to evaluate their integrity based in part on location, association, and setting. Agencies are required to mitigate a project’s impact on historically significant cultural resources through documentation, excavation, or other treatment measures. These measures can involve detailed mapping of the resources’ constituent components such as the distribution of archeological sites or artifacts or the contributing buildings to an historic district or cultural landscape elements of larger cultural landscape.

Under Section 110 of the NHPA each Federal agency is required to develop a preservation program that systematically identifies, nominates to the National Register of Historic Places, and protects cultural resources under their management or jurisdiction. The implementing regulations of Section 110 require Federal agencies to follow the Secretary of the Interiors Standards and Guidelines for Archeology and Historic Preservation. These standards and guidelines state that agencies should define the boundaries of the surveyed area and record the precise location of all properties identified. The spatial extent or boundaries of cultural resources are also required information for nominating historic properties to the National Register of Historic Places (36 CFR 60.5) and designating properties as a National Historic Landmarks (36 CFR 65). Under Section 14(a) of the Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979 agencies in the Department of the Interior, Agriculture, Defense, and the Tennessee Valley Authority are required to conduct archaeological surveys to determine the location and extent of archaeological resources on lands they manage. Geospatial information is also required under Abandoned Shipwreck Act of 1988, the Historic Sites Act of 1935, the Internal Revenue Codes of 1986 and 1990, and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990.

There are numerous of sources of attribute and spatial data for cultural resources even within a single agency, let alone all Federal agencies and their partners. Within the National Park Service, for example there are fourteen separate databases that describe the cultural resources managed by NPS. Geospatial information on these cultural resources is collected on 3000 cultural landscapes, 27,000 historic buildings and structures, 1,200 Ethnographic resources, 63,000 archeological sites, and over 500 American battlefields. This information is critical to accomplishing the Park Service’s mission of safeguarding and protecting its heritage assets for future generations.

The National Park Service maintains partnerships and conducts cultural resource surveys and documentation activities outside of the Park System. Cultural resource geospatial data plays a key role in these activities. The National Historic Preservation Act mandates that each state create and maintain an inventory of historic properties. The Historic Preservation Fund, which is administered by the National Park Service, assists State Historic Preservation Offices (SHPO) in conducting surveys and maintaining their comprehensive inventories. These inventories fulfill two key functions. First they are used by Federal agencies as part of their Section 106 surveys. And second, these inventories represent the pool from which properties are nominated to the National Register of Historic Places. Collectively the inventories contain geospatial data on over 4.5 million historic properties. In most cases the geospatial data take the form of locational data plotted on USGS 1:24000 Topographic Quadrangle Maps although street addresses and UTM coordinate information are stored in SHPO databases.

The National Register of Historic Places contains over 75,000 historic buildings, structures, sites, objects and Districts. Within the 15,000 historic districts listed on the National Register there are over 1 million contributing historic properties. Like the statewide inventories, cultural resource geospatial data in the National Register can be found on paper USGS 1:24000 Topographic Quadrangle Maps, as street addresses appearing on the nomination form, or as UTM coordinates stored in the National Register Information System. Currently contributing properties to National Register Historic Districts do not have coordinate data although historic districts listed after 1980 do contain street addresses which have the potential to be geocoded. Geospatial data from the NRIS is used by other Federal agencies such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency in disaster planning and mitigation, by numerous Federal agencies for Section 106 projects, and by state and local governments for zoning and rehabilitation tax credit purposes, among other uses.

The National Historic Landmark program has designated close to 2,400 historic places that possess exceptional value or quality in illustrating or interpreting the heritage of the United States. Like the National Register of Historic Places, NHL geospatial data are plotted on paper USGS 1:24,000 Topographic Quadrangle Maps. Because every NHL is listed on the National Register, street addresses and UTM coordinates are stored in the National Register Information System. Geospatial information is used in monitoring the condition of NHLs.

Heritage Documentation Programs (Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), Historic American Engineering Record (HAER), Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS)) has documented over 38,000 historic properties with measured drawings, large-format photographs, and historical narratives that form part of the Library of Congress’ Built in America Collection. Additionally, Heritage Documentation Programs maintains a database that describes these documentation projects, enhances term search capabilities, and contains UTM coordinates for all documented historic properties. The Secretary of the Interior's Standards and Guidelines for Architectural, engineering and landscape documentation are commonly referred to as HABS/HAER standards.

After 40 years of conducting survey and maintaining inventories, the volume of cultural resource geospatial data has reached a point where it is no longer accessible in paper form. Search times are increasingly longer to retrieve needed geospatial information. Paper maps limit the kind of spatial analyses one can perform. And the distribution of geospatial data in large quantities is all but impossible. The conversion of geospatial cultural resource data from paper to digital must be done if cultural resources are to be adequately protected in an increasingly time sensitive and digital development environment. Many Federal and State preservation agencies have independently converted their paper data to digital spatial data without the guidance of any overarching standards. In the absence of such spatial standards these efforts will result in inconsistency, inefficiency, and ultimately a loss of credibility to the national cultural resource geospatial dataset.

As Federal, state and local agencies begin to incorporate new data collected more accurately with global positioning systems (GPS), this data must be clearly distinct from legacy data created from paper records, yet it must be incorporated into the same databases and geospatial datasets. Data created through the use of GIS must also be accommodated and included in these established systems without causing the restructuring of survey methodologies or databases which contain cultural resource information within the National Park Service or any other Federal, State, or local agency.

Currently there are no standards for cultural resource spatial data. Without such standards it is difficult to exchange cultural resource geospatial data among agencies and organizations. Geospatial data for any one cultural resource may be created by different agencies resulting in data that are inconsistent with each other. For some cultural resources geospatial data are not collected at all e.g. contributing properties to historic districts, contributing elements to cultural landscapes, or ethnographic sites. In other cases, collecting geospatial data is optional. Standards would facilitate the conversion of cultural resource geospatial data from paper to digital format, and help in the incorporation of new data with legacy data. This conversion is absolutely essential if timely, accurate, and consistent cultural resource geospatial data is to be delivered to those who need it. The standards would give those who are performing the conversion a set of principles to use in creating this digital geospatial data. Thus no matter where the data is being converted from legacy or create new, a certain level of consistency is being adhered to. Moreover, users will be able to evaluate the data they are receiving against these standards and make a well informed decision on the data’s usefulness.

The proposed standards are designed to fill this gap and provide a framework for Federal agencies to follow when creating, maintaining, and distributing cultural resource spatial data. The proposed standards insure that each cultural resource has geospatial data. They insure that geospatial data are linked to attribute databases that describe each cultural resource. Moreover the proposed standards address agency responsibilities to safeguard sensitive geospatial data. And finally, the proposed standards identify the feature level metadata that should accompany each geospatial dataset. The datasets created, maintained, and distributed using these standards will allow state, local, tribal, and Federal agencies to share data more efficiently. The resulting national cultural resource datasets should become available for planning efforts at all levels of government resulting in better protection of our important cultural heritage.

The proposed standards are an outcome of OMB Circular A-16 (revised in August 2002) which identified the National Park Service as the lead agency to develop spatial standards for cultural resources. Within NPS, the CRGIS Facility is the lead program to guide the proposed standards through the standards making process. This document marks the formal beginning of the standards making process within the NPS. Once adopted for NPS, the CRGIS will begin to move the standards through the DOI standards making process and ultimately to the Federal Geographic Data Committee for Federal-wide adoption. In beginning with NPS, CRGIS sought the input from the NPS cultural resource database managers in the form of two workshops designed to familiarize them with the concept of spatial standards and engage them on the importance of cultural resource spatial data and priorities for creating the standards. Draft standards were then developed that reflected the discussions held during the workshop. These draft standards were then used to develop an implementation model using the geodatabase concept. The implementation model was then field tested during the FEMA Section 106 survey and mitigation project in New Orleans and surrounding parishes and in the U.S. World Heritage Sites geodatabase development project. Both field tests confirmed the utility of the implementation data model and provide a strong basis to begin to the process of adopting the standards.

Abstract: This draft data transfer standard describes a proposed structure for cultural resources depicted using points, lines, or polygons. Multiple feature geometries may coexist for the same cultural resource as a result of overlapping surveys each with their own particular purpose and bias. All cultural resources identified on cultural resource inventories of Federal agencies including the National Park Service, and optionally, State and Tribal Historic Preservation Offices, are covered by these standards. Attribute data are intentionally limited to those necessary for spatial data maintenance and stewardship. Data from external database systems are intended to link with these data to provide basic feature attributes. The means to maintain unique identifiers for each building (Cultural_Resource_ID), Survey_ID, as well as unique geometries associated with that feature (Location_ID) are through the use of Globally Unique Identifiers (GUIDs) assigned by the database. Information about the source and vintage of individual points, lines, or polygons are documented within the Edit_Date and Pnts_Notes attributes.

Purpose: A current, accurate representation of all inventoried cultural resources is of interest to Federal agencies, the NPS, and its State and Tribal preservation partners. This interest stems from the regulatory processes of managing cultural resources that are consistent with the National Historic Preservation Act as Amended, the National Environmental Policy Act as Amended, the Archaeological Resources Protection Act, and other laws related to cultural resources. The regulations promulgating these laws require the use of spatial data in support of various decisions and actions related to cultural resource management. Cultural resource geospatial information is also needed by NPS personnel, cooperators, and the public for map display and analysis. Collectively, the cultural resource datasets are intended to be a comprehensive inventory of all cultural resources of interest to the Federal government. This dataset provides feature geometry and is intended to be supplemented with attributes maintained by other external database systems.

The draft standards are presented below for your review and comment. Please submitting your comments and suggestions to: NPS_CRGIS@nps.

Draft standards for creating cultural resource spatial data:

• Agencies that create, maintain, or distribute cultural resource spatial data must do so in a Geographic Information Systems environment.

• A cultural resource must be represented at a minimum by a point or line feature.

• A newly inventoried cultural resource must be defined by a polygon when appropriate.

• Contributing cultural resources to larger aggregate cultural resources such as historic districts or historic landscapes must be represented at a minimum by a point or line feature. The location of vertices defining the polygon boundary of a cultural resource must meet USGS National Mapping Standard for 1:24000 i.e. 90 percent of the vertices must be within 12 meters of their true position. In cases where the locational accuracy is unknown or unknowable, agencies should provide either a best estimate or enter “Unknown” in the feature metadata for that resource.

• Agencies conducting cultural resources surveys must use Global Positioning System survey instruments capable of storing data dictionaries.

• The positional accuracy for vertices defining the polygon boundary of a newly inventoried cultural resource must be within +/- 3 meters of their true position for 90 percent of the vertices.

• Address fields created for the purpose of geo-coding the location of cultural resources must follow the FGDC Address Content Standard (currently a FGDC draft standard).

• Legacy data may be used as a source for creating spatial data for cultural resources if the feature metadata (see below) is known for the legacy data.

• User defined coordinate systems e.g. an archaeological site grid must be tied into a real world coordinate system.

Draft standards for linking spatial data to cultural resource databases

• Points, lines, or polygon boundaries for cultural resources must be associated with attributes that describe these cultural resources.

• When attribute data on a given cultural resource appears in more than one database, each database must cross referenced to the spatial data representing the cultural resource.

Draft standards for safeguarding sensitive spatial cultural resource data:

• Release of sensitive locational data must be done in compliance with the policy of the originating agency.

• Originating agencies must have an official written and published policy on the release of sensitive locational data before cultural resource data is released to the public, other governmental agencies, or within their own agency. Such policy must subscribe to the disclosure standards below.

• Security measure must exist to prevent the inadvertent or unauthorized release of sensitive locational information before release to the public or other governmental agencies.

• A cultural resource whose location is to be restricted must be explicitly identified on a case by case basis. Categorical exclusion is only acceptable in the case of archeological sites on Federal lands.

• A cultural resource's location must be withheld where the conditions indicated in Section 304 of the National Historic Preservation Act and Archeological Resources Protection Act Section (9)(a)(2) are applicable.

• A cultural resource's location may be disclosed if:
• If none of the conditions identified under withholding disclosure apply
• Its location is generally know to the public
• The locational information is needed to conduct research, preservation planning, Section 110 activities, or Section 106 projects

• In cases where disclosure would be potentially harmful but disclosure is necessary for regulatory purposes, agencies need to develop mechanisms for limited disclosure, confidentiality agreements, and other techniques for generalizing the locations of such resources.
  

Draft spatial metadata standards for cultural resources:

• Dataset level metadata for point, line, or polygon boundaries must be FGDC compliant for spatial metadata.

• Feature level metadata for individual points, lines, or polygon boundaries must address the following questions:
• Does the boundary represent a single cultural resource or an aggregate cultural resource?
• Does the boundary circumscribe, buffer, or represent the actual boundary of the cultural resource?
• What method was used to locate and plot the cultural resource? (e.g. address matching, GPS survey, triangulation w/ compass, triangulation with transit, trilateration with tape, trilateration by pacing, unknown etc.?
• When was the boundary created?
• When was the boundary last updated?
• Who or what institution created the boundary?
• What map datum was used in plotting the location of the cultural resource?
• What coordinate system was used in plotting the location of the cultural resource?
• If using GPS what was the level of accuracy?
• What use constraints are there on the boundary? e.g. suitable for Section 106 compliance, National Register boundary , or limited to research etc .

• Feature level metadata must be entered as fields in the spatial attribute table.