Transition from the National Invasive Species Information System to the Vegetation Management Action Portal

IB 2019-055
Information Bulletin

UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
BUREAU OF LAND MANAGEMENT
WASHINGTON, D.C. 20240
https://www.blm.gov

August 14, 2019

In Reply, Refer To:
9011, 9015 (220) P

EMS TRANSMISSION 08/19/2019
Instruction Bulletin No. 2019-055

To:                   All Field Office Officials

From:               Assistant Director, Resources and Planning

Subject:           Transition from the National Invasive Species Information System to the Vegetation Management Action Portal

As of April 5, 2019, the National Invasive Species Information Management System (NISIMS) is retired. The Vegetation Management Action Portal (VMAP) is now the official Bureau of Land Management (BLM) system for collecting, storing, editing, analyzing, and reporting all weed and invasive species treatment data. All workflows for entering infestation, survey, proposed and completed treatment data will now go through VMAP. This investment will eventually collapse treatment data entry from the following multiple investments into a single system:  NISIMS, Rangeland Improvement Project System (RIPS), Emergency Stabilization and Rehabilitation System (ESRS) and National Fire Plan Operations and Reporting System (NFPORS) treatment data entry will all occur through VMAP as capabilities are deployed. The system will also provide an interface to receive treatment data from the Forest Resource Information System (FRIS).

VMAP will house standardized data in one location, including its geospatial representation. It will provide a single national view for all projects and management actions formally associated with legacy systems in one data entry portal, including vegetation treatments, structures, and other activities. In addition to supporting the BLM's decision support & planning processes, this data centralization is also necessary to modernize BLM's data services and technology infrastructure, which is critical to further enabling geospatial data.

VMAP deployed its first release on April 5, 2019. For the Weed and Invasive Species Program, this release included: treatment data fields that were historically collected in NISIMS, mobile field data collection workflows using government furnished Android mobile devices for documenting inventory & treatment actions, and the addition of a workflow to create, review and approve an electronic Pesticide Use Proposal (PUP). Weed and invasive species data collectors can enter treatment data directly into the VMAP Web Application, or can collect this data in the field using S1 Mobile Mapper for Android application. Fully validated planned and completed treatments are then viewable from within the VMAP web application itself and are also synchronized to the EGIS VMAP publication geodatabase. Invasive species inventory data is also now captured in the field using the S1 Mobile Mapper for Android application. After this field data is validated, invasive species infestation & survey data will reside in the EGIS National Infestation and Survey geodatabase. It is also included in a reference layer in the VMAP web application. Future deployments of VMAP will integrate the electronic Biological Control Agent Release Proposal (BCARP) and associated approval workflows, and the storage of infestation and survey data directly within VMAP.

Data Migration

In preparation for NISIMS data migration to the VMAP and other appropriate databases, a quality control exercise was performed on the existing NISIMS dataset to identify duplicate records or those with spatial or attribute errors that were inconsistent with the database schema. Wherever possible, these errors were corrected prior to data migration. If a record failed to meet the minimum standard of data quality, it was archived to a file geodatabase and was not included in the data migration to the new database. Of the 631,408 records in the NISIMS WeedInfestationLocation data layer, 39,576 (6 percent) did not meet the minimum data quality standard. These archived records are stored at NISIMS Data Archive, and grouped by state office; field offices can review the records, resolve the errors to bring data up to minimum data quality standards and resubmit data to the database. The NISIMS to Invasive Species DB Migration has detailed information regarding the data migration.

If a record met these minimum data quality standards, but did not possess valid attribute values for all of the new database’s required fields, it was migrated to the new database and flagged as a legacy record (LGCY_FL = Y). All existing NISIMS treatment polygons will eventually be migrated into VMAP as completed treatments; work continues to ensure that the legacy data is migrated correctly. To facilitate the data migration process, a VMAP Project area will be created for each field office with associated NISIMS treatment data. All legacy NISIMS treatments will be associated with this project. Once migrated, these records will also be available in the EGIS VMAP publication geodatabase.

Until the data migration of legacy NISIMS treatments is completed, users may access legacy NISIMS data on the BLM Geospatial Gateway. However, once the migration is complete and VMAP has an associated link, this link will be deactivated: https://blmspace.blm.doi.net/oc/intra/drs/SitePages/BLM%20National%20Invasive%20Species%20Information%20Management%20System%20(NISIMS).aspx

The VMAP project lead will issue an IB with further information on additional enhancements and functionality planned for VMAP by the end of calendar year 2019. A Project Change Management Board (PCMB) consisting of the Washington Office program leads will manage VMAP, including Weed and Invasive Species. IB 2019-043 Vegetation Management Action Portal Deployment and Training Opportunities issued on June 25, 2019 provided a schedule for VMAP training. State BLM Weed and Invasive Species program leads may conduct future training to demonstrate the further extended capabilities and linkages to other geospatial data, or systems in coordination with VMAP (i.e., Enterprise Geospatial Information System (EGIS)). Any future training will be posted to the training calendar on the VMAP SharePoint site. The data collection, viewing, and reporting within VMAP has utility in answering data calls and providing planned and implemented project/management actions data for analysis and prioritization.

Updates on VMAP are available on the monthly IRM newsletters . The VMAP Training videos are also available on the BLM Vimeo Channel and the VMAP SharePoint site with additional training materials https://doiportal.doi.net/blm/WO200/VMAP/Training%20Materials/Forms/AllItems.aspx.

Additional information on VMAP is located on the VMAP SharePoint site. https://doiportal.doi.net/blm/WO200/VMAP/SitePages/Home.aspx

Specific information on the National Infestation and Survey EGIS Geodatabase is located within the VMAP SharePoint site. https://doiportal.doi.net/blm/WO200/VMAP/Shared%20Documents/Weeds%20and%20Invasives

If you have any questions, contact Gina Ramos, Senior Weed Specialist, at 202-912-7226, John Reitsma, GIS Coordinator at 303-236-1984, or Sean Haile, Acting WO-200 IRM Advisor at 503-808-6380.

 

Signed by:                                                                   Authenticated by:
Steve Tryon                                                                 Robert M. Williams
Acting, Assistant Director                                          Division of Business Resoureces,WO-850
Resources and Planning