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Locational Information |  |
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Locational Data Improvement Project (LDIP)EPA launched the Locational Data Improvement Project (LDIP) in 1996 to improve the Agency's location data (latitudes and longitudes) for facilities and other points of environmental concern. EPA headquarters is working with representatives from the regional offices and states to increase the number of Envirofacts records with latitude and longitude coordinates. One aspect of this work is the use of proper documentation as referenced in the Agency's Locational Data Standard. Recognizing the need to improve the number and quality of latitude and longitude coordinates for EPA-regulated facilities, the Office of Environmental Information (OEI) launched LDIP as a vehicle to acquire high-quality locational data for each facility. Critical LDIP activities include maintaining locational information in the Envirofacts Warehouse, improving facility identification through geocoding (i.e., calculating a coordinate value for an entity based on the reported full location address for that entity), supporting the Facility Registry System (FRS), and providing the Geographic Information System (GIS) community in program system offices with access to locational data. Another important aspect of LDIP is the requirement that all locational information in Envirofacts retain Method, Accuracy, and Description (MAD) codes. These codes, which conform to the Locational Data Standard, describe every aspect of the collection of that particular location. For locational data that resided in the programmatic databases prior to LDIP, it was difficult to know the quality of a particular coordinate, how accurate it was, and what it actually represented, because Method, Accuracy, and Description information was, for the most part, not available. The goal of LDIP is to obtain latitude/longitude coordinate information of documented origin for all of EPA's regulated facilities and sites, operable units, and environmental monitoring and observation locations.
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