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Tuesday, February 17. 2009

The U.S. Economic Stimulus Package - What's in it for Geospatial

Geospatial Business


The economic stimulus package signed today into law by President Barack Obama totals $787 Billion. Is there anything in this bill that can be remotely "tagged" as stimulating the geospatial industry? There's been lots of talk about the "trickle down" effect of how infrastructure projects will spur the business of road and building design, site selection, and analysis. But is there anything more specific than that? The Wall Street Journal published a fairly comprehensive list of where spending will be appropriated. So, let's analyze, albeit as an "educated guess," where the spending "might" impact the geospatial technology sector:


I've broken down the list into two categories: Will Impact & Might Impact


Will Impact:
  1. Grants for capital investments in designated high-speed rail corridors - $8B
  2. Grants for highway improvements - $29B
  3. Renovation of forest roads, bridges and trails, remediation of abandoned mines, removal of barriers to fish and other critical habitat - $650M
  4. Repairing facilities and equipment for U.S. Geological Survey seismic, volcano, monitoring and stream gages - $140M
  5. Modernization of the electric grid - $4.4B

Might Impact:
  1. Funding for watershed and flood prevention projects - $290M
  2. Urban industrial core and rural economic recovery programs - $150M
  3. Public transit improvements and infrastructure investments - $8.4B
  4. Grants for airport improvements - $1.1B
  5. Grants for security upgrades to ports - $150M
  6. Repairing and removing bridges hazardous to marine navigation - $142M
  7. Border security fencing and technology - $100M
  8. Funding for Homeland Security departmental site security, IT infrastructure, furniture, fixtures and other costs for headquarters - $200M
  9. Clean-up of 'brownfield' former industrial sites - $100
  10. NASA climate research - $400M
  11. Extra money for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration facilities and research - $230M
  12. Salaries and expenses for program to create broadband inventory map of the country - $350M
  13. Extra money for Census Bureau - $1B


So, there you have it. I'd liked to hear from readers about their interpretation.
Posted by Joe Francica in Geospatial Business at 18:47 | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0)

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No doubt there will be slight trickle down benefits to our geospatial industry. Whether big players like ESRI will get a windfall is doubtful.

However, as any aware person would be I am deeply disturbed by this stimulus plan's big spending spree and other enormous unfunded fiscal binges by the government for bailouts of every stripe.

Besides weighting down present and future generations with massive tax obligations to pay for it all I cringe at the thought of local and state governments acting Soviet style as appendages of the Central Government in accepting forthcoming federal loot with strings attached.
#1 Paul on 2009-02-20 14:32 (Reply)

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