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On November 20, the Harvard
GIS User Group will celebrate GIS Day at Harvard University with
a symposium titled "GIS at Harvard and Beyond." The
symposium will showcase Geographic Information Science research,
teaching, and learning at Harvard Uhniversity and will include
as speakers a blue-ribbon roster of GIS experts from industry
and academia.
What is GIS Day?
GIS Day is a worldwide annual
event on November 20 in celebration of GIS and its potential,
and it encourages schools, businesses, and research institutions
to showcase GIS applications to solve real-world problems. At
the national level, GIS Day is principally sponsored by the National
Geographic Society, Association of American Geographers, University
Consortium for Geographic Information Science, United States Geological
Survey, Library of Congress, Sun Microsystems, and ESRI.
The Harvard GIS User Group
decided to celebrate GIS Day by holding the symposium in order
to focus attention on GIS and the excellent GIS resources at Harvard.
In addition, the GIS Day Symposium is designed to raise awareness
about GIS among undergraduates and graduate students at Harvard
and in the greater Boston-area.
What is the topic of
GIS Day?
Nationwide, the topic of GIS
Day this year is open spaces and how GIS enables people to manage
and monitor this precious national treasure. With increasing population
and urban sprawl, we cannot take for granted the preservation
of any open spaces, even the national parks. GIS allows people
to monitor open spaces and to act in case of emergencies, such
as wildfires.
GIS at Harvard and Beyond
As this year is the first time
that Harvard has celebrated GIS Day with a symposium, the Harvard
GIS User Group decided to deviate from the national focus on open
spaces and instead to concentrate on GIS at Harvard and the surrounding
community. We decided to organize a series of three panel discussions
that deal with the role of GIS in managing critical issues in
our society. Special emphasis will be given to the important contributions
that GIS makes to a wide range of different disciplines such as
urban planning, environmental sciences, life sciences, public
health, economics, history, archaeology, computer science, utility
management, facility management, and remote sensing.
The Harvard GIS Day Symposium
will include GIS demonstrations, posters, and three panel discussions.The
demonstrations will begin at 12 noon and will continue until 2
pm, while the poster session will take place from 12 noon until
7 pm. The series of panel discussions will start at 2:30 pm with
a keynote presentation by Jack Dangermond, founder and president
of ESRI, and the panel discussions will end at 6:30 pm.
The
conference is open to the general public.
Program
First Panel: Using GIS to Achieve a Sustainable Society
Keynote Speaker:
Jack Dangermond, ESRI, Inc., Harvard MLA '69.
This presentation is a homecoming for Jack Dangermond, founder
and president of ESRI, Inc. He attended the Harvard School of
Design and graduated with a Masters of Landscape Architecture
in 1969. That year, he founded ESRI, which has become the largest
GIS-focused research and development organization worldwide, with
2,600 staff members and 2001 revenues of $427 million. ESRI's
GIS software products, such as ArcInfo and ArcGIS, are used by
more than 300,000 organizations around the world.
The Harvard GIS User Group is extremely honored that Jack
Dangermond will deliver the keynote speach at the first GIS Day
Symposium at Harvard University. Students and reseachers will
have the opportunity to hear the vision of one of GIS's pioneers
and become inspired by his actions and thoughts.
In September 2002, in Johannesburg, South Africa, world leaders
at the World Summit on Sustainable Development declared the following
in their "Plan of Implementation":
". . . Promote the development and wider use of earth
observation technologies, including satellite remote sensing,
global mapping, and geographic information systems, to collect
quality data on environmental impacts, land use, and land-use
changes, including through urgent actions at all levels to: strengthen
cooperation and coordination among global observing systems and
research programmes . . . , develop information systems that make
the sharing of valuable data possible . . . , encourage initiatives
and partnerships for global mapping . . . , collect data that
are accurate, long-term, consistent, and reliable . . . , use
satellite and remote-sensing technologies for data collection
and further improvement of ground-based observations . . . , access,
explore, and use geographic information by utilizing technologies
of satellite remote sensing, satellite global positioning, mapping,
and geographic information systems."
A panel of Harvard professors will explore whether GIS technology
(broadly considered GPS, Geographic Information Systems, aerial
photography and remote sensing) is one of our best "Weapons
of Mass Salvation," or whether it is another technology that
will become obsolete in a five-year life cycle. The panelists
will use the statement from the Plan of Implementation as a starting
point for a discussion of the potential for GIS in achieving a
sustainable society. The panelists will describe the activities
at Harvard University in applying GIS technology to different
disciplines and to its own operations. They will also explore
what role an academic institution such as Harvard may play in
developing GIS technology to achieve a sustainable society.
Second Panel: GIS as a Tool for Managing Terrorist
Attacks and Other Emergencies
Keynote Speaker: Jim Hall, PlanGraphics, Inc.
The World Trade Center attacks on September 11, 2001, represented
a special challenge for the GIS community in New York City. The
third building that collapsed following the terrorist attacks
was the New York City Emergency Response Center, which contained
a sophisticated GIS system. Jim Hall of PlanGraphics, Inc. will
describe how a team of determined GIS and other IT professionals
succeeded in establishing a new GIS-based emergency response center
within days and how GIS technology was an essential element in
the decision-making process during the subsequent response to
the World Trade Center attacks. He will also discuss the lessons
learned for future emergencies.
During the panel discussion, Harvard professors will reflect
on their use of GIS technology to monitor diseases and other emergencies
around the world. They will also discuss how they are using GIS
and remote sensing to assist in minimizing the future impact of
natural disasters, such as earthquakes. Are there new frontiers
for deploying GIS technology?
Third Panel: Envisioning a Geospatial Society: Data
Driven and Web Serviced?
Keynote Speaker: James Steiner, Oracle, Inc.
In an ever-increasing, integrated "digital earth,"
with faster computers and smaller and more powerful mobile wireless
devices, issues related to data collection and dissemination to
a distributed, interoperable environment have become increasingly
critical. At the national level, GIS professionals are implementing
the Spatial Data Infrastructure and are actively involved in developing
interoperable GIS platforms and services. With GIS-based applications,
students and other users will be able to perform spatial-temporal
data analysis in near-real time in a collaborative multimedia
environment and to put events in an historical context.
In this session, the panelists will discuss efforts at Harvard
to use GIS technology to make accessible data from Harvard's repositories.
They will also discuss their efforts to create archaeological
and historical databases with GIS technology. In addition, the
panelists will explore the following questions: What issues will
a geospatial web-serviced society confront? Are we going soon
to live any place, any time immersed in a virtual reality? Will
our society succumb to a "loss of historical memory"
in the process, or will the exploration of digitally reconstructed
cities of antiquity through GIS technology revive classical studies?
What infrastructure is in place for guaranteeing timely and accurate
data collection and analysis, or will we be crowded out by an
infinite amount of information? What are we as an academic community
going to do about bridging the digital divide in GIS technology?
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