Attendees Find Vital Information at This Year’s Conference
By Deb Nerud


Although not always sunny outside in Seattle, bright smiles could certainly be found inside the convention center during GITA’s Geospatial Infrastructure Solutions Conference.“I have learned more about AMI and integration to outage management that I had not contemplated before,” said Mark Lane, ArgusON, Franklin, Tenn. As a first-time attendee he is trying to branch out into “different circles.” As of the second morning of the conference, Lane was looking forward to attending more presentations that relate to his key area of interest before heading home. “I haven’t had the chance to walk the [exhibit] floor yet and am anxious to see the products,” he said.

Shenequa Duncombe, Bahamas Telecommunications Company, Nassau, is also at her first conference. “The meetings are good,” she said. “Especially the GPS talks. We are trying to get GIS up and running and I’m interested to hear about other people’s experiences in telecommunications.

Duncombe said that although they have a national GIS center, they are trying to “sync ours with theirs. The government has done the land base for two islands and they are also trying to work with all utilities to share data. Right now telecommunications are trying their own stuff, electric utilities are trying their own stuff, etc. It also makes a difference that we are not one land mass, but have 32 inhabited islands.” Read More

Emergency Responders Find Their Way Through Geospatial Information

By Deb Nerud

The use of geospatial information to support emergency responders was explained to a capacity audience of conference attendees March 11, during the keynote address of the first-ever Geospatial Dimensions of Emergency Response Symposium during Conference 31.

Craig Skalet, senior geospatial advisor, U.S. Geological Survey, USGS Emergency Operations Office, described the history of the USGS and the response process during a natural hazard event. “The USGS has five disciplines,” began Skalet. “Biology, geography, geology, water, and the geospatial information office.” Read More 

Power Panel – Mashups – Consumer Toy or Enterprise Tool?

by Susan Smith, Editor,
GISCafe & GISWeekly

March 11th’s Power Panel entitled “Mashups – Consumer Toy or Enterprise Tool?” drew a large crowd that extended out the door.

Panel moderator and Speaker Award Winner Peter Batty, owner of Spatial Networking, defined “disruptive technology” as being too simple to address the basic needs of the market when it starts out, yet gradually, it meets the needs of the market in a simpler and cheaper way than what is currently available.

That definition certainly describes Google Earth and Microsoft Virtual Earth, two completely non-geospatial products that have changed the GIS landscape irrevocably. Read More

Utilizing GIS for a Stormwater Drainage Utility Implementation

by Susan Smith, Editor,
GISCafe & GISWeekly

On March 12, the educational session entitled “Utilizing GIS for a Stormwater Drainage Utility Implementation” was presented by Marikka Williams, GISP, GIS Administrator, Highland Village, TX. She reiterated a common theme of the infrastructure conference -- that an estimated $1.6 trillion is needed to bring America’s infrastructure up to “good” status by 2010.

In Williams’ part of the world, that concern boils down to how we make enough money to fund infrastructure, namely, a stormwater drainage utility implementation of GIS? For the purpose of this implementation of future storm water management applications, it was decided that since all impervious surfaces in her city are part of the storm drainage network, they should be incorporated into management applications. Read More

Power Panel – The Ties that Bind: GIS Technology for ‘The Greater Good’

by Susan Smith, Editor,
GISCafe & GISWeekly

On March 11, a Power Panel moderated by Matt Ball of Vector 1 Media brought together a number of distinguished professionals to discuss the topic, “GIS Technology for ‘The Greater Good.’”

Panelists included GITA Speaker Award Winner Dr. Bob Austin, the City of Tampa; Ron Langhelm, Booz, Allen & Hamilton; Timothy Nyerges, University of Washington; and Tom Nolan, Seattle Public Utilities. Read More

Canada’s Model for Exchanging Critical Infrastructure Data Improves Cooperation

By Deb Nerud

Paula Rojas and Philip Dawe, both of GeoConnections, provided an overview March 11 on the initiative in Canada to support public safety and emergency response decision makers in preparation for unexpected events.

“Many emergency managers require the need to share information in an efficient manner, and to integrate it in order to support decision making,” Rojas said. “This may require information that they do not own or manage. Read More

2008 Geospatial Technology Report is Available Now!

Do you need a tool to help you monitor what other organizations are doing in their use of geospatial technologies? Get an extensive overview of the state of the geospatial industry with the 2008 Geospatial Technology Report. The report contains detailed information on the completeness, complexity, and direction of geospatial projects being implemented at nearly 500 infrastructure-based organizations —a 21% increase from last year!

The report gives you a comprehensive analysis of geospatial projects in the electric, gas, pipeline, public sector, telco, and water/wastewater markets.

The report continues its detailed coverage on critical industry topics like:

• Budget information for 2006       

• Six-year trend analysis

• Each market’s top three issues

• RDBMS usage details

• Vendor market share info    

•Implementation approaches

• Project expenditure details                

•Top 10 applications and technologies

• Maintenance cycles              

• Land base accuracy and sophistication

This report shows what your peers and the industry as a whole are doing. Use it as a benchmarking tool, to help you plan for the future, and anticipate industry direction. The report is available for purchase by visiting www.gita.org/gtr and clicking on “Resources.

2009 Geospatial Infrastructure Solutions Conference Call for Presentations

New Style of Presentation Solicitation for a Reinvented Event

The Geospatial Information & Technology Association (GITA) has issued a Call for Presentations for its Geospatial infrastructure Solutions Conference 32, slated for April 19-22, 2009, at the Tampa Convention Center in Tampa, Fla. Submissions are due by August 4, 2008.

The Call for presentations is an invitation to create, lead, participate, and/or recommend experts for presentations. To go along with GITA’s refocus on infrastructure, this new type of solicitation includes these new features:

• No written paper requirement,

• Vendor and specific solution references are allowed,

• Attendance-driven conference content and format,

• Expanded infrastructure focus, and

 • A heightened focus on the benefits of new technology.

Complete information on the abstract submission process and an online submission form is available at www.gita.org/gis.

ESRI Empowers Utility Industry with Focus on GIS

by Susan Smith, Editor,
GISCafe & GISWeekly

A Power Point presentation map was displayed during a March 10 press conference noting ESRI’s presence in the infrastructure market around the world and its heavy domination in the U.S. market. Bill Meehan, director of Utility Solutions for ESRI, and former GITA Board member, said that many new contracts are now coming from outside the U.S., in regions such as the Netherlands, Korea, the Middle East and Portugal.

Meehan has written a book on utilities at ESRI—Empowering Electric and Gas Utilities with GIS—a collection of GIS case studies covering a wide span of utility activities. He’s also working on another book which will focus more on detailing data models and workflows. Read More


Attendees learn “How to Build a big Snowball”
By Deb Nerud, BS, MA, NREMT-P

Key Principles for Successful Enterprise Systems in the Google Age were presented Wednesday morning March 12, 2008, by Mark Doherty, executive director, Technology Architecture and Strategy, Intergraph Corporation. He related some of the challenges and opportunities that exist for enterprise systems to the standing room only audience.

“Today’s enterprise systems actually are ‘enterprise’ as they are the single source of truth and are widely used. But having to use them widely and integrate them increases their complexity.” Read More

GIS Can Save Lives
By Deb Nerud, BS, MA, NREMT-P

Sadly most EOCs have push-pin and post-it note technology according to Tom Counts, 3-GIS CEO. “They are aware of GIS, but that’s a far cry from having GIS technology,” he said. Counts gave a synopsis of his experiences at the March 12, 2008 session, Transforming the Emergency Operations Center with GIS.

“Receiving information must be timely and aggregated to overlay common threads and avoid multiple responses to common events,” he began. “The events must be organized and prioritized in order of precedence for maintaining life, community and property. And the response must be measured.” Read More

Intergraph Advances Solutions for Utilities and Communications Providers

Intergraph Corp. continues to evolve its solutions for design, asset, outage and mobile workforce management to enable utilities and communications providers to respond more quickly and efficiently to market opportunities, customer demands and regulatory requirements. More than 500 utilities and communications providers worldwide currently use Intergraph’s geospatially-enabled solutions to design and manage their networks.

Intergraph’s newest design and asset management software now supports Oracle Locator for storing geospatial data, allowing for greater interoperability among other corporate systems and further compliance with corporate and industry data storage standards. Read More

GITA and Galdos Systems Inc. to Present GeoWeb 2008 in July

The collision of GIS and the Internet will have a significant impact on the way geographic information (GI) is utilized in commercial, consumer-oriented and government applications,” said Ron Lake, CEO of Galdos Systems Inc.” He added, “This is an important technology shift that will lead to the emergence of many new markets.”

Galdos has once again partnered with the Geospatial Information & Technology Association (GITA) to undertake the organization and facilitating of the event. Robert M. Samborski, GITA Executive Director, said “This event has been a catalyst for some very important developments in the geospatial community, and we look forward to working with Galdos for another exciting conference.”
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