GIS user group holds first symposium

Harvard’s Geographic Information Science (GIS) User Group will celebrate GIS Day by holding its first symposium – “GIS at Harvard and Beyond” – at the Science Center’s Lecture Hall D on Nov. 20. The symposium will include demonstrations, poster presentations, and panel discussions from noon to 7 p.m.

Panel topics will include “Using GIS to Achieve a Sustainable Society,” “GIS as a Tool in Managing Terrorist Attacks and Other Emergencies,” and “Envisioning a Geo-spatial Society: Data-Driven and Web-Serviced?”

Graduate School of Design alumni Jack Dangermond, founder and president of ESRI, Inc., the world’s largest GIS-dedicated research and development organization, will deliver the keynote address. Harvard professors, industry experts, and other key leaders will join the discussion.

“The Harvard GIS User Group has organized the GIS Day symposium to focus University-wide attention on GIS and its role at Harvard,” said Lucia Lovison-Golob, symposium coordinator and the group’s chairperson.

GIS Day was established to encourage GIS professionals, educators, and students to demonstrate the power of this particular field’s applications in solving real-world problems. A multidisciplinary field in which spatial information is mapped out, the application of GIS is perhaps best known in the functioning of global positioning systems.

National sponsors for GIS Day include the Association of American Geographers, the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science, the United States Geological Survey, The Library of Congress, Sun Microsystems, the National Geographic Society, and ESRI, Inc.

For more information, visit the Web site at http://www.gis.harvard.edu.