geographic information system

New Geographic Information Systems Office

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CT ECO interactive 3D Lidar Point Viewer map showing downtown Hartford region.
CT ECO interactive 3D Lidar Point Viewer map
showing downtown Hartford region.

Geospatial Educator Emily Wilson was named as the UConn representative to the newly formed Geographic Information Systems Advisory Council. The Council was established by the Connecticut Legislature last session in a bill that created a state Geographic Information Systems Office within the Office of Policy and Management, a Geographic Information Officer (GIO) to oversee the new Office, and the Council to Advise the GIO. Prior to this bill, Connecticut was one of only a handful of states without a state GIS office. Emily has been at the forefront of explaining the many reasons that Connecticut needs to reduce redundancy, and increase efficiency with respect to the collection and coordination of mapping data. For more information on our work with geographic information systems visit CLEAR.uconn.edu.

Article by Chet Arnold

Nigerian Visitors

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Dr. YA Umar and Dr. DB Maikaje from the Nigerian Defense Academy (it is similar to West Point) traveled to the UConn Extension office in Haddam last week. They took our Geospatial Training Program’s 3-day Geographic Information System (GIS) training course with Cary Chadwick and Emily Wilson. Dr. Umar and Dr. Maikaje are both epidemiologists in the Pathobiology department who are hoping to use what they learn to track/map the incidence of various diseases in Nigeria.

GISworkstations CC_EW_YU_DM

Cary_BubaMaikaje stated, “What we discovered was an atmosphere completely conducive to effective research. When people are open to sharing and willing to help each other, it makes for a rewarding academic environment. And that’s exactly what we found here. We are terribly impressed.”

Chet Arnold, director for outreach at CLEAR, notes that even though the request from Nigeria was unusual, in the past five years Chadwick and Wilson have trained more than 1,000 individuals in the use of GIS, GPS, online mapping, and other geospatial technologies at the Extension office in Haddam. In addition, they have been conducting courses in online mapping techniques for researchers and extension specialists in the Land Grant and Sea Grant university systems around the country, as part of a four-year grant funded by the USDA.