A few years ago, URISA scheduled committee meetings throughout the conference program, but that meant that many of URISA's great volunteers are unable to attend the educational sessions. So we now organize one big room so that all committees can meet in small groups on Sunday afternoon and report their activities and needs to their colleagues and leadership, so everyone hears the same thing.
Interested members who wish to find out more about committee activities are also encouraged to attend to discover opportunities within the organization.
Get to know your young professional colleagues and members of URISA's Vanguard Cabinet!
'Meet and Greet' on the patio of Burrito Gallery for drinks or food or both! It's less than a 10-minute walk from the Hyatt and a great way to start developing your conference connections early.
Burrito Gallery, 21 E Adams St, Jacksonville, FL 32202 burritogallery.com (904) 598-2922Emergency Preparedness for GIS (1/2 day morning workshop)
Monday, October 23, 2017, 8:30 AM-12:00 Noon
Instructors: Theresa Martin, GISP
Attendance at this workshop will offer: 3.5 AICP credits
Description: Today, natural and man-made disasters are becoming more complex, costly, and frequent. First responders and emergency managers are relying more and more on geospatial technology to prepare for, respond to, and recover from these disasters. There is a pressing need for cross-training on the non-technical disciplines GIS staff is being asked to support. Specifically, public safety (emergency management, police and fire services) and the rigid work flows which accompany their daily duties, often prove foreign to those unfamiliar with these activities.
To accommodate their needs in a time-sensitive situation, our experience is that the key is to arm the GIS professional with enough knowledge of emergency management and first responder activities so they can effectively discern the needs of the incident commander and quickly produce the spatial document(s) which best support decision making in an emergency.
This workshop is divided into two parts:
Learning Objectives:
Description: This URISA Certified Workshop is aimed at the GIS professional who is currently supporting or may support their emergency communications division in the future. In a fully operational next generation 9-1-1 system, GIS is the core component in determining how a 9-1-1 call is routed to the correct public safety answering point (PSAP).
This technology shift will have profound impacts on local data maintenance workflows, local data access, and data fidelity. We recognize there is a sincere lack of education available aimed at the GIS professional who may not be as versed with the 9-1-1 terminology or needs. This workshop is intended to provide an overview of next generation 9-1-1, GIS’ role in such a system, the implications on local workflows, and to illustrate common pain points and sources of errors in local GIS datasets.
Learning Objectives:
Intended Audience: GIS Managers, Emergency Management and Public Safety professionals.
Requirements: None
Cost: One full-day or half-day workshop is included with full conference registration; $195 if only attending a workshop or adding a second half-day workshop
Asset Management: Planning, Strategy and Implementation
Monday, October 23, 2017, 8:30 AM-5:00 PM
Instructors:
Jason Amadori, GISP, Data Transer Solutions, Orlando, FL
Tripp Corbin, GISP, CFM, MCP, CTT+,eGIS Solutions, Dacula, GA
Attendance at this workshop will offer: 8.5 AICP credits
Description: Public and private agencies face continuous challenges to accomplish more with less as increases in demand, regulatory requirements, infrastructure deterioration, and political and economic forces have significantly outpaced increases in capital and operating budgets. Municipalities are under enormous pressure to improve efficiencies, boost productivity and effectively manage resources and assets while at the same time being expected to enhance worker safety. Many of these agencies are turning to Asset Management to cope with these challenges and improve business performance and effectiveness. This URISA Certified Workshop will focus on several aspects of developing an asset management system that could help improve performance, reduce long-term costs, and maximize return on investment in infrastructure assets.
Specific topics include:
Description: This workshop covers the general topics of Business Intelligence (BI) and Data Integration (DI) and ways to add a spatial component to BI and DI systems. It will give GIS professionals the knowledge to identify and leverage opportunities to enhance decision support through interaction with existing Business Intelligence frameworks or by implementing a new Business Intelligence framework.
Business Intelligence is the ability of organizations to collect, maintain, and organize data. BI technologies provide historical, current and predictive views of business operations. The goal of business intelligence deployments if to support better business decision-making, something that all organizations, especially ones with an enterprise GIS, or ones working towards a full enterprise implementation, can benefit from.
Data integration involves combining data residing in different sources and providing users with a unified view of these datas. GIS is a core user of data from multiple sources. During this URISA Certified Workshop, you will learn key ways to integrate data from multiple sources in order to enhance your GIS functionality and leverage the power of external (to GIS) data sources.
Learning Objectives:
Intended Audience:
Requirements:
Cost: One full-day or half-day workshop is included with full conference registration; $195 if only attending a workshop
Description: Strategic planning is a vital tool for all geospatial programs, at any stage of development. An effective strategic plan is crucial to ensuring that a GIS program gets started right. As a GIS program matures, strategic planning methods are important tools for program management, program review, responding to change, and solving problems. An effective strategic plan will help you win program approval and funding, ensure that program goals and return on investment are achieved, and keep a program on track in a changing environment.
This URISA Certified Workshop teaches strategic planning methods and tools in the context of developing and managing a GIS program. Participants will learn how to successfully select and apply appropriate methods for a variety of situations.
Specific topics include:
Intended Audience: GIS managers and staff, GIS users and program participants, and managers, executives, and other professionals who are involved with GIS programs.
Cost: One full-day or half-day workshop is included with full conference registration; $195 if only attending a workshop
UAS Operational Requirements for GIS Professionals
This full-day workshop will begin with a morning session that focuses on an introduction to GIS applications in UAS/UAV. What does it take to implement a successful project? What are the restrictions? Is the technology ready for you and are you ready for the technology? Examples of UAS systems will be introduced to the attendees for an up close look at the platforms being deployed.
The afternoon session will focus on how UAS can perform tasks relevant to targeting assessment. Can these capabilities support capture requirements while maintaining privacy? What legal and legislative information do you need to be aware of when planning a project? The session will also focus on successful Private and Public partnerships. Join all the instructors for an interactive Q&A session to conclude the workshop.
Morning Focus: Introduction to GIS Applications for UAS Technologies
Instructors: John M. Robbins, Ph.D., Unmanned Aircraft Systems Program Coordinator, Assistant Professor, Aeronautical Science Department, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
Steven Lehr, Adjunct Faculty, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
Rapid expansion of technology has led to significant growth in the capabilities Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) may offer. Miniaturization of remote-sensing technologies, balanced systems integration, enhanced image processing capabilities, and reasonable acquisition costs have allowed the UAS market to expand exponentially. This workshop will explore fixed-wing, rotor-wing, and hybrid applications of UAS technologies to include remote sensing capabilities and GIS applications.
This workshop will explore the following content areas through the use of lecture and collaborative classroom discussion:
Afternoon Focus: Drones: Imaging Technology and Privacy Concerns
Instructors: Charles Mondello, GISP, President, Property Drone Consortium
Kevin Pomfret, Executive Director, Centre for Spatial Law and Policy
The session will begin with a discussion on technologies in place for sUAS image sensing. It will address how sUAS can perform tasks relevant to target assessment. These capabilities can support capture requirements while maintaining privacy. The presentation will further highlight capability in data extraction relevant to the sector.
The instructors will discuss privacy and related concerns associated with sUAS. Historically the Federal Aviation Administration has had the exclusive authority to regulate the national airspace from the ground up. However, the rapid growth in small, unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), commonly referred to as drones, for commercial and recreational purposes has challenged the status quo. The FAA does not have the resources to monitor drone use across the nation, but is concerned about ceding too much authority to local authorities as it might result in unintended consequences for the broader aviation community. At the same time, state and local authorities are getting tremendous pressure from their citizens to restrict the use of drones due to concerns over privacy, trespass and nuisance. This presentation will describe some of the ways in which states and localities are trying to address their citizens’ concerns and the potential federal preemption issues.
Intended Audience: GIS professionals interested in learning about drones from A to Z.
Cost: One full-day or half-day workshop is included with full conference registration; $195 if only attending a workshop
With the rapid deployment of NG911 technologies and the fact that GIS data is now mission critical information, the need to quickly and efficiently develop, deploy, cleanse and maintain Public Safety centric GIS data layers is becoming a task that may not have been high priority previously. In this hands-on workshop, the attendees will learn the basics of quality control and quality assurance related to public safety data (address points, road centerlines, MSAG, ESN and PSAP boundary files).
Requirements:
Outline:
Learning Objectives:
Skills:
Cost: One full-day or half-day workshop is included with full conference registration; $195 for workshop only or for second half-day workshop
Geocaching Poker Run
On Tuesday evening, meet old friends and make new ones as the conference presents the Geocaching Poker Run. Clues and GPS coordinates to nearby establishments will be provided to you as you wander downtown Jacksonville in teams. At each destination, beverages will be available for purchase if you so desire. The rules are simple:
The single most-used piece of information collected about you is your address. Where you are if you call for help or report an incident should not be a multiple choice option. Addresses and incidents require accurate collection and distribution of location information.
Attend this session and hear how cities and counties across the country are whipping their address data into shape. Regional approaches to creating, accessing, and sharing accurate address data benefit NextGen 9-1-1 efforts as well as support local and federal initiatives. An ESIG winning submission will share their story on creating an agile mapping system for tracking real-time data during in a response/support of storm events.WIN A PRIZE! Everyone attending this session will receive a raffle ticket for prizes to be drawn at the close of the conference. In addition to a fantastic closing keynote, win an awesome prize!
Attendance at this session will offer: 1.0 AICP credits
3-2-1 Launch, 21st Century Kennedy Space Center GIS
Join Glenn Walters as he takes us on a “spatial” mission as he shares his insight on GIS work at the Kennedy Space Center. With the advent of commercial space, the Kennedy Space Center has been evolving from a single launch program into a multi-tenant, multi-use spaceport. To serve the future needs of the KSC user-base, GIS will also need to evolve.
Glenn will share the following KSC GIS highlights during this transition:
Hear how KSC continues to evolve from mylar and drawing based-data to a high-accuracy GIS. Using the latest ArcGIS platforms now provides the basis for multiple user groups to be able to visualize, and collaborate with GIS viewers configured with specific tools and features. KSC’s GeoSpatial Integrated Master Schedule (GeoSIMS) web viewer was developed to serve as an intuitive situational awareness and planning tool. A simple, intuitive interface provides the end user with their proximity to any impactful KSC operations on a day-by-day basis.
Another aspect in KSC’s evolution is transitioning field processes and a workforce culture from paper maps and clipboards to tablets and smartphones. KSC’s GIS have been deployed to answer the needs of everyone from your basic GIS to advanced Users.
This must attend Closing Keynote will not disappoint.
URISA Annual Business Meeting
Hear from URISA Board officers about the Board's activities over the past year, actions taken, and exciting plans for the future. Meet the new members elected to the URISA Board.