GIS-Pro Workshops Will Cover Important Topics

PARK RIDGE, Ill., June 23 -- The Urban and Regional Information Systems Association issued the following news release:

URISA is pleased to announce the eight full and half-day workshops that will kick off GIS-Pro 2017 in Jacksonville, Florida in October. The workshops will take place on Monday, October 23. Usually incurring an additional fee (up to $200), attendance at one workshop is included with full conference registration. A summary of each workshop is included below. Be sure to visit the online conference program for details, including instructor profiles, learning objectives and more.

Emergency Preparedness for GIS - 8:30 AM-12:00 Noon (half-day workshop)

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. Attend this URISA Certified Workshop to prepare for such situations.

NextGen 9-1-1 & GIS Workflow - 8:30 AM-12:00 Noon (half-day workshop)

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's role in such a system, the implications on local workflows, and to illustrate common pain points and sources of errors in local GIS datasets.

Asset Management: Planning, Strategy and Implementation - (full-day workshop)

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.

Business Intelligence and Data Integration for the GIS Professional - (full-day workshop)

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.

GIS Strategic Planning - (full-day workshop)

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.

UAS Operational Requirements for GIS Professionals -(full-day)

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 of the instructors for an interactive Q&A session to conclude the workshop.

NG9-1-1 Data Hacks: Finding Anomalies and Fixing Them - 1:00 - 5:00 PM (half-day 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).

Survey of FEMA's Hazus-MH Natural Hazard Loss Estimation Tool - 1:00 - 5:00 PM (half-day workshop)

This workshop will introduce participants to the capabilities of Hazus-MH, a GIS-based risk assessment methodology and toolkit created by FEMA for analyzing potential impacts from floods, hurricanes and earthquakes. The instructor will discuss and demonstrate the wide range of options available for defining and analyzing hazards. They will also explain the types of estimations that Hazus-MH can produce for things such as debris, damage and economic losses to buildings, casualties and shelter needs, and much more. The workshop will highlight options that geospatial professionals have for improving the credibility and usefulness of Hazus-MH outputs through the integration of enhanced data about the built environment as well as the hazards that communities might face.

Workshops are intentionally limited in class size, to facilitate discussion. So register early to have the best opportunity of attending your preferred course. Of course, each workshop counts toward GISP Education Points and several will count as AICP-CM credits (our submission is in process). Review the conference details, registration and venue information at www.gis-pro.org. Early registration discounts are available until August 1, 2017.