CalGIS 2010 Preconference Workshops

New Educational Opportunities!

CalGIS 2010 will be offering three URISA Certified Workshops on Sunday, April 18, 2010. Take advantage of these peer-reviewed, full-day comprehensive courses taught by certified workshop instructors!

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WK1- Asset Management: Planning, Strategy, and Implementation - CANCELLED
 
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. Many of these agencies are turning to Asset Management to cope with these challenges and improve business performance and effectiveness. This 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.

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WK2- GIS Program Management
Instructor: Greg Babinski, GISP, King County GIS Center, Seattle, WA
Today, most government organizations have some type of GIS programs in place. They vary from being in their early stages, to rebuilding or tuning up phase, to completely being changed as new technologies and applications emerge. This workshop is designed to provide guidelines for managing your GIS program. It will look at the various organizational and technical issues program managers must address in order to develop a successful GIS program. The discussions will include managing all aspects of a GIS program from staffing and budgeting to procuring technology and working with vendors. A variety of real world examples will be presented showing a range of GIS programs and their implementations. This workshop presents an overview of successful and unsuccessful techniques for implementing GIS.

Specific topics include:

• Program development
• Project management techniques
• Budgeting
• Staffing
• Sustaining program support
• Managing consultants and vendors

Intended Audience: GIS Program Management is a must for anyone embarking upon a GIS program, involved with a less-than-successful GIS, or who is seeking ways to improve a successful implementation.

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WK3- An Overview of Open Source GIS Software
Instructor: Sara Yurman, GISP, Spatial Focus, Inc., Decatur, GA
Free and open source software (FOSS) has been offering choices to computer users for a number of years. Over the past few years the open source choices in GIS have been broader and more capable than ever before. This workshop will focus on GIS open source software. It will give an overview of current developments from technical and management perspectives. Selected packages and their applications in various projects will be demonstrated and discussed.

Specific topics include:

• Open Source GIS background and development
• Overview of Open Source GIS spatial functionalities
• Live demonstration
• Interoperability: The Open Source GIS spectrum
• Planning and implementation issues

Intended Audience: Anyone interested in free and open source geographic information system software. The workshop will suit both managerial and technical needs and it does not require any prerequisites.

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Other Preconference Workshops

In addition, NOAA will present two half-day workshops, one in the morning and the other in the afternoon. Stay tuned for further details!

These NOAA half-day workshops are free, but you must register for the conference to attend.

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WK-4 NOAA Coastal Inundation Mapping Workshop - morning session

As part of the Digital Coast’s Inundation Toolkit, this workshop provides an introduction to coastal inundation and coastal inundation mapping. Workshop design will reflect the materials and content of a two-day Coastal Inundation Mapping course provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Coastal Services Center. The workshop format is a combination of lectures, demonstrations, and discussions so that attendees gain a better understanding of the following topics:

• Types of coastal inundation
• Coastal inundation products (risk-based, event-based, and scenario-based)
• Elevation data / Integrating elevation data
• Mapping inundation
• Risk and vulnerability assessments

What makes this workshop unique is that it creates the link between education and application. To create inundation maps effectively and responsibly, it is necessary to be knowledgeable about the subject matter at hand. This includes being aware of the different types of coastal inundation, being aware of the various methodologies used to delineate flood areas in a coastal environment, understanding the data limitations, and understanding of how this information is used to support state and local planning efforts.

This workshop is designed for certified floodplain managers, National Weather Service personnel, and state, county, and municipal officials.

Instructors: Matt Pendleton, IMSG at the NOAA Coastal Services Center, Charleston, SC

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WK-5 Habitat Priority Planner (HPP) Training - afternoon session

This half day course provides participants with the knowledge and skills to successfully use the Habitat Priority Planner, a free-to-download ArcGIS extension designed to assist with conservation, land use, and restoration planning. Through lectures, discussions, demonstrations, and group exercises, participants will learn how to establish goals and criteria with a spatial context, and how the Habitat Priority Planner will help accomplish strategic planning goals.
After completing this course, participants will

• Be able to develop their own spatial analysis process, including defining goals, collecting data, performing analyses, and selecting criteria
• Be familiar how to use common land cover data sets to classify habitats with the Habitat Priority Planner
• Understand how the Habitat Priority Planner can be used to prioritize habitats for land use management action
• Learn spatial analysis methods to support natural resource strategic planning  
• Explore a method for stakeholder engagement using a geographic information system (GIS)

This tool has been used by land trusts, National Estuarine Research Reserves, National Estuary Programs, The Nature Conservancy, National Fish and Wildlife Service, county governments, and many others to meet diverse management goals.  The strength of the Habitat Priority Planner is its broad applicability to various data sets and management needs. Participants should be familiar with ArcGIS 9.2 or 9.3.

Instructors: Danielle Bamford, NOAA Coastal Services Center, Charleston, SC

 

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