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2009 GIS in Transit Conference

Monday, November 16, 2009
8:30 AM - 5:00 PM

Conference attendees may register for one of TWO pre-conference workshops taking place on Monday, November 16. Each workshop is URISA-Certified, which means it undergoes a comprehensive annual peer review. Each workshop instructor is also certified, with experience and expertise in the topic. 

Take advantage of the opportunity to attend one of these courses. Class size is limited, so be sure to register early to guarantee your space. Note that there is an additional fee to attend a workshop. It is not included with conference registration.

Each workshop being offered is described below.

An Overview of Open Source GIS Software

Certified 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.

Transportation Spatial Database Design

Certified Instructors:

• Al Butler, GISP, AICP, MilePost Zero, Orlando, FL

• Ed Wells, GISP, Washington Metro Area Transit Authority, University Park, MD

• Anurag Mehta, Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), Washington, DC

Although almost all data maintained by transportation agencies may be considered as spatial, the data used by GIS applications are generally separate from those used by the mainstream applications of the agency. The workshop will show the student how to develop an integrated multimodal database design for transportation agencies that not only serves to break down cross-functional barriers but also offers a foundation for true enterprise-level spatial databases. Such a design offers the opportunity for GIS to come out of the backroom and be a viable real-time agency management tool.

Specific topics include:

• Basics of database design and UML Survey of major transportation data structures in use today
• Dataset and feature-level metadata
• Support for transactional updates
• Workflow control
• Treating location as a relationship between a position and a datum
• Separating features into their component element
• Identifying events and characteristics

Intended Audience: Students completing this workshop will be able to create database designs that support such functions as reproducing the state of the dataset at any historical point in time, storing data once and use it many times, providing certified datasets and changed-record updates to external users without significant processing overhead, and integrating stovepipe datasets in to a comprehensive multimodal enterprise database for use by both GIS and non-GIS applications. To get the most out of the workshop, students should be prepared to discuss at least one spatial database design issue they presently face at work.