North Dakota GIS Day 2002 - November 20, 2002

Governor John Hoeven proclaimed (60kb jpg) November 20, 2002 as GIS Day in North Dakota. It was a successful event with well over 100 people from state agencies, counties, cities, and private enterprise attending GIS demonstrations and speaker presentations. The events were held in Bismarck, in the Capitol and in the North Dakota Heritage Center. This year, GIS Day was highlighted by the introduction of the state GIS Hub, made possible by funding from the State Legislature with additional funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the North Dakota Division of Emergency Management.

The North Dakota GIS Hub is a centralized data warehouse for storing and sharing state GIS data among state agencies and other organizations. The GIS Hub also contains web-based mapping and data discovery tools to be used by the state and the public. The GIS Hub is a core state asset for utilizing base mapping information and provides a foundation for meeting the needs public health and safety initiatives such as Homeland Security.

GIS demonstrations included showing off the GIS Hub and how ESRI tools are used by state agencies. The consulting firm of Kadrmas, Lee, and Jackson (KLJ) (Bismarck office) along with the North Dakota Department of Commerce presented a paper and demonstrated a GIS application developed by KLJ for the Department of Commerce and hosted on the GIS Hub. Houston Engineering (Minneapolis office) presented a paper and demonstrated a GIS application used in the Red River Basin. Agri ImaGIS (Maddock, ND office) presented a paper and demonstrated how GIS and remote sensing is used in agriculture. ESRI (Minneapolis office) presented a paper on Homeland Security.

Immediately following GIS Day, on November 21st, ESRI (Minneapolis office) presented a "mini" Users Conference that was very informative. There were a few slides from the 2002 Users Conference in San Diego, and several live demonstrations of topology, survey analyst, tracking analyst, ArcSDE, ArcIMS and other functionality. ESRI did a great job of pro-actively reaching out to the state, making themselves available to North Dakota GIS users during and after the mini conference.

The North Dakota GIS Technical Committee (GISTC) developed and hosted the GIS Day event. The GISTC would like to thank the following groups for their help and assistance: The Information Technology Department for sponsoring the event, the Health Department for the use of the projection equipment, the North Dakota Heritage Center for the use of their auditorium, the State Water Commission for providing the GIS Day posters, the Department of Commerce for supplying the GIS Day banner, the Capitol Facilities Management for the use of Memorial Hall and for their great job on setting things up, the Legislative Council for the use of the network facilities, and Central Duplicating for printing of the GIS Day announcements. The GISTC extends a special thanks to those who spent their valuable time preparing for the presentations and traveling to Bismarck to share their ideas with the GIS community. The GISTC wants to especially thank all of those who took time from their work load to attend the GIS Day events, in many cases traveling a long distance.

We hope to see you all next year for GIS Day 2003!

Bob Nutsch
GIS Coordinator
State of North Dakota