Missouri GIS Conference 2007 Wrap-up
Missouri GIS Conference 2007 Award Winners
The MGISAC Lewis and Clark GIS Award “Forging New Frontiers in GIS for Missouri”
Liz Cook was involved in a mid-1970's project at the MU School of Forestry that used Landsat satellite imagery to create the first landscape-scale forest cover map of Missouri. While in graduate school in 1977, she first used Landsat data to map county land use in Missouri as a project for the Department of Agronomy.
Liz worked for the Missouri Department of Conservation in the late seventies and early eighties, and was the first employee to use Landsat data and created the first GIS applications at MDC to manage their lands. She developed the first remote sensing technique for mapping ring-necked pheasant habitat in Missouri and presented a professional paper on that subject at the 43th Midwest Fish and Wildlife Conference in 1981. Using SPIRES and SAS, Liz developed the first computer databases at MDC for managing large amounts of natural resources data such as species distribution, forest cover analysis, and cave data.
The Director and Assistant Director of the Missouri Department of Conservation were on hand to witness the first remote connection of her computer at MDC's Jefferson City office with the computers at the University of Missouri through the first phone modems on the market, which consisted of a rotary phone handset placed in a special cradle of a huge machine. More breakthroughs continued in the six years of Liz's employment with MDC as she successfully demonstrated how computerized data, satellite imagery, and GIS technology could be used to analyze radio-telemetry data of wildlife, land-use change detection, and vegetation cover mapping. Of special note was the St. Louis County color satellite image she developed that was published in 1985 in the National Geographic Atlas of North America: Space Age Portrait of a Continent.
At Lincoln University, Liz built the GIS lab from scratch and developed the first Introduction to GIS course, which was a hands-on approach that was well suited to the students there. She mentored many of those students, helping them find jobs, providing recommendations for them, and advising others in their jobs. She provided leadership on state and national committees, and in addition to her technical proficiency, she is credited with having taken a reasonable and logical approach to GIS issues.
Liz is currently employed with the United States Department of Agriculture Natural Resource Conservation Service, where she has made continuous and numerous contributions that take data from the field to business systems to analysis, modeling, presentation, and ultimately decision-making. She has provided intra- and interagency technical leadership, training, coordination, and outreach.
In addition to the value Liz has brought to her employers, Liz has contributed in numerous ways to the GIS community at large through her service on committees, user groups, conference presentations, outreach activities, and data research, development and distribution. Her contributions to the understanding and growth of GIS in Missouri will be felt far beyond the extent of the state and far beyond the extent of her career. She has not only contributed as an explorer and pioneer in GIS, but has left lasting legacies for each of her employers along the way, and has inspired many of those she has taught and mentored and interacted with along the way. There is no one person in Missouri who has done more to advance the acceptance and use of geographic information systems or who is more deserving of this award.
Outstanding Contribution to GIS Award
As always - competition was stiff for this conference's Outstanding Contribution to GIS Award. The MGISAC would like to recognize and congratulate the following individuals and organizations that - although not receiving the award - certainly deserve Honorable Mention and recognition by the greater GIS community in Missouri:
It is a distinct pleasure to announce this conference's winner of the MGISAC's Outstanding Contribution to GIS Award as the Howell County Health Consortium. The nomination reads as follows:
I believe this award is deserved by the Howell County Health Consortium because of their outstanding achievement in developing a county-wide GIS designed to speed emergency response to residents and use county resources more effectively in a disaster. This project was funded by a grant from the Missouri Foundation for Health which was written and administered by South Central Public Health Services (SCPHS)and has been three years in the making. The grant closes out in January 2007 and the maintenance of the program will be handed over to the 11 county agencies that use it. Personnel from the health department, sheriff's department, courthouse, 911, all rural fire departments, South Howell County Ambulance, South Central Ozarks Council of Governments, fire and police departments of Mountain View, Willow Springs and West Plains were provided equipment from the grant which included laptops, GPS units, printers, and GIS software. Training was provided through ESRI's Online Campus and course exercises held at the Health Consortium's meetings. The county agencies cooperated in collecting data to create the GIS. Homebound residents with high-risk medical needs were asked to voluntarily register their information for the GIS, with all information provided by them staying confidential. This information will be used to make sure those with the greatest needs are located and helped in a timely manner during a disaster. And, on a larger scale the GIS becomes part of the government infrastructure helping regulate the day to day operations, especially useful in data reporting.
The cooperation and response from emergency personnel and agencies across Howell County to create the GIS was phenomenal and the benefits of having it in place will be invaluable to county residents in case of disaster.
MOGISAC 2007 Conference Awards
Outstanding papers and posters were submitted yet again - to the conference committee - and were voted on by the conference attendees by ballot. They were too numerous to mention them all here. The conference committee would like to thank all who submitted posters and presented. Poster submittals set a new record!
Best Presentation
Avoiding the Mistakes of GIS Development - Pam Kelrick, GISC, Kirksville, MO
Best Student Poster/Project
Mapping CO2, CH4 and N2O Fluxes from Soil of a Secondary Forest in Central Missouri. - R.Paro, N.V Nkongolo, S. Johnson and F. Eivazi Lincoln University, GIS Lab, 307 Founders Hall, Jefferson City, MO 65102
Best Poster/Project
Distribution of MDC Permit Privileges Sold - Mar. 05-Feb.06 - Based Upon Buyer's Zip Code. - Michael Kline - MDC
