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Monday 17 October 2005: Session 3, 1:30:00 PM
GIS For Small Towns
Presentation Abstract
GIS for Small Towns is a workshop created to tell the story of how GIS came to Polk City, Iowa. The story goes from the vision of a software trainer and developer who saw the potential of geographically related data in the planning and day to day operations of a small town to the “buy in” to GIS by the city for its police, fire, public works, and administrative departments and the creation of a GIS committee to prioritize projects and allocate budgeted funds.
Speaker Biographical Information
Alan Jensen, AICP : Iowa State University Extension
Since 2001, Alan serves as the State-wide GIS Coordinator for the Iowa Geographic Information Council (IGIC), which is the state-wide GIS technology and data clearinghouse for the state of Iowa. A planner by training, Alan is a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners. He has been an adjunct faculty member of the Community and Regional Planning Department in the College of Design since 1994, and Community Development Specialist with ISU Extension to Communities since 1995. He continues to lecture and has ongoing community development projects in northern India and Nepal. Alan was recently selected to receive the 2005 ISU Extension Individual Achievement Award. Alan is an advocate for bringing information to local decision-makers so that they may create and sustain great places to live. He is a native Iowan, now living in the southwest Iowa community of Creston with his wife, a homemaker and teacher, and youngest son, a high school senior. His older two sons are married, working and living in central Iowa. Really, he is just an ordinary Iowa guy that loves backpacking in the wilderness, the expansive Iowa landscape, and, mostly, just tries to keep track of his family.
Mark Bowersox : Chief of Police, Polk City, Iowa
Mark Bowersox has been with the Polk City, Iowa, police force for the past 29 years. He was appointed Chief of Police in 1991. He is an instructor for traffic related topics for the Iowa Law Enforcement Academy and is a very active advocate in the field of traffic safety in the state of Iowa. Mark has consulted in development of a records management system for small police departments. He uses GIS applications for day to day operations of the police department as well as emergency and special event planning.
Robert Schultz : Iowa DOT, Office of Traffic and Safety
Robert Schultz is an education consultant, software trainer, and crash analysis software Beta tester for the Iowa DOT, Office of Traffic and Safety. He has provided statewide software training for the Iowa DOT since 1989, training all levels of law enforcement as well as county and city engineers and engineering consultants. He has also served as a user representative and consultant for the development of recent crash analysis software for the state of Iowa. Robert also provides statewide technical support for the current crash analysis software, CMAT. He is also a member of the Statewide Traffic Records Advisory Committee, serving as the software educational consultant and as liaison with local safety data users. In addition to his work for the Iowa DOT, Robert has been a consultant for Iowa State University / Center for Transportation Research and Education since 1989. While working with ISU / CTRE, he first came into contact with GIS software in 1995. Seeing the potential of GIS for specific applications in crash data analysis, he later learned about the benefits of GIS in analyzing crime data. Wanting to bring the power of GIS to the small Iowa town where he lived, he offered to help the local police chief incorporate GIS into his department. Using GIS software along with record management software developed by his company, Robert introduced Polk City, Iowa to the concept of GIS applications for a small town. Robert’s background has been primarily in education, custom software training, and the development of law enforcement record management software.
Brian Culpepper Technical Outreach Specialist: RGIS Mid-South Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies (CAST) - University of Arkansas
Mr. Culpepper is a Research Specialist with RGIS, MidSouth and has been involved with several a GIS/web-mapping projects over the past twelve years. He also provides technical support and assistance to State and Local government agencies as a local outreach representative for the Mid-South regional office of the National Consortium for Rural GeoSpatial Innovations (RGIS).
