GIS Community

The GIS Initiative is working towards building a community of users and developers of the GIS in the atmospheric sciences and related disciplines. This page contains information about groups and organizations that either represent and foster GIS research, applications and data infrastructure and sharing in relation to atmospheric sciences or provide local network of GIS professionals.

International

European Cooperation in the Field of Scientific and Technical Research

European Cooperation in the Field of Scientific and Technical Research (COST) - is a research program within the European Science Foundation. COST-719 is completely dedicated to the use of GIS in climatology and meteorology. At the moment, 19 countries participate in the project (with Rumania joining later this year it will increase to 20), with experts from national meteorological services, agro-meteorological institutes, universities and research institutes making up the lion’s share of the participants.

Three major focus areas of COST-719 include:

• Spatial data availability and spatial data infrastructure
• Interpolation strategies
• GIS applications

For more information about COST-719 visit the program's official website at: www.knmi.nl/samenw/cost719/.

Special session at the joint EGS-AGU-EUG Conference in Nice, France

The special session on the use of GIS in meteorology and climatology at the joint EGS-AGU-EUG conference in Nice (April 6-11, 2003) was a success. The session organized and chaired by Olga Wilhelmi (NCAR) with Izabela Dyras (the Institute of Meteorology and Water Management, Krakow, Poland) included near 30 contributions on a series of interesting research topics. Both oral and poster presentations are now available on the European COST-179 website at: www.knmi.nl/samenw/cost719/egs2003.htm. A publication with papers presented at the session is underway.

ESRI SIG

SIG Home Page - It was discussed that the atmospheric SIG and the data modeling efforts will help to establish a working dialog between ESRI and the atmospheric sciences community about data representation issues and to address the needs of the atmospheric community in ESRI software development, for example temporal data management and improved raster data support.  

SIG Mailing List - The Atmospheric Special Interest Group (SIG) mailing list is intended for SIG members to share ideas, thoughts, and questions about GIS data modeling, temporal and raster data management, and any other issues related to the use of GIS in atmospheric sciences.  

Colorado - GIS Colorado (formerly GISCO) has been established to represent and foster GIS activities throughout Colorado, and to further the sharing of data and exchange of ideas. For more information visit the GIS Colorado website at: www.giscolorado.com.

Mailing List Information - A way to stay in touch with the GIS Community. Subscribe to the GIS Initiative and Atmospheric Special Interest Group (SIG) mailing lists to receive Initiative announcements and information on upcoming events (e.g., seminars, meetings, workshops) or take part in the SIG discussion forum.