GIS Day is a global event held each year in conjunction with National Geographic Society’s Geography Awareness Week. GIS Day celebrates GIS technology and its benefits to the world. GIS professionals, local government, and anyone interested in GIS technology are welcome to attend. Opportunities to learn about GIS will be provided through a series of lectures, poster presentations, exhibits, and hands-on exercises.

GIS is a computer-based mapping tool that takes information from a database about a location, such as streets, buildings, water features, and terrain, and turns it into visual layers. The ability to see geographic features on a map gives users a better understanding of a particular location, enabling planners, analysts, and others to make informed decisions about their communities.

GIS touches lives daily, being used throughout the world to solve problems related to the environment, health care, land use, business efficiency, education and public safety. Homeland Security initiatives, mapping the debris field following the Space Shuttle Columbia tragedy, and monitoring the spread of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) are examples of the wide ranging use of GIS.

The opening session will be presented by Dr. Yasser Ayad, associate professor of geography at Clarion University, and Matt Gilara, GISP, manager GIS/Community Development at the Northwest Pennsylvania Regional Planning and Development Commission.

“Dr. Ayad has been a regular participant in the Northwest Commission’s GIS User Group meetings since they started in Feb. 2005,” said Gilara. “At the August 2006 meeting he suggested that we work together to put on an event for GIS Day. So, instead of holding a quarterly GIS User Group meeting in November, we are participating in this one day GIS Conference.”

“Participants can network with a wide variety of professionals,” said Ayad. “We will have participants from local governments, educational institutions (K-12), higher education, oil and gas and timber industries, and private companies involved in the geospacial fields in general and GIS in specific.”

A diverse variety of organizations and businesses will be featured as speakers, including the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania (CCAP), PA Geospacial Data Sharing Standards (PGDSS), Penn State University, Snyder Brothers Oil and Gas, Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, Hyma Devore Lumber, and Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI). There will also be a dedicated area for poster presentations and an exhibit area where multiple companies will display their products.

“We are organizing a series of hands-on mapping and GIS exercises in our GIS laboratory,” said Ayad. “Many possibilities are going to exist to learn about the tool, GIS, and its applications. Among those sessions would be a series of movies about GIS, Remote Sensing, and several environment-related topics.”

“This event will be a tremendous opportunity to network with peers and colleagues in northwest Pennsylvania and throughout the state,” said Gilara. “GIS technology is rapidly growing in northwest Pennsylvania and it is events like this that lead to that growth. The Northwest Commission is proud to be involved in this GIS Day event and will continue to be an advocate and participate in GIS development in Pennsylvania.”

Registration will be held the day of the event or participants can pre-register at www.clarion.edu/ages/gisday/2006.

GIS Day is sponsored locally by Clarion University and the Northwest Pennsylvania Regional Planning and Development Commission; and nationally by the National Geographic Society, the Association of American Geographers, the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science, the U.S. Geological Survey, the Library of Congress, Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard, and ESRI.