Upcoming Presentations for Fall 2008

November 21, 2008
GIS Day

A community Collaborative Approach for Developing GIS Applications: The Steep Slope Calculator and mapWNC.org
Jason Mann, GIS and Application Services Manager, City of Asheville
Dave Michelson, GIS Analyst, City of Asheville
Gene Hume, GIS Coordinator, Buncombe County
Vicki Magnis, GIS Developer/Analyst, Buncombe County
Greg Dobson, GIS Coordinator, UNC Asheville’s NEMAC
The City of Asheville, Buncombe County, and RENCI – UNC Asheville have successfully partnered to produce an online community tool in response to local "steep slope" ordinances. Given that the ordinances require slope to be calculated by parcel boundaries, a traditional GIS overlay district could not feasibly be used due to the fact that parcel boundaries change frequently (thus the overlay district would have to be continuously updated). The proposed alternative was to create a method by which government staff, developers, and private citizens could, in real time, evaluate a given parcel and dynamically analyze the slope to determine if ordinance restrictions apply.  The “Steep Slope Calculator” has become part of mapWNC.org, an effort to provide innovative web-based mapping solutions to address issues that affect our region. This presentation will discuss technical lessons learned from developing the tool, and the nature of the collaboration and mapWNC.org.

GIS Technology and Its Applications: Bridging the Gap
Clay Tabor, UNC Asheville Student and NEMAC GIS Student Researcher
Geographic information system (GIS) is a dynamic and evolving field that combines various computer technologies to manage, display, and analyze spatially referenced data.  From its roots in geographic research, the use GIS technologies are quickly expanding to a variety of fields.  With such demand, the number of GIS programs and features are rapidly increasing.  However, as the integration of GIS into various fields increases, so has the integration between GIS applications.  This integration between applications as well as the response to the needs of specific research has allowed GIS technologies to flourish.  The presentation will attempt to illustrate the process, work involved, and results of working with these various GIS applications.  Using specific examples from summer research with NEMAC, the presentation will provide a glimpse into the potential of GIS integration with other technologies.  These examples will come from the field of atmospheric sciences, which is still in its early stages of GIS embrace.  Included will be the work done for the Greenville-Spartanburg national weather service office and the various geospatial web applications.  These projects demonstrate the unique challenges and benefits of working with GIS.  The results convey the promise of this new field as a means for analysis and display of data throughout many domains. 

Multigraph: A New Tool for Viewing Historical Weather Records in a Geographic Context
Mark Phillips, Research Scientist, UNC Asheville’s NEMAC / NCDC
This will be an informal demonstration of new software that is being developed at NEMAC and NCDC for viewing time series data such as historical temperature and precipitation records in a geographic context.  The software runs in a web browser and can be used in combination with web mapping tools such as Google Maps.

 

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