NATIONAL CONFERENCE ADDRESSES COMMUNITY TECHONOLOGY NEEDS

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - As communities nationwide continue to struggle with ever-shifting populations, building booms and busts, and environmental concerns, a national coalition has formed to help integrate technology into the community decision-making process. The AURORA partnership will meet Sept. 28 and 29 at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville.

"We want to knit Geographic Information Systems (GIS) into the framework of community decision making," said Fred Limp, director of the Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies in Fayetteville.

When making decisions about building a new subdivision, a city or county must take into account the traffic flow, the watershed, the distance to a nearby store or emergency vehicles, Limp said.

"This decision now leads to that decision. There are a lot of 'what ifs,’" he said.

Technology can help bring many issues to light with the push of a button, and that’s where the AURORA Conference enters the picture.

"There is a wealth of data and information available on the social and environmental conditions of communities, national parks, or other geographic areas" said Mark Schaefer, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Water and Science at the U.S. Department of the Interior. "But its value and relevance to decision making is much greater if it is combined with tools to analyze alternative courses of action and anticipate their consequences. We hope to improve the support for place-based decision making through easier access to data, better tools for integrating and analyzing information and greater collaboration between scientists and managers."

The two-day conference, sponsored by CAST and the Department of the Interior, will begin with statements from Dr. Schaefer. Other speakers will include Jack Pellicci, vice president for the global sector of Oracle Corporation, Lawrence Ayers, former Civilian Director of the Defense Mapping Agency, David Schell, president and chief executive officer of the OpenGIS Consortium, and Tim Stephenson, co-director and founder of the Arkansas- based Environmental and Spatial Technology (EAST) program.

Last year’s conference took place in Grand Teton National Park near Gallatin County, Mont., where the AURORA partnership has been working. Once a relatively inaccessible haven, the town, like many others near national parks, has experienced significant growth in recent years.

"The residents are beginning to see the threats to those attributes that made it desirable to live there in the first place," said Tom Gunther policy advisor to Schaefer.

The issues facing the Montana community embody the problems of other towns — build-up, human-wildlife interaction, commute time, and water quality.

GIS technology provides detailed information about an area, including its topography, commercial or residential status, the number and type of dwellings, local schools, hospitals, voter precincts, pipelines, mail delivery systems, hydrology, and many other features of the infrastructure, environment, geography, and socio-economic and geopolitical status.

Data of this sort has been compiled for Northwest Arkansas by a group of four high school students through a project called CADIS — the Community Asset Development Information System sponsored by CAST, the National Association of Counties, Intergraph Corp., the Northwest Arkansas Council and the Bank of Fayetteville. Through this project, people in Northwest Arkansas will be able to pull up information about the county from any computer terminal with Internet access, Limp said.

The information unveiled through CADIS will provide a prototype for other communities seeking to answer basic questions about growth, industry, livability and environment, Limp said.

For an agenda on the AURORA Conference, please see www.cast.uark.edu/local/aurora.

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