“Pennsylvania is at the leading edge of geospatial technology,” Speaker of the House Dennis M. O’Brien said when he welcomed more than 80 national experts, business leaders, geospatial practitioners, and county and municipal officials to the first Pennsylvania Geospatial Policy Symposium at the Capitol this week.

The symposium, sponsored by the Speaker in partnership with The Pennsylvania State University and the Legislative Office for Research Liaison, focused on policy questions related to the opportunities afforded by the expanding use of global positioning systems, geographic information systems and other geospatial hardware and software tools in business, government and academia.

These powerful general-purpose technologies are used to create and analyze data about the location of people, places and things. Private businesses across Pennsylvania, schools, universities and government agencies at all levels create and collect vast quantities of data in the course of their daily operations.

Over 90 percent of these data are referenced by location – where people live or work, where roads go, where political, zoning and property boundaries lie, where crime occurs, where floods threaten, where customers reside, and the like.

These data, when appropriately shared and integrated into an overarching statewide geospatial data infrastructure, have far-reaching implications for the future of the Commonwealth.

Speaker O’Brien said the state has world-class geospatial software firms, internationally renowned geospatial research programs at universities, and cutting-edge geospatial service providers, and many mature and centrally integrated GIS applications are used by municipal, county and state agencies.

"The synergies linking geospatial technology deployment in the public and private sectors and in our colleges and universities will lead to more jobs, economic growth and greater government efficiency and effectiveness in Pennsylvania,” Speaker O’Brien said.

Participants in the symposium include: Jim Geringer, former governor of Wyoming who implemented GIS data sharing and enterprise-wide solutions while governor; David Schell, president and CEO of the Open Geospatial Consortium Inc., a non-profit, international organization that is leading the development of standards for geospatial and location-based services; James Knudson, Pennsylvania Deputy Chief Information Officer, Environmental Community of Practice; and Dr. Theodore R. Alter, professor of agricultural, environmental and regional economics and former associate vice president of Penn State.

10/5/2007