26 September 2011

Wansoo Im on PPGIS: Promoting Community Engagement

Fall 2011 Environmental Geomatics Lecture

Dr. Wansoo Im, Vertices, Inc.
Public Participatory GIS: Promoting Community Engagement
Wednesday, September 28 at 4pm
Cook-Douglass Lecture Hall Room 110

Recent innovation of information technology with interoperability has enabled community organizations to utilize GIS technology with few obstacles.  A brief overview of GIS technology and cases studies of community mapping will be presented to show how PPGIS can encourage community participation in environmental and health issues.

Dr. Wansoo Im is the founder of VERTICES, LLC, a geospatial information services company providing innovative and interactive map-based solutions.  In addition to VERTICES, he is an assistant professor at the department of Family and Community Medicine at Meharry Medical College.  He is an adjunct faculty at Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University.    He specializes in developing decision support systems using a public participatory approach and interactive web-based geographical information systems. Dr. Im received his Masters in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his Ph.D. from the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy. Since 1991, Dr. Im has taught GIS courses for various schools including the Department of Urban Studies and Community Health at Rutgers University, and the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering/Institute for Transportation Studies at New Jersey Institute of Technology.  Dr. Im is most proud of his web portal, http://www.imrivers.org, which is currently being used by multiple environmental organizations across the United States.  His work on community participatory internet mapping was featured in The New Yorker magazine in 2006 and The New York Times in 2008

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