University Consortium for Geographic Information Science

The University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS) is an organization of universities and colleges, federal agencies, industry partners, and international affiliates whose purpose is to foster research and education in the field of Geographic Information Science (GIScience). UCGIS was founded in the early 1990s based on the recognition that a diverse and broad-based organization was needed to sustain growth in GIScience within the United States.

As described on the UCGIS Web site, the UCGIS mission and its associated goals are organized in three main thrusts:

Unify:

• 1.
  Provide ongoing research priorities for advancing theory and methods in GIScience.
• 2.
  Assess the current and potential contributions of GIScience to national scientific and public policy issues.

Facilitate:

• 1.
  Expand and strengthen GIScience education at all levels.
• 2.
  Provide the organizational infrastructure to foster collaborative interdisciplinary research in GIScience.

Benefit Society:

• 1.
  Promote the ethical use of and access to geographic information.
• 2.
  Foster GIScience and analysis in support of national needs.

Governance of UCGIS is conducted by an executive committee (made up of the president, the president elect, the past president, and the executive director) and a board of directors. The activities of the UCGIS are performed by the chairs of committees (research, education, policy and legislation, communications, and membership), who organize the work of the delegates. Delegates from the UCGIS 75-plus institutional members are scholars representing disciplines, including [Page 2914]cartography, cognitive science, computer science, engineering and land surveying, environmental sciences, geodesy, geography, landscape architecture, law and public policy, remote sensing and photogrammetry, and statistics. Each year, delegates and partners participate in a summer assembly and a winter meeting to coordinate research and education activities of national need.

Special workshops create significant products to advance GIScience research and/or education. Recent UCGIS products include the following:

• A GIScience research agenda developed from convening a 10-year diverse representation of delegates (McMaster &Usery, 2005)
• A monograph describing a GIScience and technology body of knowledge for education and research (DiBiase et al., 2007)
• A research agenda (Yuan & Stewart Hornsby, 2007)
• A research monograph (Stewart Hornsby & Yuan, 2008) about the topic of geographic dynamics

Each year, UCGIS conducts a search for a published research contribution that is worthy of national recognition and for an educator who has made outstanding contributions to GIScience education worthy of national recognition.

Current information about UCGIS activities can be found on the organization's Web site at http://www.ucgis.org.