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GIS for Community Service
Many universities use GIS to provide important services to their communities. GIS is used to plan community bikeways, to route deliveries of meals-on-wheels for the elderly, and to provide community access to information about toxic materials or hazardous waste sites. A university can provide an important service to the local community by combining the strengths of GIS and the World Wide Web to create a civic network. Web-based civic networks are an important first step in creating a societal GIS where citizens have access to a wide range of spatially referenced data about their community. Universities are frequently repositories of large amounts of data about their local communities. By integrating such data into a common civic network, a university can provide an important service to the community and at the same time provide enhanced learning and research opportunities for students and faculty interested in community issues. Moreover, a civic network can strengthen ties between the community and university, and give citizens a forum to participate in research and decision making. Explore Resources for Community Service |
