COVER STORIES 3 Kingston University London: 20 Years of GIS Education continued from cover At least 10 KUL graduates currently work for Esri, and many students work for data and solutions providers. KUL GIS graduates are in demand by diverse organizations, including environmental agencies; local government; retail, commercial, mapping, transportation, and utilities organizations; and software firms. One of our first master’s graduates, Armen Asyran, recently helped compile Earth, which is the world’s largest atlas published by Millennium House. KUL has been a world leader in GIS throughout its first 20 years and firmly intends to remain so. Since the initial decision was made in 1988 to establish the first bachelor’s degree course and a centre of excellence in GIS, many changes have taken place, but the current faculty is committed to developing interesting, cutting-edge courses, undertaking research and consultancy, and maintaining and developing links to the GI industry to support common goals. The GIS faculty at KUL has pioneered a number of developments subsequently taken up by the university. Tim Linsey and Ed Parsons were responsible for making online resources available via the Mosaic Web browser in the early 1990s with GISWWW and its own bulletin board. Parsons also built his own local area network within the university for the distribution of GIS resources. Faculty members are also routinely involved in national-level resource initiatives, such as the development of MasterMap Download, the academic interface for Ordnance Survey’s MasterMap data, which faculty helped shape prior to its rollout to all UK universities. With a strong team of former faculty members and alumni who continue to support KUL, there exists a unique group of academics and professionals who have shaped this major contribution to the development of GIS. Close liaison with the GIS sector keeps the course current and directly relevant to the needs of employers. Links with suppliers, consultants, bureaus, and a wide range of users have been established, resulting in student visits, internships, and guest lecturers. This collaboration provides crucial support for the course and helps maintain KUL’s reputation among employers. High-quality, externally funded research has characterized the work of the faculty and informed teaching in areas such as remote sensing of hazards and upland forests, spatial statistics and the handling of geographic information, image-based systems, multimedia, and virtual reality development in GIS, as well as the application of GIS to environmental problems. Ongoing is a two-year project to explore use of students’ personal technologies for data gathering and sharing and the role of social networking sites, such as Twitter and Facebook, for the creation of collaborative geolearning environments and innovative Twitter maps—which, taken together, I call “cartoblography.” Research, Consultancy, and Commercial Links Under the consultancy name Kingston Centre for GIS, the faculty has delivered training workshops and seminars at GI industry events for the past 20 years, such as the annual Solutions Centre events at UK GIS conferences. The Kingston Technical workshop series is now delivered at the annual Association for Geographic Information (AGI) GeoCommunity conference. KUL also gets involved in GIS Day by hosting a day of events for local schoolchildren, and plans are under way to take part in the National Geographic Society/Esri GeoMentor scheme. newly released Location Strategy for the United Kingdom (Geographic Information Panel, 2008) puts the nature of place, where events happen and impact the people and assets at that location, at the centre of national, regional, and local initiatives and service delivery. The purpose is to better plan and to manage risk and use resources more efficiently, maximizing the value of geographic information to the public, government, and UK business and industry. This is a crucial document in shaping the information economy for the coming years and emphasizes the continued need for suitably knowledgeable and well-trained graduates in GI systems and science. In 2008, GIS was officially included as a core component of the school geography curriculum, meaning that every schoolchild will now be formally introduced to GIS. Along with KUL, other universities and Esri (UK) are making great strides to support development of GIS at the school level, which should see a thriving graduate and postgraduate market emerge. The Early Years in Kingston upon Thames: From Idea to Inception In honor of this 20th anniversary, I would now like to reflect on the history of the course and reveal some of the stories that have characterized GIS at Kingston. Since 1947, the School of Geography at Kingston Polytechnic had developed a strong reputation for its bachelor’s degree course in geography. The cartography component had always been a core component of the course, and staff research interests with Ph.D. awards at the time focused on digital cartography and expert systems. Courses in digital cartography; remote sensing; and, in 1986, an option in GIS were introduced into its geography course. Only 250 metres along the road, the Environmental Studies Department of Kingston College of Further Education (KCFE) had been involved with cartography and related subjects since the 1960s. Demand for suitable qualifications in cartography by people working within established cartographic agencies led to the development of two-year part-time Ordinary and Higher National certificates in 1968 and 1970, respectively. These incorporated all aspects of cartographic practice, theory, and production methods, as well as surveying, photogrammetry, mathematics, and geography. The rapid expansion of digital cartography in the 1980s and development of the new discipline of GIS had a major effect on the education programmes of both institutions. These developments provided the context for the institutions, in the late 1980s, to jointly develop a new range of educational and training courses in GIS that reflected the strong growth of technology in geography during that decade as geographers sought to develop links between increasingly available data and the computer’s ability to facilitate effective storage, manipulation, and analysis. A proposed bachelor’s degree course in GIS emerged as a collaborative development concerned with spatial data handling and the application of GIS technologies to a wide spectrum of problems and their solutions. The aim of the course was to enable students to acquire knowledge, skills, and expertise in GIS, integrated with mapping technology, for the purposes of spatial data management. Justification for the world’s first degree course in GIS gained support on the basis of an expanding continued on page 4 Illustration by Kyle Heinemann, Esri Vanessa Lawrence, CB, Ordnance Survey’s CEO and director, is a fellow of KUL and recipient of an honorary doctorate and visits regularly to deliver a keynote lecture that is normally timed to contribute to GIS Day. KUL also supports and encourages growth in GIS courses elsewhere. In 2006, KUL led a major European-funded project to establish a GIS curriculum, course, lab, and staff training at the University of Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina. KUL also runs an annual GIS summer school in conjunction with AGI. Commercial and academic links feed directly into the course through our innovative Contemporary Issues in GIS invited-speaker series, which has seen a number of illuminating speakers over the years. Faculty members are also in demand by other institutions as advisers, adjunct tutors, and external examiners, such as Penn State’s Masters in GIS (James O’Brien), the UNIGIS MSc programme (Nigel Walford), and the Royal School of Military Survey MSc course in defence geographic information (Kenneth Field). Such networks are important to share expertise, disseminate findings and experience, and support healthy inter- and intrasectoral collaboration. KUL is also supporting Esri (UK) Ltd. in developing its Enterprise Training Lab based on applications and student projects developed over recent years. The GIS Road Map at KUL: Another 20 Years and Beyond The last 20 years have seen phenomenal change and growth in technology, data, software, and the GI industry. KUL has been part of that growth and has led initiatives to keep courses at the forefront of GIS education. As KUL embarks on the next 20 years, there are echoes of 1989 and the drivers that stimulated the initial development of the course. Perhaps now, more than ever, an increasingly democratized approach to handling spatial data and mapping has caught the public’s imagination and illustrated the power of the geographic approach. Ever more jobs and careers require graduates to be highly skilled and trained professionals in GI systems and science. The impact of online data providers and the rapid diffusion of mobile and Internet mapping applications have reignited interest in the combination of geography and technology that should provide a steady supply of students to courses and serve the now maturing discipline well in the future. Many more pivotal positions in GI-related careers will be needed—careers for people who can now gain professional recognition as Chartered Geographers with expertise in the field of GIS (CGeogGIS). The recent review and events marking the 20th anniversary of the milestone Chorley Report on Handling Geographic Information (1987) in Britain (see below) reaffirmed the position of GIS at the heart of spatial data infrastructures. The Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe (INSPIRE) initiative promotes data interoperability and sharing of spatial information and provides a framework across Europe. The