2012 Redlands Panel on Business and Society: Thinking Ethically about the Use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
Friday March 9, 2012
Casa Loma Room, 9:00am to 12:30pm (continental breakfast
available at 8:30am)
Harlan Onsrud, Ph.D.
Professor of Spatial Information Science and Engineering
University of Maine
David DiBiase
Director of Education and Industry Solutions, Esri
Advisory Board Member of the MGIS Program, Penn State
University
Diana Sinton, Ph.D.
Director of Spatial Curriculum and Research, University of
Redlands
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology begins with
the premise that problem solving can be enhanced when
geographic information is properly analyzed. But as GIS
becomes a standardized tool in business and government to
address social, economic and environmental questions, how is
it changing the relationship between individuals and the
world in which they live? The panelists will examine this
general question through a number of topics, including the
responsibilities that GIS engineers have to the privacy of
citizens, the standards to which GIS professionals should
adhere when using geospatial applications, the legal
implications of the ownership of geospatial data and,
importantly, the social impacts, both positive and negative,
that result from the use of GIS.