Author Biography

Lewis, Benjamin

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Biographical Notes

One-paragraph biography: Mr. Benjamin Lewis has over 14 years of experience in the field of GIS, working for academic research groups, public agencies, and private companies. Mr. Lewis has developed many network-based GIS applications and is the designer and primary developer of the ROMap, a peer-to-peer GIS prototype. Mr. Lewis is founder of the OpenSourceGIS.org site, a master list of Open Source GIS applications. Short resume: RECENT PROJECTS at ATS, Inc. * Rapid Online Mapping Network (ROMap) - Designed and built a Java based, peer-to-peer mapping system in conjunction with the Open GIS Consortium and the Federal Geographic Data Committee for presentation at the U.N. Summit for Sustainable Development in South Africa. * South Florida Water Management District - Designed and built a real time,web-based interface to the District's SCADA system to provide a geographic view of SFWMD flood control structures, color coded by alarm status. The system was developed using ArcIMS 3.1, running on SDE 8.1 and SQL Server 2000. * CourthouseOnline.com - Designed and built a high performance, royalty free web-based GIS parcel viewer to meet the needs of the CourthouseOnline tax data portal. Open Source MapServer was used as the development platform. * Pennsylvania Spatial Data Clearinghouse (PASDA) - Diagramed alternative data flow architectures for PASDA. The scenarios provided a framework for developing consensus on the future direction of the clearinghouse. * Department of Public Works, City of Baltimore - Developed work plan for migrating the Department's utility management data from a Unix, ArcStorm based, Miner and Miner PowerTools environment to an ArcFM, GeoDatabase environment. * Pennsylvania Department of Transportation - Consulting services in many areas: Designed and developed a web-based Photogrammetry Asset Management System (PAMS) for the Photogrammetry Division. This includes integrated Project Management and Project Archive systems. The Project Archive uses Open Source, MapServer GIS to provide robust search and display functions for archived photogrammetry projects against a backdrop of statewide DRG and road data. EDUCATION * University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Master of Regional Planning 1991. * University of Wisconsin, Madison. BA in History. 1986. CONFERENCES / PUBLICATIONS * Founder of OpenSourceGIS.org web site, a master list of Open Source GIS software projects. Started February 2001. * "Open Source GIS: Fast, Powerful, and Good at Interoperability", GIS 2001: Extending the Technology, Penn State University, Hershey Pennsylvania, May 2001 * "Web-Based, Open Source GIS: A Well Kept Secret", Web GIS 2000 Conference, Penn State University, State College, Pennsylvania, November, 2000 * "A Holistic Approach to Modeling Outdoor Acoustical Environments", Geo Info Systems, May 1997 * "Tailoring GIS Technologies to the Transportation EIS Process", ARC/INFO Users Conference, Washington D.C., December 1994