Titled "Geographic Information Analysis and Human Capital Research," the conference was held at the Hotel Boulderado, Boulder, Colorado, July 10-12, 1995, and was organized by personnel at the Buffalo site of the NCGIA.
The purpose of the Boulder meeting was to explore the use and limitations of geographic information analysis (GIA) and the rapidly developing technology and software of geographic information systems (GIS) in the area of human capital research. As will be discussed in more detail in the pages that follow, three geographic databases were assembled for use at the conference, each representing a distinct area of human capital research and a different form of data that are conventionally employed in geographic analysis. Each of the three databases was originally assembled by senior scholars working in areas related to human capital research, who led focus group sessions during the conference itself. The efforts of these scholars - Robert Huckfeldt, Carol Kohfeld, Richard Morrill, Peter Rogerson, and John Sprague - were instrumental in contributing to the success of the meeting, and we gratefully acknowledge the considerable time and expertise that these individuals devoted to these tasks.
Computer and technical support necessary to facilitate hands-on exploration of the potential for GIS/GIA to contribute to a variety of human capital concerns was received from Environmental Research Systems Institute (ESRI). In addition to making computer hardware from their Boulder office available to us at the meeting, ESRI allowed us to make extensive use of their GIS software ArcView, and hosted a training session prior to the conference for interested conference participants. Two representatives of ESRI, Charles Killpack and John Calkins, participated in the conference, offering overviews and demonstrations of GIS/GIA. John Calkins also served as a technical consultant for the meeting. We are grateful to ESRI and to these individuals for their valuable support of the meeting.
A list of conference participants and their institutional affiliations is appended to this report. As conference organizers, we are grateful to the NSF and to HUD for their support of our meeting. In particular, Allan Kornberg, NSF division director for the social, economic, and behavioral sciences, and James W. Harrington, program director for geography and regional science at NSF, made valuable contributions to the planning of the meeting and as participants in the proceedings.
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