This year’s Dangermond Lecture will be presented by Shoreh Elhami in Corwin Hall on Thursday May 29, 2-5 pm, as part of the spatial@ucsb opening event, “Connecting Our Region through GIS and Geospatial Technologies.” Shoreh is the co-founder and chairperson of GISCorps, a URISA program that coordinates the deployment of volunteers to underserved communities worldwide. URISA is a non-profit professional and educational association that promotes the effective and ethical use of spatial information and information technologies for the understanding and management of urban and regional systems.
URISA’s GISCorps will be the topic of Shoreh’s lecture. According to her abstract, “URISA’s GISCorps (www.giscorps.org) coordinates short term volunteer GIS services to underserved communities worldwide. Since its inception in October 2003, the Corps has attracted over 1,200 volunteers from 62 countries. To date, GISCorps has deployed 75 volunteers to 25 missions. These volunteers have contributed over 6,000 working hours in emergency and non emergency response missions in Latin America, Asia, Eastern Europe, Africa, and in the United States in post Hurricane Katrina disaster recovery efforts. The presentation will include information about several GISCorps’ implemented missions and, in particular, the role of its volunteers in disaster response missions.”
Shoreh has over 20 years of professional experience in GIS, 18 years of which have been in senior level GIS management, and she is the principal architect and current Director of Ohio’s Delaware County GIS system. Shoreh received The Ohio State 2002 Distinguished Alumni Award, URISA’s 2003 Leadership Award, ESRI’s 2003 first place award for the Map Book project, and she was a finalist for the 2003 “Innovator/Creator of The Year” award. She is a member of the URISA Board of Directors, a member of the National Research Council’s Mapping Science Committee, and an Adjunct Instructor of Geographic Information Systems in Professional Planning Practice at The Ohio State University.
