Geographic Information System (GIS) applications have long been in use by natural resource organizations as a way to display and analyze relationships between attributes across large geographic areas. Transportation organizations have been using GIS applications for at least twenty years to improve decision-making.

As use of GIS has evolved, so have expectations: GIS has become a means to communicate information amongst diverse agencies in planning and project decisions. Needs for new applications that rely on integrating diverse spatial data from a variety of sources have increased; fostering collaboration amongst data providers and data users and resulting in innovative tools that help agencies and organizations understand context and reach decisions more quickly and with more confidence.

The Transportation Research Board is working with the Federal Highway Administration to convene a workshop on May 3 - 4, 2006 in Washington, D.C. to discuss successful GIS data sharing collaborations for environmental GIS applications used in transportation, discuss common approaches and issues, and consider methods to facilitate adoption by other organizations.

Representatives from State and Federal transportation and natural resource agencies, local government, and non-governmental organizations with expertise in natural resource planning and regulatory programs, transportation planning and project development, and geographic information specialists from the Mid-Atlantic Region are encouraged to attend.

This is an opportunity to:

• Showcase your use of GIS for environmental applications
• Learn how other states are overcoming the challenges of sharing and integrating geospatial data from multiple sources
• Understand how geospatial technologies can help meet requirements in SAFETEA-LU
• Discover ways to gain support for collaborative environmental spatial data development projects
• Develop partnerships with other organizations in the Mid-Atlantic Region