Otawa, Toru

About the Author: Dr. Toru Otawa teaches GIS applications in regional land planning, CAD and sustainable design courses at the University of Idaho, USA. He received a Bachelor of Science in Landscape Architecture from the Tokyo University of Agriculture, a Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and a Ph.D. from the University of Queensland, Australia. His ongoing research focuses on land informatics, the assessment of efficacy and effectiveness in corporate or organization-wide geospatial information systems applied to regional land planning, management and design.

Maximizing the Power of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in Applied Land Informatics

2004 0-7734-6491-3
Geographic information systems (GIS) have been implemented in a variety of organizations around the world and are increasingly used as a spatial decision-making tool by a wide range of disciplines. This diffusion of GIS has been driven primarily by advancements in GIS-related technologies such as hardware and software. While introducing GIS, very few organizations have scrutinized the socio-cultural infrastructure of an organization such as data and user needs. This “black-box” approach to GIS implementation has often led to disappointing outcomes, contrary to organization’s initial expectations. This book is based on the author’s inexhaustible motive to help maximize the benefits from GIS in corporate settings by understanding better and sound GIS design that meets organizational missions, goals and needs.

This study is a compilation of the land information research undertaken during the 1990s. A model was conceptualized and applied to local organizations to help evaluate the implementation of organization-wide or corporate geospatial information systems (GIS) over time. A questionnaire was developed to assess values and perceptions associated with the model components. The evaluation model has proven its value in assessing the efficacy of GIS in local and regional organizations. It was also effective as a diagnostic tool to make an existing GIS work and advance to the next level of implementation. This book describes the results of analyses and suggests various ways in which an organization, whether public, private, or quasi-public, can help maximize the potential of and benefits from a corporate GIS.