2022 Texas GIS Forum connects professionals and enthusiasts with new technologies Posted on April 11, 2022

TNRIS manages the Strategic Mapping Program that acquires and manages statewide digital data layers.

Novice GIS users and professionals pushing the boundaries of GIS technologies gathered at the 2022 Texas GIS Forum hosted by the Texas Natural Resources Information System, a division of the Texas Water Development Board. This year's conference was held in Austin on March 8-11 at the Commons Learning Center at the J.J. Pickle Research Center. Workshops and presentations featured a host of geographic information systems technologies, the latest Lidar advancements, 3D innovations, and more. Attendees also enjoyed interacting with vendors and hearing keynote speakers Erin Helton and Mark McCoy. Find out more about the annual Texas GIS Forum at https://tnris.org/texas-gis-forum/2022.

Soundbites

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Richard Wade talks about GIS and evolving technology

Richard Wade - TNRIS Deputy Executive Administrator

"Our industry changes about every six to seven years—what I was doing seven years ago isn't the same thing that we're doing now. And the technology is always changing. And this is a technology-based occupation that we're in. So in my opinion, what we are looking at is a, kind of, dynamic shift in the way data is being collected. And what that does is data prices are going down and the ability to obtain it is much easier. And now we can do a lot more with it. So I think what we are learning is, is that a lot of this information is, kind of, coming together and people are learning about how it's coming together and how they can take something that they've created before and merge it in with this newer technology that's going to really take it a different direction or maybe make it useful in a different way."

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Richard Wade on the prevalence of GIS technology

Richard Wade - TNRIS Deputy Executive Administrator

GIS is no longer a misunderstood technology—I think it's used everywhere now. Five, 10 years ago, nobody understood what it was. Now everybody has it on their personal devices and everybody uses it. So bottom line is, this is an exciting time. It won't be as exciting as next year and it won't be as exciting as the year after that."

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Richard Wade on the growth of the Texas GIS Forum

Richard Wade - TNRIS Deputy Executive Administrator

"We went from just having a few—10, 20, 30 people—to now approaching 350 to 400 people with 32 vendors, at some point. And so everybody gets, in my opinion, gets a lot out of this. They go away with their minds kind of reeling on what is possible."

This article is posted in Water Data .