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September 15, 1991 - 2011

 

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20 Years

 

Founded in 1991 and designated a formal Research Center by the UA Board of Trustees and the Arkansas Department of Higher Education, CAST has grown from one suite in the basement of Ozark Hall that included eight Sun Solaris Workstations, one Masscomp 5600, one Gateway 2000 and a total of 3+ gigabytes of disk  to 11,000 square feet of office space and computer laboratories in the state-of-the art research and teaching facility of the JB Hunt Transport Services, housing more than 100 high-performance workstations and approximately 30 larger application and data servers with more than 100 terrabytes of disk.

 

CAST's accomplishments over this time include:

Center of Excellence agreements with Definiens, eSpatial, ESRI, ERDA, Intergraph, IONIC, ORACLE, PCI Geomatics, Safe Software, Skyline, Sun Microsystems, Trimble and Wingware.

1991-1992 - US National Park Service selects CAST to conduce a comprehensive condition assessment of all the nation’s Civil War battlefields using GIS methodologies. The results are then used to set national priorities for battle preservation efforts as part of the American Battlefield Protection Act of 1996.

1992-1993 - U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services funding the GAP project for $250,000. This leads to to the first detailed, digital habitat map of the state.

CAST, through cooperative agreement with Trimble Navigation Ltd., houses a community GPS base station that is publically accessible, one of the first in the nation. Two decades later, in 2011, CAST is collobrating with Development Consultants, a local engineering firm, to continue to serve the public with freely accessible GPS data. 

CAST staff begins to work closely with staff and political leaders in communities around Northwest Arkansas to assist in the adoption of GIS technologies in daily operations. In 2011 cities such as Fayetteville, Bentonville, Springdale,  Benton and Washington Counties and the NW Arkansas Regional Planning Council all have strong GIS staff and programs and the technology is being used to aid in a wide range of public planning and management efforts.

Fred Limp appointed Chairman of the State Mapping and Land Record's Modernization Board.

The Board develops Act 150 passed in 1993 it and it's successor - the Arkansas Land Information Board - continues to develop new legislation for statewide mapping and GIS efforts. In 2011 the Arkansas Geographic Information Office, created by that legislation, and it's programs under long-time Director Shelby Johnson are viewed as national leaders.

Senator Dale Bumpers tours the Center.

1994 - 1995 - Intergraph selects CAST as one of the only four National Center's of Excellence in the Mapping and GeoSciences providing CAST with more than $5 million in hardware, software and support services. Two state-of-the art teaching labs are outfitted with equiptment and new courses offered in Geography and Anthropology.

Working with the US National Park Service the Center designs and implements the on-line National Archaeological Database (NADB). In 2011 the on-line publically accessible database has grown to contain more than  1/3 of a million records for the entire US.

CAST is one of the founding  members (of eight) of the Open GIS Consortium.  The Consortium develops interoperable specification for digital geo-data and operations.  In 2011 the Consortium (now called the Open Geospatial Consortium) has 434 members world-wide - including companies like Microsoft, Oracle, Google as well as members from national agencies in the US, Europe, Asia and elsewhere and more than 100 universities.

1996 - 1997 - CAST is invited by Tim Stephenson of Greenbriar High School to begin initial involvement with the EAST program in Greenbriar High School. By 2011 EAST has grown to involve 17,000 students in seven states.

CAST staff develops Arkansas' first digital election boundary map working with Secretary of State Sharon Priest. These are used to assist the election process around the state.

Seven undergraduate courses are now offered in the new classrooms  by CAST staff.

The first detailed satellite-based land cover land-use map of the Mississippi River Valley in Arkansas - showing detailed crop and crop-rotation information is prepared. It's success leads to statewide land-use land-cover mapping efforts for 1999, 2004 and 2006 and 2010.

1997 - 1998 - Oracle designates CAST as Center of Excellence and provides $1.8 million.

Seamless Warehouse of Arkansas Geodata (SWAG) technology project began, the predecesor to GeoStor. It is the first large scale interoperable state-wide geospatial data repository.

Environmental Dynamics PhD Program is approved. Many students are either funded by and/or utilize CAST resources in their research projects.

In collaboration with Kimberly Smith (BIOL) CAST initiates GIS and remote sensing based studies of birds-at-risk in Latin America.  Over the next years multiple research projects involving Smith and his students address significant habitat studies in Arkansas and throughout Central and South America. 

1998 - 1999 - SWAG project receives Computerworld Smithsonian Award and becomes part of the Permanent Research Collection on Information Technology at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.

 CAST receives the MidAmerica GIS Symposium Award for outstanding achievement by an Academic Institution in the field of Geographical Information Systems research.

CAST creates the Arkansas Interactive Mapper - one of the nation's first comprehensive state-wide interactive mapping systems that could prepare high quality cartographic products interactively.

SUN Microsystems provides CAST with high-performance server computer system, an Ultra Enterprise 5000 with four CPU's, one gigabyte of RAM and 600 gigabytes of disk.

2000 - 2001 - GeoStor goes online.

CAST and Computing Services intiate campus-wide ESRI license.

2001 - 2002 - Sun Microsystems provides CAST with  (1) an Enterprise E4500 midrange server with eight 400-Mhz Ultra Sparc CPUs, (2) a gigabit network StorEdge A5200 Raid disk array with 4800-Gb capacity, (3) StorEduge L3500 Robotic tape backup systems with native (uncompressed) 3500 GB capacity, and (4) two Enterprise E450 departmental servers with four 480-Mhz Ultra Sparc CPUs, 4-GbRAM and 144-Gb disk.

Students, both undergraduate and graduates, were issued more than 400 research computing accounts providing them no-cost access to the full range of both hardware and software at the Center.

2002 - 2003 - EAST Initiative now in 214 schools with CAST providing geospatial training and support.

ArkansasView begins, one of the ten charter members of AmerciaView. AmericaView is a USGS funded program to improve the access and use of remotely-sensed imagery across the US.

2003 - 2004 - CAST receives $495,216 NSF award for the HARLS-CS project, allowing CAST to purchase the OPTECH ILRIS-3D Long Range Scanner, multiple mapping grade and survey grade GPS systems and other surveying and mapping equipment.

More than 700 student and faculty research and teaching computer accounts are issued.

2004 - 2005 - Satellite Mallard Tracking project, a web-map showing GPS locations or migratory ducks, funded by Arkansas Game and Fish Commission begins. It is featured on ESPN and gets 100,000s of hits each duck season.

Leica Geosystems Geospatial Imaging and CAST formed the inaugral Leica Geosystems Center of Excellence in Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing.

With the GRASP Lab at the University of Pensylvannia, CAST receives a $1.3 million NSF award to 3D scan and to use geophysical analyses at the World Heritage site of Tiwinaku, Bolivia -- and to develop new computational methods to extract information for the complex data.

Jack Cothren is elected to the Board of the American Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. The first person from the University to be so honored.

2005 - 2006 - CAST collects 3D laser scan data of Machu Picchu, Peru - the first organization to do so.

Construction begins on JB Hunt Transport Services building, soon to be CAST's new home.

CADIS/CRATE build 3d models of Fayetteville and work with Google to be one of the earliest large scale datasets imported into Google Earth.

2006 - 2007 - The CORONA project is funded for $522,144 by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Using innovative computational methods over the next four years the project will develop a photogrammetrically correct image map of the entire Near East based on late 1960s and early 1970s "spy" satellite images.

Fourteen (14) classes were taught in CAST supported facilties from departments including GEOS, ANTH, ARCH, BIOL and others.

2007 - 2008 - CAST moves into the JB Hunt Transport Services state-of-the art facilites with 11,000 square feet of office space and computer laboratories.

2008 - 2009 - Environmentally Friendly Drilling Systems (EFD) program funded for $400,000 by the Houston Advanced Research Center.

CAST returns to Machu Picchu, Peru for additional 3D laser scanning as part of the Geomatics for Archaeology field program.

2009 - 2010 - CAST awarded $1,198,509 by the NSF EPSCoR, allowing CAST to purchase the Breuckmann smartSCAN HE 3D scanner, Leica C10 3D scanner and Z+F 5005i3D scanner.

Dr. Fred Limp retires as CAST's director and Dr. Jack Cothren becomes the new director.

2010 - 2011 - Data collected from the 2005 and 2009 Machu Picchu, Peru project is used for the cover of the April issue of National Geographic.

Through various funding CAST has particitated in projects and traveled to Bolivia, Peru, Hungary, Greece, Italy, Africa, Turkey, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Syria, Panama, China and many locations around the US.

 

Congratulations to CAST and all those what have been a part.