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Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies

University of Arkansas

Communities

Home » Outreach » Communities

Over the last decade much of the activity of the Center has been in the creation of geospatial tools and approaches that can assist local communities.  Geospatial data and methods are essential elements for the effective management of many issues faced by communities but the complexity and costs are often an impediment to their adoption.

The Center's overall approach to community outreach has followed the philosophy of the classic proverb "Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day. Teach a person to fish and you feed them for a lifetime." Our efforts have been focused on creating community capacity wherever possible and in providing technical assistance to communities to aid them in effectively obtaining commercial services from providers in other situations.

In partnership with our Center of Excellence commercial partners we also assist communities by providing a location where they can examine state-of-the-art systems, solutions and strategies. Center staff, through our relationships with the professional press (e.g. GeoWorld, Earth Imaging Journal and others) also have access to a wide range of software and solutions and thus can provide unbiased information on a range of options.

The Center does not conduct traditional "for hire" projects for communities but will attempt to put them in contact with commercial providers. In many situations, the complex technical requirements of many geospatial activities have served as impediments to the acquisition of needed data and solutions. For example, the complex technical requirements of aerial photographic missions or LiDAR data acquisitions have frequently limited their appeal to communities without the technical capacity to accurately specify and acquire these products. In these cases, the CAST staff can assist the community in developing specifications and reviewing offers. This improves the quality and efficiency of the process for both the community and the potential commercial provider.

In other cases the Center has worked with external funding sources (e.g. USGS, USDA, etc.) to develop proof-of-concept or pilot systems that can then be used as models for communities. With limited resources, communities are naturally wary of spending on unproven, but potentially valuable technical solutions. By demonstrating the value (and costs) of new approaches CAST's projects can aid communities in moving forward into new directions.

Another category of community oriented projects include our summer projects in colllaboration with the EAST Initiative program, such at the CRATE or CADIS Internship programs. The CRATE Internship program allows high school students to further their animation abilities by working in a real world work environment on projects that benefit the community. CRATE is made possible through collaborations from various community members, the EAST Initiative and CAST. The students participate in EAST training through the many camps that are offered in the program, in particular, the animation camps. These camps teach students the basics of 3D animation and video editing with leading-edge software such as Softimage, Adobe Premiere, and SketchUp. Students learn to model and animate objects, scenes, and characters. The CADIS program, on the other hand, is a partnership of business, public, and academic sectors helping high school students to become key contributors to their community. In the CADIS program, high school students spend their summer defining and solving important community problems.

The ongoing support and involvement of CAST in the University of Arkansas Economic Development Institute (UAEDI) has been countinously engaging and exciting since the inauguration of UAEDI in 2002.

During these years CAST has been actively involved in a series of projects such as the Crossroads Coalition Atlas or the Crossroads Asset and Resource Library (CARL) that UAEDI has promoted.

All these and other examples of various community projects are provided in the links to the left of the page.