2 High Tech Questionnaire

What do you feel will be the major technological development in the next 10 years?

I personally feel that gene research and its application will be the biggest development in the next 10 years. Unfortunately, as a civil engineer I will not be involved in that work. However, if I were to limit your question to the field I'm most familiar with I would say the application of geographic information systems.

Please describe the development and explain why it will be so important?

Geographic Information Systems, or GIS as it's commonly called has been around since the early 1980's. However with the availability inexpensive software, the Internet and computer savvy users, it's application into our lives will increase tremendously. Several of the immediate benefits we have had from GIS include; Enhanced 911, recent urban redevelopment, census planning, UPS/Federal Express, property tax evaluations, real estate title transfer, public health, crime, managing growth through planning agencies, planning evacuations during storms, locating schools, delivering water and sewer to our homes, planning community recycling issues, and planning oil field drillings. The other major development and the reason I believe that the development of GIS will explode is due to the military unscrambling their global positioning systems to allow instant positioning. This removes a costly barrier to the application of this technology and will allow information to flow to and from these maps in real time. This development does have a dark side…."Big Brother". The Orwell idea of one all-powerful organization could become a reality when all these information sources and GIS applications are linked.

How can we learn more about this development research wise such as web sites, books, and magazines?

http://www.esri.com - software company
http://www.andassoc.com - links to applications to government agencies using GIS
http://www.usgs.gov

May we contact you again if we have further questions or to set up an interview (Yes/No)? Yes

Franklin Vaughan
Civil Engineer