Action Plan of Niigata GIS Association：

1. A Short History of the Association

A group of companies, which are engaged with miscellaneous types of GIS related business at the Niigata City organized themselves, and jointly founded the Niigata GIS Association on Aug. 25, 2005. They originally planned to start the preparation for its organization in the September of 2004; however, in the following October, the “Mid Niigata Earthquake” had occurred, and this severely destroyed the life lines of the middle part of Niigata Prefecture. In the meanwhile, the founding companies were fully engaged with the “GIS Support Project for the Recovery and Restoration of the Damaged Regions,” and had to delay the founding of the association. But because of the disaster and their engagement with the support activities, at a higher level of understanding, they seriously recognized the urgent importance of GIS technology.

2. Mission Statement

The mission of the Association includes the following issues:

1. The development of the basic technology of GIS
2. The creation of new markets
3. The concentrated transmission of geographic information at the time of disasters

Based on the lesson learned from the Mid Niigata Earthquake, in order to enhance the preparedness at a normal time, we also take the followings as our mission:

1. The sharing and exchange of spatial information
2. The enhancement of the literacy for spatial information
3. The organization of taskforces at the time of emergency

3. Our Relation with Niigata University

During the same period when the Association was formed, Niigata University also launched its global strategy and action plan by establishing the Headquarters for Global Strategy (International Academic Support Office), and started to support projects like Health GIS, aspiring to be a GIS center in Asia. Eventually, the Niigata University had joined the Association as special corporate member, and its university president, Mr. Akira Hasegawa took the position of special adviser, and Prof. Hideo Makino (Department. of Engineering), adviser for the Association. In the last April, the Niigata University also established a Research Center for Natural Hazards & Disaster Recovery, promoting GIS research activities in miscellaneous fields of study.

4. Our Activities

In the last year, the Association held a special seminar twice for the promotion of GIS. This year, we have been engaged with the following activities and plans.

• Jul. 22, 2006 The president of the Association participated in the special seminar at Niigata University (“GIS Literacy for Beginners) as guest speaker.
• Aug. 31, 2006 The Association held the third special seminar “Business GIS”
• Spt. 26, 2006 The Association co-sponsored the International GIS workshop at Niigata University.
• Oct. 29, 2006 The Association will participate in the Regional ICT Festival at Niigata (Oct. 27-29) by planning a seminar.
• Nov. 3, 2006 The Association will co-sponsor a GIS Day festival with Niigata University at its Ikarashi Campus.
• Dec. 1, 2006 The Association will hold the forth special seminar.
• Other　Activities/Links

5.Long Term Plan of the Association

GIS has been recognized more and more as one of social infrastructure in miscellaneous fields of our social activities. In the last June, a “Bill on the Basic Guideline on the Promotion of the Use of Geographic Spatial Information” has been introduced to the national diet, and the needs and expectations for GIS have also grown larger.

The Association will take it as its mission to bridge spatial data owned separately by administrative agencies like State, Prefecture, City, Town, and Village by raising the autonomy of the “area” of life. For this, the Association is not good enough, and we are now considering that we should develop it into a NPO.

Our goal is to construct a framework of collaboration among Governments, Industry, and Universities, in which regional information should be controlled by the region, and when it is necessary, the information should be shared, exchanged, and used for the better management of their area of life and the policy making to realize it.