About the Author
Nick Chrisman attended the University of Massachusetts in Amherst as a geography
major from 1968 to 1972. During that period the campus had two computers.
A user had to make a special request to obtain 24,000 words of memory for
a batch job. He modified some programs from Harvard Lab for Computer Graphics
so that he could make maps using 1970 Census data related to the Boston
school desegregation court case and other projects. This limited experience
helped him get a job at the Harvard Lab.
From 1972- 1982, he worked on a variety of applied projects as well as design
and programming of software. The ODYSSEY system, a prototype of the modern
GIS processors, was the major product of this period. From 1979-81, he took
leave from Harvard to complete a Ph.D. in Geography at the University of
Bristol in England. The thesis concerned a model of error in categorical
coverages and methods of analysis sensitive to such error.
In 1982, the software development era at the Lab was over. He took a position
at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the Department of Landscape Architecture.
He joined an interdisciplinary team of surveyors, landscape planners and
agricultural experts in developing the Soil Conservation Plan for Dane County,
Wisconsin. The Dane County Land Records Project, and its interdisciplinary
approach, set the stage for the statewide efforts culminating in the Land
Information Program, a model for assistance to local governments in
making the transition to GIS techniques. From 1982 through to 1990, he was
active in the National Committee for Digital Cartographic Data Standards,
as chair of the group defining data quality standards.
In 1987, Chrisman took a position in the Department
of Geography at the University
of Washington in Seattle. He continues to be active in research on error
in categorical coverages, on time in GIS, on algorithms and data structures,
as well as the social and cultural context of GIS. This book is the result
of teaching an introductory course on GIS (most recently, Geography
460) over the past fourteen years.
Version of 3 March 1997