We would like to thank all who made this book possible.
We have taught GIS courses at Carnegie Mellon University since the late 1980s, always using our own lab materials. With the feedback and encouragement of students, teaching assistants, and colleagues, we eventually wrote what became the GIS Tutorial series of workbooks, leading to this book. We are forever grateful for that support.
Faculty members of other universities who have taught GIS using our books have also provided valuable suggestions and feedback. They include Luke Ward of Rocky Mountain College; Irene Rubinstein of Seneca College; An Lewis of the University of Pittsburgh; George Tita of the University of California, Irvine; Walter Witschey of Longwood University; Jerry Bartz of Brookhaven College; and James Querry of Philadelphia University.
We are very grateful to the many public servants and vendors who have generously supplied us with interesting GIS applications and data, including Eli Thomas of the Allegheny County Division of Computer Services; Kevin Ford of Campus Design and Facility Development, Carnegie Mellon University; Barb Kviz of the Green Practices program, Carnegie Mellon University; physicians at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC; Erol Yildirim, Council for Community and Economic Research; Mike Homa of the Department of City Planning, City of Pittsburgh; staff members of the New York City Department of City Planning; Wendy Urbanic, Pittsburgh 311 Response Center; Bob Gradeck, Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center; Michael Radley of the Pittsburgh Citiparks Department; Pat Clark and Traci Jackson of Jackson Clark Partners; Maurie Kelly of Pennsylvania Spatial Data Access (PASDA); staff of the Pennsylvania Resources Council; Kirk Brethauer of the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission; Steve Benner of Pictometry International Corp; and employees of several spatial data vendors (including Esri, HERE Technologies, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, US Geological Survey, and the National Park Service).
Many technical and expert GIS staff members of Esri reviewed the draft of this book, including Amir Bar-Maor, Kevin Butler, Kylie Donia, Rupert Essinger, Robert Garrity, Christa Hash, Melita Kennedy, Eric Krause, Juan Laguna, Alex LeReaux, Shitij Mehta, Andy Mitchell, Jonathan Murphy, Andrew Norris, Tim Ormsby, Edie Punt, Simon Woo, David Wynne, and Karen Zwicker. We are most grateful for their comments, corrections, and clarifications. It was a pleasure working with these dedicated and talented professionals. Any remaining errors are ours. Finally, we are much indebted to the wonderful staff at Esri Press for their editorial expertise, beautiful design work, efficient production, and distribution of our book.