Kids GIS Portal

= Project Mission =

The mission is to provide an intuitive environmental geospatial portal for kids of all ages, based on open source software, open exchange formats and industry standard data models such as ArcHydro and the Pacific Northwest Hydro framework.

= Project Concept =

Kid’s GIS Open Source Environmental Portal is an exciting new project under development by GIS professionals from around the State of Oregon. By encouraging collaboration among engineers, surveyors, scientists, faculty and students the project team aims to provide a productive and harmonious web-based learning environment for kids. Based on powerful GIS tools and standardized environmental data structures, the Kid’s GIS portal is being designed to engage kids and help develop interests in math and earth sciences.

Important measures of the program’s success include: Free access (developed using non-proprietary software and data structures) Fun and intuitive interface (much like Google Earth) Ability to easily share information between schools, universities and public organizations Ability to use the application on any computer Prolific use

The team aims to provide an enduring program to educate and enable future generations to identify, monitor, preserve and restore natural habitat along surface waterways. If successful, core project components will support environmental and public education needs well beyond the needs considered in the initial project design.

= Core Team =

Cy Smith, Oregon Dept. Administrative Services Robert Harmon, Oregon Water Resource Dept. Chuck Orton, Orton Consulting Inc. Rick Ellis, Cadapult Software Inc. Allan Branscomb, University of Oregon Brandt Melick, City of Springfield

= Relationship to OSGeo =

At this time this project is independent, and not directly affiliated with OSGeo. However, it is closely aligned with several goals of OSGeo, and so OSGeo is contemplating providing hosting an initial development and deployment server (on Telascience hardware).