Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA
Ph.D., Information Systems in Planning, 1997

• Dissertation title: Infrastructures for sharing geographic information among environmental agencies.

Analyzed organizational and technical processes of information infrastructure development, through more than 60 interviews with state, regional, and federal data managers and users in the Great Lakes, Gulf of Maine, and Pacific Northwest regions. Agencies studied include the Environmental Protection Agency; Great Lakes Commission; US Geological Survey; Environment Canada; Bonneville Power Administration; US Fish and Wildlife Service; Northwest Power Planning Council; state GIS centers and other agencies in WA, OR, ID, MT, MI, MA, NH, ME, Ontario, and Nova Scotia; and others.

Built an interactive service providing public access to over 7GB of digital orthophotos on the National Spatial Data Infrastructure, in order to assess the current state and likely futures of geographic information standards, services, and sharing.

Awarded National Science Foundation Dissertation Grant (Geography and Regional Science Program, 1995-1996); Federal Geographic Data Committee Competitive Cooperative Agreement (1995-1996).

• Graduate coursework and Ph.D. qualifiers in Information Systems in Planning and Environmental Planning & Management.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA
S.B., Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 1987

Curriculum in applied mathematics, electromagnetic engineering, and computer science; senior thesis on laser optics. Honors: Engineering (Tau Beta Pi), Research (Sigma Xi), Electrical Engineering (Eta Kappa Nu).

Lycée Lyautey, Casablanca, Morocco
Baccalaureate, Mathematics and Physical Sciences, 1983

WORK EXPERIENCE

MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
Computer Resource Laboratory, School of Architecture and Planning
77 Massachusetts Ave., Rm. 9-514
Cambridge, MA 02139

Postdoctoral Associate	Oct. 1997 - present
Supervisor: Joseph Ferreira, Jr.  jf@mit.edu / (617) 253-7410	Full-time  $50k/yr.

Creating interoperable online services to disseminate some 35 Terabytes of digital geospatial information to/from over 2,000 rural field offices of the US Dept. of Agriculture's Natural Resource Conservation Service. Laboratory experimentation is on distributed, multi-server scalability and seamless data access; also conduct fieldwork to tune data services to specific applications onsite. Advise the Department of Agriculture's business process reengineering efforts, and participate on the OpenGIS industry consortium. Also collaborating with the Massachusetts Coastal Zone Management Office and the Federal Geographic Data Committee to put large coastal orthophoto libraries online.
 

Research Assistant	Oct. 1995 - Jul. 1997  Jan. 1990 - Jan. 1993  Mar. 1987 - May 1988
Supervisor: Joseph Ferreira, Jr.  jf@mit.edu / (617) 253-7410	15 to 40 hrs./wk.  $16/hr. and/or Tuition

Designed, built, and analyzed geographic databases and networked data services for urban and regional planning, in collaboration with the US National Capital Planning Commission, the Massachusetts Executive Office of Environmental Affairs, and local town planning agencies. Adapted these data products to research and teaching projects.

• 1995-present: Built tools to streamline networked access to digital orthophotos within the National Spatial Data Infrastructure. Principal architect of graphical Web interface, visible at http://ortho.mit.edu, that streamlined access to digital orthophotos for hundreds of users in local and federal government, universities, private firms, and the public. Co-wrote successful funding proposal to the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC). Currently developing derived data services for Washington, DC, and the Massachusetts coastal zone.
• 1990-1993: Assessed vector and raster GIS tools and database management systems for land use planning and demographic analysis in Washington, DC, and made written and oral recommendations to the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC). Designed a data model to integrate databases on facilities management. Built one of the first Web-to-Oracle SQL gateways (April 1994) to provide public access to the NCPC federal facilities database.
• 1987-1988: Ported early GIS tools (Odyssey and Roots) to the X Window System, using the C programming language.

 

Instructor	Sept.1988 - May 1990;  Sept. 1992 - Jan. 1994
Supervisor: Joseph Ferreira, Jr.  jf@mit.edu / (617) 253-7410	15 to 40 hrs./wk.  $16/hr. and/or Tuition

 

• Taught introductory course on Computers in Public Management to over 300 students in MIT's Master of City Planning Program (Fall 1988, Fall 1989, Spring 1990, Fall 1992, Fall 1993). Topics included spreadsheet modeling, database management, and digital mapping, using MapInfo, Atlas, MS-Access, MS-FoxPro, dBASE 3/4, Excel, Lotus 1-2-3. Duties progressed from assistant-teaching to primary responsibility for curriculum design, teaching, and administration.
• Taught second-level GIS Workshop (Spring 1993) to 30 Master's, undergraduate, and PhD students in MIT's Depts. of Urban Studies & Planning and Civil & Environmental Engineering. Designed curriculum, gave lectures, prepared and supervised hands-on GIS laboratory exercises, and designed and graded assignments. Software taught: Atlas*GIS, Arc/Info, ArcView.
• Taught a workshop (Jan. 1991) on early Internet tools (ftp, WAIS, gopher, archie) as part of the MIT - Tufts University Professional Development Institute. Invited back in Jan. 1992.
• Gave several guest lectures in Computer-Based Analysis for Public Management and in a Seminar on Planning Support Systems.

WALLACE, FLOYD, ASSOCIATES, Architects and Planners
Russia Wharf, 286 Congress St.
Boston, MA 02210

GIS / Information Systems Specialist	Mar. 1995 - Aug. 1996
Supervisor: Deborah Poodry - (617) 305-9800  (now at Einhorn Yaffee Prescott, P.C., Cambridge, MA)	$45/hr.  10-20 hrs./wk.

Designed and built systems to collect, integrate, and report information held by the Boston Public Works Department. Devised semi-automated procedures to geocode a linearly-referenced, 45,000-record pavement-management database; oversaw their implementation by three GIS technicians. Software used: MapInfo with MS-FoxPro and MS-Access, under Windows 3 and Windows 95.

Based on small-group interviews with Public Works personnel, defined information flows and developed a GIS-based tool for citywide handicap-access survey, planning, and prioritization. Designed and carried out a training curriculum for colleagues and city engineers.

Duties progressed from providing technical expertise to overseeing project implementation, training, and client and contractor relationships.

NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF LA PLATA, Argentina
Facultad de Ingeniería
Calle 1 y 47, 1900 La Plata, Argentina

GIS Consultant	June-July 1995
Supervisor: Prof. Ing. Pablo A. C. Massa  massa@isis.unlp.edu.ar / (021) 25-8911	$45/hr.  50 hrs./wk.

Advised civil-engineering students and technicians on data systems for water and sewer infrastructure management in the Buenos Aires region. Used a Genasys geographic information system with a Sybase database engine, on IBM RS/6000 Unix workstations. All work was conducted in Spanish.

PLYMOUTH ROCK ASSURANCE CORPORATION
695 Atlantic Ave.
Boston, MA 02111

Unix systems consultant	June-Sept. 1991; Jan. 95
Supervisor: Geoff Arnold - (617) 951-1644	8-12 hrs./wk.  $35-40/hr.

Tuned Digital Unix / Informix database servers for optimal performance; studied performance factors and specified hardware and software upgrades.

THOREAU COUNTRY CONSERVATION ALLIANCE

GIS consultant	Jan. 1991
Supervisor: Barbara Barros - bbarros@mit.edu / (617) 253-3216	8-20 hrs./wk.

Devised and documented procedures to integrate digital land use maps, 3-D terrain models, and image data using Arc/Info, the X Window System, and Macintosh Hypercard.

WORLD BANK, Environment Division, Africa Technical Dept.
1818 H St. NW
Washington, DC 20433

Consultant	Summer 1988; Jan. 1989  Summer 1989
Supervisor:  François Falloux  ffalloux@worldbank.org / (202) 473-5562	$110/day  40 hrs./wk.

Advised African governments and donor agencies on strategies for building remote sensing and land information systems in developing countries. Convened a workshop of 40 African and international specialists (Sept. 1988). Co-wrote World Bank Technical Paper #108, Land Information and Remote Sensing for Renewable Resource Management in Sub-Saharan Africa. Recommended internal World Bank strategies for environmental data management.

PUBLICATIONS and PRESENTATIONS

Publications

1. Evans, John D., 1998 (in press). Organizational and Technological Interoperability for Geographic Information Infrastructures, to appear c. 8/98 in an edited volume published by Kluwer. Available online at <http://mit.edu/jdevans/interop97>.

2. Evans, John D., 1997. Infrastructures for sharing geographic information among environmental agencies. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT, Cambridge, MA. Full document is available online at <http://mit.edu/jdevans/thesis>.

3. Evans, John D., 1997. Infrastructures for sharing geographic information: lessons from the Great Lakes and the Columbia River. In Geographic Information Research: Bridging the Atlantic, M. Craglia and H. Couclelis (eds.). London: Taylor and Francis.

4. Evans, John D., and Joseph Ferreira, Jr., 1995. Sharing spatial information in an imperfect world: Interaction between organizational and technical issues. In Sharing Geographic Information, H. Onsrud and G. Rushton (eds.). New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University.

5. Evans, John D., 1994. Sharing spatial information across agencies, regions, and scales. In Environmental Information Management and Analysis: Ecosystem to Global Scales, W. Michener and J. Brunt (eds.). London: Taylor & Francis.

6. Ferreira, Joseph, Jr., Lyna L. Wiggins, John D. Evans, Michael J. Shiffer, Robert W. Smyser, and Philip R. Thompson, 1993, Computing Technologies for Land Use and Regional Planning at the National Capital Commission. Final Report Contract 91-02, National Capital Planning Commission. Unpublished.

7. Evans, John D., Joseph Ferreira, Jr., and Philip R. Thompson, 1992. A visual interface to heterogeneous spatial databases based on spatial metadata. In Proceedings of the 5th International Symposium on Spatial Data Handling, P. Bresnahan, E. Corwin, and D. Cowen (eds.). Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina.

8. Computer-based Land-use Planning Projects for the National Capital Planning Commission Project Report 8/30/91 (unpublished).

Public presentations

April 1998: Planning Information and Maps on the Internet, presented to the Annual Conference of the American Planning Association, Boston, MA.

December 1997: Paper 1 above presented at the first International Conference and Workshop on Interoperating Geographic Information Systems, National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis, Santa Barbara, CA. Presentation available online under <http://mit.edu/jdevans/interop97>.

September 1997: Infrastructures for Sharing Geographic Information, presented to the Applied Ocean Physics and Engineering Seminar at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute / US Geological Survey, Woods Hole, MA.

May 1996: Making digital orthophotos more accessible over the Internet, presented at the New England GIS Technology Conference, Taunton, MA.

July 1995: Paper 3 above presented at the National Science Foundation-European Science Foundation Summer Institute on Geographic Information, Freeport, ME.

May 1993: Paper 5 above presented at the Symposium on Environmental Information Management and Analysis: Ecosystem to Global Scales, Albuquerque, NM.

March 1993: Information integration for land use planning in the National Capital region, presented at the American Planning Association Annual Conference, Washington, DC.

Aug. 1992: Paper 7 above presented at the 5th International Symposium on Spatial Data Handling, Charleston, SC.

July 1992: Washington, DC: Planning support systems for the National Capital Planning Commission, presented at the Urban and Regional Information Systems Association (URISA) Annual Conference, Washington, DC.

Feb. 1992: Paper 4 above presented at the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA) Specialist Meeting on Institutions Sharing Geographic Information, San Diego, CA.

(Many lectures and seminars at MIT.)

Special accomplishments

June 1998: Invited to join a panel on Distributed Geolibraries sponsored by the Mapping Science Committee of the National Academy of Sciences / National Research Council.

May 1998, June 1997: Served on a proposal review panel for the Federal Geographic Data Committee's National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) Benefits program