STUDENTS DESIGN PROJECT TO HELP IMPROVE COMMUNITIES

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - A new web-based program designed by local high school students and supported by community leaders will help Northwest Arkansas lead the way in place-based decision making with a prototype that gives people easy access to the information they need.

With the Community Asset and Development Information System (CADIS), anyone with Internet access can find out information about land in Benton and Washington Counties. The information in CADIS databases includes streets, water features, landmarks, school districts, city limits, public lands, addresses, vegetation, physical geography and more.

"Using, CADIS, individuals and businesses can find out important information about the region and identify potential places to build a home, start a farm or locate a business," said Fred Limp, director of the Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies (CAST). "CADIS uses state-of-the-art computer systems to process and analyze complex regional data and provide results in an easy-to-use map format."

This summer, four high school students from the Environmental and Spatial Technology (EAST) program spent 10 weeks at CAST on the University of Arkansas campus creating the program that became CADIS. During the first three weeks of the internship, Ari Kooshesh, Ben Farley and John Cromwell of Fayetteville High School and Matt Hanafin of Rogers High School generated ideas and presented them to community leaders, including John Lewis, president of the Bank of Fayetteville, Uvalde Lindsey, executive director of the Northwest Arkansas Council, other people from local businesses and non-profit organizations and government officials from Fayetteville, Springdale and Washington and Benton Counties.

"Because of CADIS, our community has the potential to help ourselves, and others, through technology," Lewis said. Programs like CADIS give the public more reasons to become computer literate, he said.

Mark Schaefer, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Water and Science for the U.S. Department of the Interior, and a proponent of using advanced technology to support place-based decision making, said, "CADIS is an excellent example, not only of the uses of this technology, but also the important role that our schools and students can play in developing this capability. I believe tools of this kind will revolutionize community-based planning over the next decade."

The students created an informational Internet site where they could chart their progress. Then they worked with data provided by the National Association of Counties (NACo), commercial data providers and government organizations, using software donated by Intergraph to create a usable database for the community. In their work they were joined by three undergraduate students from the University of Arkansas.

"It wasn't important how old you were - the keys were the skills you had, a willingness to learn and to be part of a team. As such it was an important 'real world' learning experience for everyone," said Tim Stephenson director of the state-wide EAST program.

"In two and a half months we dealt with all aspects of a major project, from forging compromises, to collecting data, to developing applications, to finally presenting our results," said Fayetteville High School student and EAST team member Ben Farley. "CADIS has given us a more realistic idea of what may be in store for us later in life."

Their work resulted in two applications: LandFinder, which people can use to look for specific properties for any 40-acre tract of land among the 30,000 40-acre tracts in Benton and Washington Counties, and Civic Center, which will allow people to type in an address and find information on voting districts, school districts and state and local elected officials.

With LandFinder, a user can choose different criteria in seeking land: Flat or hilly, near or far from a highway, street or particular city, near pasture land or certain types of businesses.

Once the user has submitted a request, LandFinder sends back a map outlining the particular areas that meet the criteria. The person can zoom in on those areas, get specific details and even "write" on the map and print it out.

The database includes information gathered from NACo, Washington County 911 and the CAST GAP Project, which provided data on the whereabouts of railroad tracks, chicken houses, school district boundaries, oak forests and pastures. The database contains 56,000 road segments alone.

The students molded most of this information into a useable program in the form of CADIS. This is only the beginning, according to Williamson.

"These students have created the infrastructure for an important community tool," said Malcolm Williamson of CAST, who supervised the CADIS project. "There’s a whole lot more that can be done with it from here."

The CADIS project also serves as a prototype for other communities, Williamson said.

"A program like this is not restricted to university towns," he said. Many communities across Arkansas have established EAST programs in their high schools, where students learn to solve community problems by using computer technologies like geographic information systems (GIS), global positioning systems(GPS) and computer assisted data (CAD).

"These communities are raising a generation of people who know how to use this technology," Williamson said. Community leaders should seek help from these students to create technological solutions to local problems, he said.

The idea for CADIS grew from Aladdin, a partnership between the community and the University that seeks to improve public Internet access to information that affects people’s daily lives, including sites on education, health care, community services and politics.

"CADIS would not have happened if not for the already present relationship and trust developed between the University and the community through Aladdin," Lewis said.

To learn more about CADIS and to use the applications, go to http://www.cast.uark.edu/local/cadis

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