John D. Evans, Ph.D.
E-mail: jdevans@mit.edu
Address:
 

Phone:
M.I.T. Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning
77 Mass. Ave., Rm. 9-514
Cambridge, MA 02139
(617) 258-0803

What I do at M.I.T.

I'm working in M.I.T.'s Department of Urban Studies and Planning, as a Postdoctoral Associate. What do Postdoctoral Associates do (besides use lots of syllables)? I'm experimenting with interoperability among geographic information systems -- learning how to help different uses and users of geographic information work together, more easily and more -ah- deeply.
In particular, I'm building a world-class (if all goes well!) data service for digital orthophotos. I built an initial version that serves up Boston-area orthophotos obtained from MassGIS, in the Massachusetts Executive Office of Environmental Affairs. Since it went online in September 1996, this service has attained a good degree of interactivity, performance, and interoperability, and has sparked quite a lot of interest. Now I'm adding in several features, such as dynamic coordinate conversion, seamless coverage, vector overlay, and geocoding, that should provide wider ease of use and smoother integration into people's work. A few ephemeral prototypes are online, for the Massachusetts Coast, Washington, DC, and the Boston metro area (v.2).
I'm funded by the Natural Resources Conservation Service (U.S. Dept. of Agriculture) and by the Federal Geographic Data Committee. Hats off to them both for seeing the light!

Interests and experience

(Want to try and hire me away from my job? :-)
One-page résumé:  PDF or HTML (use thin margins to print on one page)
A recent federal résumé (4pp.): HTML)

Dissertation

Cap 'n gown shot
    "I'm out!" - June 5, 1997		 I recently completed my Ph.D. at M.I.T., in the field of Information Systems in Planning. I've put my dissertation, entitled Infrastructures for sharing geographic information among environmental agencies, on the Web for all to enjoy. 

(Don't feel like reading the whole thing? Check out a summary presentation and paper I prepared for the International Conference on Interoperating Geographic Information Systems (*), December 1997.)
My dissertation committee was as follows:
  • Joseph Ferreira, Jr. (Computer Resource Laboratory, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, M.I.T.)
  • Wanda Orlikowski (Center for Coordination Science, Sloan School of Management, M.I.T.)
  • Lyna Wiggins (Center for Urban Policy Research, Rutgers University)


    • Funding for the dissertation came from two sources. A grant from the National Science Foundation's Geography and Regional Science Program helped to fund the organizational case studies in Chapters 4, 5, 6, and 7. Thanks, NSF! (The proposal I wrote is online.) The Federal Geographic Data Committee's Cooperative Competitive Agreements Program helped to fund the development of the digital orthophoto data service described above and in Chapter 8 of the dissertation. Thanks, FGDC!
     

    Last revision: December 7, 1997