History
The work of our Centre for Geographical Information Systems is the current manifestation of a well -established departmental tradition in thematic mapping that had its beginnings in
a) geomorphic mapping led by Dr E. Derbyshire (later Professor at the University of Leicester, U.K.), and the land degradation and history of settlement studies led by Professor Martin Williams (now at the University of Adelaide) and Emeritus Professor J. M. Powell.
b) the socio-demographic mapping studies led by Professor M. I. Logan (later Vice Chancellor of Monash University, and now retired), Professor J. McKay (now at the Monash Asia Institute), the late Professor C.A. Maher, and Associate Professor K. O'Connor (now at the University of Melbourne), and
c) regional studies, exemplified in thematic mapping terms by The Atlas of Victoria edited by the late Dr J Stuart Duncan, and published in 1983.
Much of the thematic mapping carried out in these earlier studies was supported under budgets that referred to national research and decision-support priorities. Thus, we can invoke a tradition of deploying expertise developed during research funded by the University, and by the Australian Research Council, (and other government agencies), to problems of an applied nature.
It is from this well-established tradition that we have adopted modern digital spatial data handling methods, and followed closely their diffusion during the on-going process of Australian micro-economic reform. The crucial change from analogue to digital spatial analysis was greatly spurred by the visit of Professor TIAN Desen from the University of Nanjing in 1988.
This tradition and expertise, is now deployed in teaching and higher degree supervision that refers to the Centre for Geographical Information Systems.