The Consortium is a non-profit organization intended to facilitate partnerships between academia, local government, state and federal agencies, and private industry.   The Consortium is intended as a means to facilitate funding, partnering, and project management for an applied regional GIS research program, that also includes training and technology demonstration activities.

• The Consortium's applied R&D agenda on a regional basis encompasses:

• environmental monitoring and assessment of the US-L watershed,

• GIS watershed analysis to support engineering design and reclamation, and

• leveraged partnering to acquire and process of aerial photography and

• products for the entire anthracite region (3600 sq. mi.)

• demonstration of a local data distribution strategy showcasing Web based GIS applications and data sharing from both local and federal servers.

Most of these federally funded projects also require partnering with cities, counties, agencies (local, state and Federal), and private industry for regional training, technology transfer, data acquisition, and decision support.  This approach is based on community cost-sharing and leveraging of resources.

©2001 PAGIS