The State of Minnesota tapped into FireWise, an organization funded by Wildland/Urban Interface Working Team (WUIWT) of the National Wildfire Coordinating Group, aimed at involving communities in preventing fires, to map areas threatened by a blowdown of trees in 1999. The project is now up and running

Of note:

"The system utilizes Spatial Oracle, UMN MapServer and Java. Javascripting builds the front end html code for Web display."

Students do analytical work - mostly high schoolers, but also junior high students.

"The Minnesota Firewise program secured a modest grant from the National Fire Plan for the system to purchase software and hardware."

"...plans are in the works to allow the data to be displayed on a standardized client such as ArcGIS, Web Mapping Service (WMS), or Web Feature Service (WFS)."

- Government Technology

Specifically, the foundation gave $1.5 million to the Environmental Science and Policy Program at the College of William and Mary to establish a Center for Geospatial Analysis and a “teacher-scholar” postdoctoral program in the interdisciplinary environmental science program.

A geologist, associate professor Greg Hancock, will coordinate the establishment of the Center for Geospatial Analysis (CGA).

The school paper refers to GIS as "an emerging technology that uses computers to plot, layer and organize data." The center, it notes, is "one of the first in the nation at a liberal arts college of William and Mary’s size."