F R I D A Y , D E C E M B E R 8 , 2 0 0 6
GIS Manager, Department of Environment and Community Development, Fulton County, GA
Carl develops and directs the implementation of enterprise-centric GIS applications for decision support of development services, public works, public safety (emergency management, police, fire, 911), tax assessors, tax commissioners, and other departments. He initiated web based applications using both Open Source or proprietary software, including interactive map tools for tax, GPS monuments, zoning and future land use queries, and annexation history. He directs a staff of seventeen GIS specialists in E&CD and assists and coordinates other GIS specialists in the Tax Assessors Office and General Services.
Carl has to contributed to and utilized Open Source projects over the past 12+ years. He has contributed to GIS/remote sensing, database, web scripting, web hosting projects; serves on several URISA standard setting committees
Carl has worked for Fulton County for the past fifteen years. He is been involved with the Georgia Speleological Survey and the Tennessee and Alabama Cave Surveys in both cartographic and archival roles.
SARA YURMAN
Director of Information Services, Spatial Focus, Inc.
Sara Yurman is an experienced GIS Manager and a founder of Spatial Focus, Inc. She has over 14 years of experience in both organizational and technical aspects of geographic information, encompassing government at the local, regional, and state levels. Her activities have included team-building and change management as well as implementations of raster and vector GIS, GPS data integration, system development, and database design.
Ms. Yurman has been Project Leader for the Fairfax County and SAGIS Address Implementation Plans, and was the primary technical consultant to the Republic of Malawi on the automation of the Land Title Registry. She has designed comprehensive GIS databases for Hall County, GA, Gaston County, NC, and developed a web-based quality control application, that provides for detailed checking of cadastral, planimetric and orthophotographic maps.
Before the founding of Spatial Focus, Inc. Ms. Yurman was a consultant for American Cadastre, Inc. (AmCad), a GIS consulting firm. She served AmCad's domestic market in both managerial and technical assignments. Ms. Yurman served as on-site interim GIS Project Manager for the Pulaski Area Geographic Information System (PAgis), a partnership involving the City of Little Rock, Little Rock Municipal Water Works, Little Rock Wastewater Utility and Pulaski County. She completed a Strategic Plan over six month period that reorganized the 8-year-old partnership and forged new institutional relationships. After recruiting a permanent replacement, Ms. Yurman continued to work with PAGIS to complete and document a database design, produce governing documents for the new organizational structure, and assist with address completion and reconciliation.
Prior to joining American Cadastre, she worked with a variety of clients on technical and strategic issues, advising clients on profit potential of existing geographic data within their organization. Her client list included a transportation planning firm and an ESRI business partner. Previous work included serving as GIS Manager for the Department of Community Affairs, State of Georgia, encompassing responsibility for GIS coordination at the State level, including working with federal, state, regional and local governments. During her tenure she established a statewide lending service for global positioning systems (GPS) equipment for local government statewide, along with a GPS base station, publishing daily hourly on a public bulletin hoard system.
Ms. Yurman worked in regional government as the GIS Manager for the South Georgia Regional Development Center, where she developed a GIS that served 10 counties and over 35 units of local government. She developed the GIS system, provided training and technical support throughout the process, and provided strategic planning, budgeting, and management of the system. During this project, Ms. Yurman designed and supervised the development of a comprehensive addressing system for a County in Georgia that had not previously been addressed, in support of the E-911 system. Image processing and GPS efforts were also within her purview.
Ms. Yurman also worked for Gwinnett County, GA, as a planner, providing GIS services in the Planning Division, and preparing statistical and demographic reports for the public and other County departments. She is a trained and experienced user of ARC/INFO, Maptitude and other GIS and database programs.
Ms. Yurman received a BFA from California Institute of the Arts, and a Master's degree in geography from Georgia State University. Her language skills include English, basic Spanish and written French.