Mission Statement

The Geographic Information Science Center (GISC) was established by Chancellor Berdahl in 1998 to serve Berkeley faculty, students, and staff by coordinating the acquisition, instruction, deployment, and development of geographic information technologies on the campus. Administratively located under Vice-Provost Jewel, the Center is not directly managed by any particular unit or department on campus and thus has a campus-wide mandate. The fundamental mission of the center is to raise the level of GIS expertise on the entire campus and to stimulate cross disciplinary education, research, and cooperation using these technologies. In turn, the Center seeks to raise the visibility of existing activity, to encourage linkages and to stimulate new research and education at Berkeley in the rapidly developing field of geographic information science. It accomplishes this mission by serving research, education, and administration with computer infrastructure support; shared hardware resources; distribution of site licensed software; specialized instructional classes and seminars; data development, repository and access; consulting services; programming support; community building; and outreach.