Emily Wilson Awardee Bio
If you have accessed a statewide GIS dataset or online map in Connecticut at any point over the past 20 years, chances are you have encountered Emily’s work. From her job as a GIS Educator at the University of Connecticut, leadership roles on GIS Boards and Councils, a herculean effort to establish the new state GIS office, and her tireless commitment to advancing statewide GIS, Emily’s visionary leadership has made a lasting impact not just on the Connecticut GIS community, but on our state as a whole.
Emily has been a faculty member in the Department of Extension at UConn and an educator for the Center for Land Use Education and Research, better known as CLEAR, for nearly 25 years. Her resume is extensive. Just a few highlights include:
- She is the co-founder and developer of CT Environmental Conditions Online (CT ECO), a collaboration with the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. CT ECO was the first web-based platform for sharing statewide geospatial data and continues to be a critical source for data access and visualization, serving statewide natural resource data including all of the statewide imagery and elevation data for Connecticut, including the latest 2023 flight.
- Emily is a principal and the leading GIS analyst for Connecticut’s Changing Landscape, a long-running, nationally unique project at CLEAR that tracks land cover changes over six dates covering 30 years. The data has provided objective information addressing many issues including urban sprawl, agricultural land loss, habitat analysis and water quality, and has been used by numerous federal, regional, state and local entities, including the Long Island Sound Study and the CT DEEP.
- She is also the leader of the Connecticut Trails Program, a multifaceted, collaborative effort providing information and services on recreational trails for the public. This includes Connecticut Trail Finder, a collaboration with CT DEEP, CT DOT, and many others that has become the go-to online mapping resource for recreational hikers and cyclists to get information about trails around the state.
Emily has given back to the GIS community in many ways. She has been a longtime Board Member, and the former Chair of Northeast Arc Users Group (NEARC). She was appointed as the University of Connecticut representative on the original Connecticut Geospatial Information Systems Council and now serves as a CT GIS Office Advisory Council member. And speaking of the GIS Office, she played a significant advisory role in the formation of that Office through her education of elected officials and legislative leaders on the many critical uses of GIS technology and the need for a more coordinated approach in Connecticut. In these roles, Emily has worked to encourage sharing of information with the goal of increased efficiency and reduced redundancy in the realm of creating, maintaining and accessing geographic information across government agencies, local governments and universities in the state.
Throughout her career, Emily has been an early adopter of geospatial tools and technology, not only mastering technical skills, but also developing and delivering derived maps, data, and tools for everyday users. Emily has been a tireless advocate for GIS, paying specific attention to elevating women in the profession and leading by example, and doing all this while raising a family of her own. Emily, your work has not gone unnoticed. For all these reasons (and more), we would like to honor her today with the inaugural CT GIS Award…