Redlands, California-In a world filled with ever-increasing amounts of information, spatial portals are revolutionizing the way we find, manage, and share geographic knowledge, from the local level to the world stage. These one-stop Web sites distribute and collect geographic data and mapping services maintained anywhere on the Internet.

Geographic information system (GIS) users increasingly depend on these specialized portals to access and share spatial information in an assortment of industries including government, education, and health care. Spatial Portals: Gateways to Geographic Information, a new book from ESRI Press, explores the opportunities, developments, challenges, and issues that are impacting the geospatial industry.

The reader-friendly Spatial Portals explains and reviews this rapidly evolving technology for students, public officials, business leaders, and other decision makers from the perspective of a GIS user. From the world’s response to the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 to the management of waters in the Canadian Pacific, readers experience real-world examples of how organizations around the world construct and use spatial portals.

Authors Dr. Winnie Tang and Jan Selwood drew from their extensive experience to create a book that speaks to the industry. Tang is CEO of ESRI China and is widely recognized as a leader of the Asian GIS industry. She regularly lectures at universities in the region and serves as an advisor to a wide variety of geographic, technology, and conservation organizations in Asia. Selwood is an independent GIS consultant based in Japan who works extensively in Europe and Asia developing and managing GIS projects for a wide range of clients and applications.

Spatial Portals: Gateways to Geographic Information (ISBN 1-528948-131-3, 196 pages, $29.95) is available at bookstores and online retailers worldwide or can be purchased at www.esri.com/esripress or call 1-800-447-9778. Outside the United States, you may also contact your local ESRI distributor; see www.esri.com/international for a current distributor list.
Books published by ESRI Press are distributed to the trade by Independent Publishers Group (Tel.: 1-800-888-4741, Web: www.ipgbook.com).

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 About ESRI Press
ESRI Press publishes award-winning books about GIS applications, science, and technology. The complete selection of GIS titles form ESRI Press can be found on the Web at www.esri.com/esripress.

About ESRI

Since 1969, ESRI has been giving customers around the world the power to think and plan geographically. The market leader in GIS, ESRI software is used in more than 300,000 organizations worldwide, including each of the 200 largest cities in the United States, most national governments, more than two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies, and more than 5,000 colleges and universities. ESRI applications, running on more than one million desktops and thousands of Web and enterprise servers, provide the backbone for the world’s mapping and spatial analysis. ESRI is the only vendor that provides complete technical solutions for desktop, mobile, server, and Internet platforms. Visit us at www.esri.com.

ESRI, the ESRI globe logo, GIS by ESRI, www.esri.com, and @esri.com are trademarks, registered trademarks, or service marks of ESRI in the United States, the European Community, or certain other jurisdictions. Other companies and products mentioned herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective trademark owners.