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Information Systems of the Canada Land Inventory”, which
he presented in 1962 at National Land Capability Inventory
Seminar in Ottawa. This paper is an outline of his vision of
what GIS could and should be and is in large part what it
became. The Department of Agriculture accepted his proposal
and awarded contracts to Spartan and IBM to develop this
vision of a GI-system. Dr. Tomlinson joined the ARDA team
and directed the GI-systems development and along with
him more than 40 people worked on its development teams
throughout the rest of the decade.
Dr. Tomlinson was also the first to tell you that his idea was
built on the “shoulders of giants,” such as the president of the
Royal Geographical Society who figured out how to digitize
lines in 1870 so he could transmit shapes by telegraph. Dr.
Tomlinson would also relate several other pivotal events that
led to the development of both the GIS / LIS in Canada, and,
more broadly, the development of SYMAP and the Laboratory
of Computer Graphics at Harvard, out of which Esri had its
beginnings. He was very much involved with Esri over the
years and was often seen speaking and participating in the
Esri International User Conference in San Diego.
Dr. Duane Marble, one of early pioneers in computational
geography and GIS education, helps us to more broadly
remember Dr. Tomlinson.
“As colleagues and one who knew him well and who
worked with him on quite a number of occasions, I
believe, that quite aside from GIS, Roger’s life was an
interesting one. As a young man in England in the early
1950s he spent three years as a Pilot and Flying Officer
for the Royal Air Force. He enjoyed his RAF service and
went on to other things only when it was pointed out that
he was so tall that his legs would have been left behind if
he needed to use one of the new ejection seats.
Roger was interested in matters pertaining to glaciers,
and in the years following his RAF service he led an
expedition to the Norwegian icecap, spent a year at a
McGill’s Sub-Arctic Research Station at Knob Lake,
wrote an M.S. thesis (1961) on glacial geomorphology
and then taught for a year at Acadia University in Nova
Scotia.
Following his work on CGIS, Roger completed a Ph.D.
in geography at University College, London in 1974. His
dissertation, “The application of electronic computing
methods and techniques to the storage, compilation, and
assessment of mapped data,” summarized much of the
CGIS work and identified the important lessons that
had been learned there.”
In 1977, Dr. Tomlinson founded Tomlinson Associates Ltd, a
geographic consulting firm based in Ottawa, Canada, serving
international clients including the World Bank, the US and
Canadian Forest Services, U.S. Geological Survey, USGS; U.S.
Census Bureau, U.S. Department of Commerce, USDC; and
U.S. Department of Agriculture, USDA, among many others.
Dr. Tomlinson became a lifetime advocate of the critical need
for carefully structured design and evaluation of geographic
information systems. Over the ensuing years, Tomilson
Associates did exactly this service for a variety of clients in the
public and private sectors. Dr. Tomlinson’s book, “Thinking
About GIS: Geographic Information System Planning for
Managers,” continues to serve as a guide for both senior
managers responsible for a broad range of GI-Systems activities
in their organization and for technical managers responsible for
actual GI-Systems implementation. It summarizes much, but
not all, of his design and evaluation approach but the printed
page can never truly reflect the intense personality and incisive
capabilities of an old friend and colleague.
Dr. Tomlinson was honored often for his work over the
years including being awarded an Honorary Fellow of the
Royal Geographical Society and being the first recipient of
the Esri Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997. Also, the
GIS Certification Institute awarded Dr. Tomlinson the GISP
Certificate for Lifetime GIS Achievement, and in 2010 he
received the Alexander Graham Bell Medal of the National
Geographic Society, together with Jack Dangermond. Finally,
in 2013, he became an officer of the Order of Canada.
Dr. Roger Frank Tomlinson a husband, a father, a mentor,
a good friend, a co-worker and a colleague, known to many as
the “Father of GI-Systems,” died suddenly in San Miguel de
Allende, Mexico, in February, at age 80. His contributions to
our field were instrumental in its development into what we
recognize today, and he will be greatly missed.
By Melissa Rura, Duane Marble, and David Alvarez
2
The dissertation should be available in digital form in the near future.
level faculty teaching advanced placement (AP) courses. This
book can be very useful in facilitating the connection between
curricula in science, technology, engineering or mathematics
(STEM) with future post-secondary career paths in geospatial
professions – remote sensing in particular. Because this book
was never intended to exhaust the subject matter in remote
sensing (i.e. ‘SpringerBriefs in Space Development’), this book
could also be used at the university level in conjunction with
other remote sensing textbooks, adding value to these more
extensive texts.
