Dr. Henk J. Scholten has been awarded the Environmental Systems Research Institute’s (ESRI) Lifetime Achievement Award for his significant contribution to advancing the science and technology of geographic information systems (GIS) throughout his career. He will receive the award on 13 July 2009 at the ESRI User Conference in San Diego, CA, from ESRI president Jack Dangermond.
With this award, the ESRI recognizes Dr. Scholten’s accomplishments as “one of the first adopters of GIS in the world and a prolific author of books on spatial analysis.” ESRI also pays tribute to his prominence in the field, and his research work as scientific director of the Spinlab, the Spatial Information Laboratory at the Free University of Amsterdam.
Dr. Scholten is co-editor of the Springer books Modelling Land-Use Change, Geographical Information Systems for Urban and Regional Planning and Geospatial Technology and the Role of Location in Science. He is also co-editor of The Added Value of Geographical Information Systems and Comparative Studies in Population Geography, both out of print.
Henk Scholten studied mathematics and geography at the Free University of Amsterdam and obtained his Ph.D. in 1988. Since 1990 he has been professor in spatial informatics at the Faculty of Economics of the Free University of Amsterdam and director of the Spinlab. Dr. Scholten is founder and CEO of Geodan, one of the largest European companies specializing in geospatial information technology. He has been advisor to the European Union and several ministries in the field of disaster management and GIS, and has written more than one hundred articles and nine books on the subject. In April 2005, Scholten received a Royal Dutch Decoration for his significant contribution to geoinformation, both on a national and international level.