Getting to Know Web GIS. Pinde Fu

      Acknowledgments

      I would like to thank everyone at Esri Press who supported this book project. Special thanks go to Catherine Ortiz for inviting me to write this book, Stacy Krieg for managing the project, Mark Henry for his excellent editing that greatly improved the quality of the book, and the designer and other colleagues for their valuable contributions.

      I would like to express my special appreciation to my Esri colleague Dr. Jie Chang, author of chapter 9. With his expertise on remote sensing, Dr. Chang’s contribution—imagery services and raster analysis—adds an important component of Web GIS that the previous editions of this book did not have.

      I am also grateful for the support of many other Esri colleagues and other contributors. This book would not be possible without the inspiration and support of Esri President Jack Dangermond. I sincerely thank Mourad Larif and Brian Cross for giving me the flexibility to work on the book; Clint Brown for providing guidance on the book contents; Derek Law and Geri Miller for reviewing the first edition; Professor Marci Meixler at Rutgers University for reviewing the second edition; and Jennifer Laws of Esri, Professor Jennifer Swift at the University of Southern California, Professor Bo Xu at California State University, and Danny Downing at the University of Florida for reviewing the third edition.

      Thanks to Julia Guard for her assistance in designing the slides, Bethany Scott and Sarah Ambrose for providing figures on big data analysis, Al Pascual and Eric Wittner for providing materials on virtual reality and augmented reality, Morakot Pilouk for providing materials on real-time GIS and hosting the sample stream service for the real-time GIS chapter, and Javier Gutierrez and Matthew Miller for reviewing the 3D web scene chapter. Thanks to Nathan Shephard, Jeremy Bartley, Jeff Shaner, Weston Murch, Meg Hartel, Laurence Clinton, Jinnan Zhang, Zikang Zhou, Dawn Wright, David DiBiase, Jianxia Song, Ismael Chivite, Tif Pun, Derek Law, Wei-Ming Lin, Jinwu Ma, Rupert Essinger, RJ Sunderman, Maosour Raad, and Brenda Watson for sharing enlightened discussions on Web GIS and for their support.

      This book was developed based on my work experience at Esri and my lecturing experience at Harvard University Extension, Henan University, the University of Redlands, the University of Texas at Dallas, the University of California, California State University, and many other universities. I want to thank my colleagues and students at these universities for providing feedback that has improved the content and structure of this book.

      Finally, and most importantly, I would like to thank my family for their love and support.