# Introduction

PostGIS is developed by Refractions Research Inc, as a spatial database technology research project. Refractions is a GIS and database consulting company in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, specializing in data integration and custom software development. We plan on supporting and developing PostGIS to support a range of important GIS functionality, including full OpenGIS support, advanced topological constructs (coverages, surfaces, networks), desktop user interface tools for viewing and editing GIS data, and web-based access tools.

## Project Steering Committee

The PostGIS Project Steering Committee (PSC) coordinates the general direction, release cycles, documentation, and outreach efforts for the PostGIS project. In addition the PSC provides general user support, accepts and approves patches from the general PostGIS community and votes on miscellaneous issues involving PostGIS such as developer commit access, new PSC members or significant API changes.

Mark Cave-Ayland

  Coordinates bug fixing and maintenance effort, alignment of PostGIS with PostgreSQL releases, spatial index selectivity and binding, windows production builds, integration of new GEOS functionality, and new function enhancements.

Paul Ramsey

  Co-founder of PostGIS project. General bug fixing, geography support, GEOS functionality integration and alignment with GEOS releases.

Kevin Neufeld

  Documentation, Hudson automated build, advanced user support on PostGIS newsgroup, and postgis maintenance function enhancements.

Regina Obe

  Documentation, general user support on PostGIS newsgroup, windows production and experimental builds, and smoke testing new functionality or major code changes.

## Contributors Past and Present

Sandro Santilli

  Bug fixes and maintenance and integration of new GEOS functionality. WKT Raster support.

Dave Blasby

  The original developer/Co-founder of PostGIS. Dave wrote the server side objects, index bindings, and many of the server side analytical functions.

Jeff Lounsbury

  Original development of the Shape file loader/dumper. Current PostGIS Project Owner representative.

Mark Leslie

  Ongoing maintenance and development of core functions. Enhanced curve support.

Olivier Courtin

  Input output XML (KML,GML)/GeoJSON functions and bug fixes.

Pierre Racine

  WKT Raster overall architecture and programming support

Mateusz Loskot

  WKT Raster support

Chris Hodgson

  General development

Nicklas Avén

  Distance function enhancements and additions, Windows testing, and general user support

Jorge Arevalo

  WKT Raster development

Stephen Frost

  Tiger geocoder development

Other contributors

  In alphabetical order: Alex Bodnaru, Alex Mayrhofer, Barbara Phillipot, Ben Jubb, Bernhard Reiter, Bruce Rindahl, Bruno Wolff III, Carl Anderson, Charlie Savage, Dane Springmeyer, David Skea, David Techer, Eduin Carrillo, IIDA Tetsushi, George Silva, Geographic Data BC, Gerald Fenoy, Gino Lucrezi, Greg Stark, Guillaume Lelarge, Klaus Foerster, Kris Jurka, Mark Sondheim, Markus Schaber, Maxime Guillaud, Maxime van Noppen, Michael Fuhr, Nikita Shulga, Norman Vine, Ralph Mason, Steffen Macke, Vincent Picavet

Important Support Libraries

  The GEOS geometry operations library, and the algorithmic work of Martin Davis in making it all work, ongoing maintenance and support of Mateusz Loskot, Paul Ramsey and others.

  The Proj4 cartographic projection library, and the work of Gerald Evenden and Frank Warmerdam in creating and maintaining it.

## More Information

- The latest software, documentation and news items are available at the PostGIS web site, http://postgis.refractions.net.

- More information about the GEOS geometry operations library is available at http://trac.osgeo.org/geos/.

- More information about the Proj4 reprojection library is available at http://trac.osgeo.org/proj/.

- More information about the PostgreSQL database server is available at the PostgreSQL main site http://www.postgresql.org.

- More information about GiST indexing is available at the PostgreSQL GiST development site, http://www.sai.msu.su/~megera/postgres/gist/.

- More information about MapServer internet map server is available at http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu.

- The "Simple Features for Specification for SQL" is available at the OpenGIS Consortium web site: http://www.opengeospatial.org/.