David William Rhind

for others with the same name see Rhind

Professor David William Rhind CBE FRS FBA is a British geographer and expert on geographic information systems (GIS). He was Vice-Chancellor of City University London until July 2007.

Rhind graduated in geography and geology from the University of Bristol in 1965 ^[1] and received a PhD in geomorphology from the University of Edinburgh in 1969.

Rhind held academic posts at Edinburgh, the Royal College of Art and Durham, before becoming a professor of geography at the University of London in 1982. In this position he was a major contributor to the Chorley Committee, the UK Government committee of enquiry "Handling of Geographical Information", which reported in 1987. He subsequently became Director General of Ordnance Survey, overseeing the completion of the digitisation of the last of its paper maps.

Work on GIS led to the awarding of a DSc from the University of London in 1991. Rhind has also received honorary doctorates from universities including Bristol, Loughborough, Southampton, Kingston, Durham, London Metropolitan and Royal Holloway. In 2002 Rhind was elected both a Fellow of the Royal Society (the British National Academy of Sciences) and an honorary Fellow of the British Academy (the equivalent body for the social sciences and humanities). He was the first geographer elected to the Royal Society for nearly 50 years and is almost unique in also being a Fellow of the British Academy. ^[2]

Rhind has held many other posts including chairing the Statistics Commission^[3] and the UK Nuclear Decommissioning Authority's Socio-economic Committee,^[3] and membership of the court of directors for the Bank of England.^[4] In 2000, he gained a CBE for services to Geographical and Social Sciences.^[5]

He has published several books on Geography and the Earth Sciences.

In 2009, Rhind was awarded the honourary degree of Doctor of Science from Edinburgh University.

Academic and other posts

• Research Officer in the University of Edinburgh 1968-69
• Head, Applications Section, Experimental Cartography Unit, Royal College of Art 1969-73
• Lecturer, then Reader, University of Durham 1973-1981
• Visiting Fellow, International Training Centre, Enschede, the Netherlands, 1975
• Visiting Fellow, Australian National University 1979
• Professor of Geography in the University of London 1982-91
• Dean of departments of Computer Science, Maths & Statistics, Economics and Geography, Birkbeck College 1987-91
• Director General and Chief Executive, Ordnance Survey of Great Britain 1992-98
• Vice-Chancellor and President, City University London
• Chairman, the Statistics Commission
• Chairman, Universities UK, Employment Business and Industry Policy Committee
• Non-Executive Director, Bank of England

Bibliography

• Data banking of drift borehole records for the Edinburgh area, Rhind D. & Sissons, J.B., HMSO, 1971.
• Geology of Durham County ; The buried valley of the lower Tweed, Newcastle upon Tyne : Natural History Society of Northumberland, Durham and Newcastle upon Tyne, 1972.
• Computer mapping of drift lithology from borehole records, Rhind D.W., HMSO, 1973, ISBN 0118806092
• People in Durham : a census atlas, Dewdney J.C. & Rhind D. (Eds), University of Durham, 1975, ISBN 0900974389.
• Contemporary cartography, Rhind D., London : Institute of British Geographers, 1977.
• Geographical networks and automatic data processing, Cox N.J. & Rhind D., University of Durham, Dept. of Geography, 1978.
• Making a national atlas of population by computer, Rhind D.W. & Evans I.S., Census Research Unit, Department of Geography, Univ. of Durham, 1978.
• Land Use, Rhind D. & Hudson R., Methuen, 1980 ISBN 0416717802.
• A Census user's handbook, Rhind D.W., Methuen, 1983, ISBN 0416305105
• Cartographic and remote-sensing digital databases in the United Kingdom, Finch S. & Rhind D.,British Library Research and Development Dept., 1987, ISBN 0712331069
• Handling Geographic Information: Report of the Committee of Enquiry chaired by Lord Chorley, Department of the Environment, HMSO, 1987, ISBN 0-11-752015-2
• Cartography, Past, Present, and Future: A Festschrift for F.J. Ormeling, Rhind D.W. & Taylor D.R.F., Elsevier Applied Science for International Cartographic Assoc, 1989, ISBN 1851663363
• Environmental monitoring and prediction, Rhind D., London : South-east Regional Research Laboratory, University of London, c 1990.
• Geographical Information Systems: Principles and Applications (known in GIS circles as the Big Book), Maguire, D. J. Goodchild, M. F. & Rhind, D. W., The Geoinformation Group, Harlow, 1991 ISBN 0582056616
• Understanding GIS: The ARC/INFO method, Rhind D.W., ESRI, 1992 (6th Ed), ISBN 1879102072
• Postcodes : the new geography, Raper J., Rhind D. & Shepherd J., Longman, 1992, ISBN 0-582-09270-1
• Statistics, maps, information and money, Manchester Statistical Society, 1994, ISBN 0853361274
• Framework for the World, Rhind D.W. (Ed), Cambridge, GeoInformation International, 1997, ISBN 0470244402
• Geographical Information Systems: Principles, Techniques, Applications and Management (aka the Big Book 2), Longley P.A., Goodchild, M. F., Maguire, D. J. & Rhind, D. W. (eds), Wiley, 1999 ISBN 0471321826
• Geographic Information Systems and Science, Longley P.A, Goodchild M.F, Maguire D.J. & Rhind D.W., John Wiley & Sons, 2001, ISBN 0471892750

References

1. ^ University of Bristol Alumni
2. ^ http://www.city.ac.uk/vco/davidrhind/ City University accessed 13th Dec 2007
3. ^ ^{a b} David Rhind
4. ^ Bank of England|About the Bank|People|The Court of Directors
5. ^ BBC NEWS | In Depth | New Year Honours 2000 | DBEs to CBEs

Academic offices
Preceded by Raoul Franklin	Vice-Chancellor, City University, London 1998–2007	Succeeded by Malcolm Gillies

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Name	Rhind, David William
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