Geoff Howard

A caption in Landlink, Issue 8 (May 1999), names Geoff Howard as a member of the middle row in a team photograph accompanying “LINZ first in mapping”. The article says the pictured team received plaques for contributions to establishing the New Zealand Topographic Digital Database and dates the four-year project to 1995 with LINZ’s predecessor DOSLI.

Conversion of national topographic information was under way by the later 1980s, and by the 1991 AURISA conference Geoff Howard, Geoff O'Malley and Robin Pickering could present a paper titled "New Zealand's Topographic Database - Where To Next?" The paper records a change in the organisation’s work: DOSLI was no longer dealing only with printed map editions. It was maintaining digital topographic information that could support later products and supply users outside the traditional cartographic production line.