Robert F. Austin

Robert F. Austin (Bob), Ph.D., GISP, age 72, of Clearwater, Florida and Asheville, North Carolina passed away on August 14, 2022.

Austin graduated from Southfield High in 1968 where he lettered in basketball and tennis and then attended the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor on an academic scholarship. He earned his Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees while studying Geography and Southeast Asian Studies. He also studied Thai and learned to speak it quite well, thanks to regular practice with a group of his students from Thailand. Upon graduation he was admitted to the doctoral program and spent a year abroad in the United Kingdom, Brunei, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore conducting research for his dissertation. He received his Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Michigan at the age of 27.

After leaving Michigan, he continued in academia at the University of Missouri where he was an Assistant Professor and Chair of the Geography department. While at Missouri, he received a Fulbright Fellowship and spent a year lecturing and teaching at Oxford Polytechnic in England. In 1984 Bob left academia to pursue advancing technological opportunities in the private sector; he took his first position in that arena with Chicago Aerial Survey (later Geonex) where he was like a kid in a candy shop with all the computer and photogrammetry equipment on site. He applied his experience working in the field for telephone companies during summers while in college, along with his knowledge of computer mapping and database management systems, to develop large projects and training programs for telephone and other utility companies converting their archives of paper maps and records to digital format. Bob worked as a consultant in the telephone and engineering industries nationally and internationally and had long term assignments in Russia and Malaysia.

Over the years, he taught courses and/or lectured at several universities including Virginia Tech, University of Tampa and Delta State. Having experienced careers in both the academic and private sectors, Bob spent his last years of employment in public service with the City of Tampa in the Department of Technology and Innovation where he was the Enterprise Applications Integration Manager. Always excited about learning more and sharing the many ways he envisioned GIS benefiting the world, Bob greatly enjoyed collaborating with other scholars and colleagues in several professional organizations. He was an active member of AM/FM International (later GITA) where he was a regular presenter at conferences and assumed the roles of conference Chair and President. He also had the great privilege of serving as a Member and Chair of the National Geospatial Advisory Committee which is a Secretary of State appointment.

Bob was quite dedicated to the use of geospatial to save lives and property. In 2016 he travelled to Vietnam as a subject matter expert for UN-SPIDER (United Nations Platform for Space-based Information for Disaster Management and Emergency Response). In addition to his many published papers, monographs and book chapters, Bob was a regular contributor and served on the editorial board of Solstice: An Electronic Journal of Geography and Mathematics. After retiring he continued to write and co-published a textbook on GIS for Critical Infrastructure Protection. He also published The Big Cabbage: A Memoir of Life in Russia in the 1990s.

At the time of his passing, he was working on a book of historical fiction set primarily in Barbados and the American colonies in the 18th century. Like most geographers, Bob had a great love of travel and was happiest when he could take his family along even when, for him, they often were working vacations. He and his wife, Michelle, accomplished their goal of visiting every continent with a trip to Antarctica in 2014. His daughters, Alexandra and Lisa, were also along for many of their excursions and whether they were digging for thunder eggs in Australia, playing with orangutans on Borneo or exploring museums in Cairo he enthusiastically took on the role of tour guide.