Database Upgrade

The U.S. EPA has joined with the Commerce Department's Census Bureau to produce an upgrade of a geographic information system. The GIS permits users to extract environment and demographic profiles within any defined area of the country. The software, LandView III, became available on February 6. It presents information from five EPA data bases, such as hazardous- and nuclear-waste site locations regulated by the agency, kinds and amounts of chemical emissions, and other data.

Windows-based LandView III is described as an upgrade of DOS-based LandView II released in 1995. It contains updated street and landmark information, improved street- search, thematic-mapping and data-querying techniques and a much greater volume of demographic data than in the previous versions. It comes on a set of 11 compact discs The discs may be ordered from the Census Bureau's Customer Services Branch, 301.457.4100.