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MISSOULA - Climate change and urban issues expert Chuck Tooley will give the keynote speech at the regional convention of the American Public Works Association in Missoula this week.

Tooley, who retired in 2005 as the longest-serving mayor of Billings, trained with former Vice President Al Gore as one of the first 50 people Gore chose to give his presentation for The Climate Project designed to educate citizens and governments about global warming.

In his Missoula address, “Global Warming,” at the conference luncheon on Wednesday, Tooley will talk about the implications of global warming for public works.

“This is a tremendous opportunity for our group of engineers and administrators to learn from Mr. Tooley how our municipal operations can be improved in light of global climate concerns,” said Steve King, public works director for the City of Missoula and past president of the Rocky Mountain Chapter of the APWA.

The chapter’s conference will convene about 120 public works specialists in Missoula at the Holiday Inn Downtown Tuesday through Thursday around the theme of “Lean and Green: Public Works’ Role in Sustainable Communities.”

Participants will share information about such topics as new urban forestry practices, water quality, limiting the urban carbon footprint, building sustainability into projects, water rights issues and more.

At the same time and place, the Montana Association of Geographic Information System Professionals Intermountain Conference will convene about 250 people.

Participants at the conference, “Minds, Models, and Maps,” will hear from keynote speaker Jack Nisbet, a teacher and writer who explores the intersection of human and natural history in the greater Northwest and lives in Spokane.

Nisbet will speak Wednesday at 10:45 a.m.

GIS professionals work with the relationships among data and maps, often in public works and natural resource applications, looking at road distribution, map crime data, map disease in forests and map economic data for applications in retailing.

Conference sessions open to the public:

Wednesday and Thursday, 9 a.m.-4 p.m.: GIS vendors and poster projects available for public perusal.

Thursday, 1 p.m.-6 p.m.: GIS and Business, a special free public session of the Intermountain GIS conference, in cooperation with the University of Montana School of Business. Presentations will show how businesses from small, home-based companies to large corporations are using GIS techniques to improve their bottom lines.

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