5 things I learned from making maps for journalists | 5 choses que j’ai apprises en créant des cartes pour les journalistes
Presenter: Esther Needham, Azavea
Journalists often have a unique work-style and tight deadlines, sometimes at odds with a typical office workflow. But who doesn't want to have their maps published for all to see? From breaking down a story idea, to data wrangling, to time-crunched editor feedback we'll walk you through our experiences and process working with media organizations, including NextCity and WHYY, to create infographics, maps, and interactive map widgets.
Mapper vs. Mantis: Fighting Gerrymandering Through Interactive Cartography | Mapper contre Mantis : combattre le redécoupage des circonscriptions électorales par la cartographie interactive
Presenter: Kaitlin Tasker, University of Texas at Austin
Copresenters: Paul Flynn, Brendan Hoover, University of Texas at Austin
On March 10th, 2017, a panel of federal judges ruled that three of Texas' congressional districts had been illegally redrawn, violating the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act, and likely stunting the vote of the state's growing minority populations. Commonly known as gerrymandering, such redistricting has a long history in the United States. Yet, despite repeated occurrences of gerrymandering for over 200 years, many voters do not fully understand the term nor how it may affect voting in their state. Here, we present a tool for education on gerrymandering, put together by a collaborative team of geographers from the University of Texas at Austin. The web application outlines voting districts in Texas and raises awareness as to the social inequalities perpetuated through district manipulation. Users can review their districts and their respective demographics.
Crash Mapper: GeoVisualization of NYC Auto Crashes | Crash Mapper : la géovisualisation des accidents automobiles à New York City
Presenter: Chris Henrick, GreenInfo Network
Crash Mapper is an interactive web mapping application that enables users to view and filter automobile crash data for New York City from 2012 to present. Working with a traffic safety non-profit in Hells Kitchen and building off of previous work by civic-tech enthusiasts, version 2 of Crash Mapper was released earlier this year. In this talk I'll describe the trials and tribulations of parsing a million plus records of automobile crashes from the NYC Open Data Portal, how we leveraged CARTO for data storage and a backend API, what's the difference between making data open and making it truly accessible, and what's in store for the app to make crash data more actionable for transportation safety advocates in the Big Apple.
GUI for Animal Movement Analysis and Visualization | Une IUG pour l’analyse et la visualisation des déplacements des animaux
Presenter: Brendan Hoover, The University of Texas at Austin
Understanding the movement of animals is a critical branch of research because of anthropogenic activities that have caused rapid environmental changes and is vital for increasing our understanding of habitat fragmentation, climate change, disease spread, and invasive species. The ability to analyze animal movements has improved because of tracking technologies like Argos and GPS, which allows for the monitoring of animal movements at fine spatial and temporal scales. Movebank.org is a data repository where researchers can share the tracking data they collect. While movebank.org offers a plethora of data to analyze animal movements, most tools for the analysis of animal movements require programming knowledge, which is a barrier to many researchers. I developed open source graphic user interface (GUI) in python that allows users to quickly import data from Movebank.org and implement common movement analysis tools, including visualizations, without programming knowledge.
Volunteer Wildlife Mapping in Denali National Park and Preserve, Alaska | La cartographie bénévole de la faune dans le Parc national et Réserve de Denali, en Alaska
Presenter: Heather Fischer, Arizona State University
Map of Life—Denali is a citizen science program where volunteers use the Map of Life mobile application—developed by Map of Life at Yale University—to record the location and time of wildlife observations in Denali National Park and Preserve Alaska. This citizen science program began in the summer of 2016, over 2,000 observations have been collected thus far. These observations, regarded as volunteered geographic information, provide park officials with a growing dataset that covers a variety of species in the park. These data are being used to examine ecological research questions as well as social science research questions. This presentation will present data collected from the citizen science program, discuss quality and accuracy of these data, and show how these data are used park biologists to visualize wildlife population density and park social scientists to explore human-wildlife interactions.
Shelter Services Applications: Spatial tools for increased social service efficiency | Des applications pour les services de refuge : des outils spatiaux pour renforcer l’efficacité des services sociaux
Presenter: Mattie Wheeler, University of Washington Tacoma
The author presents research exploring systemic institutional burdens in managing resources for homeless populations to utilize social services and shelters. Minimal research has explored the best practices in transferring information of shelter availability to social workers or the homeless population. Recent increases in mobile mapping software hold promise for addressing problems in accessing shelters through implementing tools that allow connection to real-time representational spatial data. This presentation reviews how Esri's Collector app can be modified to address homeless populations access to shelters within Seattle, WA through the acquisition of data collection and automating data amendment for increased usability.
Elevation + math + pixels = terrain art for the web | Altitude + maths + pixels = l’art du terrain pour la Toile
Presenter: Andy Woodruff, Axis Maps
Terrain rendering, while done at its finest by powerful software or a talented hand, is within reach of anyone with a web browser, a text editor, and a willingness to do some math. With a bit of JavaScript code, pixel-level manipulation of images based on elevation data can produce anything from simple hillshading to stylized, animated landscapes. Especially when combined with ascendant web technologies and elevation data services, a little tinkering puts terrain-based art for anywhere in the world at your fingertips.
