NACIS 2017

South China Sea: Mapping Politics and Geography | La mer de Chine méridionale : cartographier la politique et la géographie
Presenter: Leo Dillon, US Department of State
The South China Sea, one of the world's most important maritime commerce routes, has in the last decade become more and more a geopolitical hotspot as conflicting claims to maritime space and to islands and reefs have intensified. Accurately mapping these various claims is problematic and is made more difficult by the uncertain geography of the islands, rocks, and reefs found there. Making a tough cartographic situation worse is how the geography and politics relates to international maritime law and the different ways in which it is interpreted. This presentation will examine the challenges in mapping the South China Sea from the perspective of a State Department cartographer who has been doing it for 25 or more years.

Conflict Urbanism: Colombia and Aleppo | L’urbanisme du conflit : la Colombie et Alep
Presenter: Juan Francisco Saldarriaga, Columbia University
Copresenters: Laura Kurgan, Angelika Rettberg, Madeeha Merchant,
Jamon Van Den Hoek
Mapping conflict is extremely difficult: data is hard to collect, realities on the ground change constantly, and the intricacies of each conflict are difficult to understand and even more difficult to explain through simple maps. Our Conflict Urbanism: Aleppo, and Conflict Urbanism: Colombia projects grapple with these issues while still trying to map and analyze the destruction of Aleppo and more than 30 years of conflict in Colombia. Through the use of satellite images, crowd-sourced data and web-mapping tools we attempt to create a spatial record of these two conflicts. Our work is part historical memory and part analysis and tries to set the basis for further studies that might inform nuanced transitional justice policies that are responsive to local needs and cognizant of socio-spatial phenomena.

Mapping the movements of people mimicking animals | Cartographier les déplacements des humains imitant les animaux
Presenter: Sarah Bennett, University of Wisconsin–Madison
We use our bodies in interesting ways when we interact with animals, especially when we mimic them. At the International Crane Foundation, people mimic cranes to raise endangered whooping crane chicks. Meanwhile, in the rodeo sport of cutting, a mirroring dance occurs between a rider-horse pair and a cow they've separated from the herd. In questioning how these activities might construct animal-human crossover identities, I made isoline maps of pivotal moments of self assembly and sharing between the bodies involved. In this presentation, I'll give background on how the people and animals in my case studies move and I'll show the maps I made of their movements. Drawing on my earlier work on isoline mapping for dance, my visualizations reveal the unseen spaces that materialize in our interactions.

The State of Online Indigenous Mapping in the Canadian Context | L’état de la cartographie autochtone en ligne dans le contexte canadien
Presenter: Thomas McGurk, Concordia University
Mapping and cartography has felt the impact by web technologies in profound ways. Maps, movement, spatial data, communications, and social media have become part of everyday life for millions of people. A reoccurring narrative in this fusion of spatial and communications technology is its possible democratizing possibilities, especially for habitually marginalized groups and actors. The work examines how Canadian Indigenous peoples and their allies are creating on-line maps by producing an audit of existing websites. Drawing from the work of Smith (1999) a content analysis related to aspects of decolonized methodologies is performed for mapping sites run uniquely by Indigenous actors, sites run by Indigenous actors and NGOs, and sites run by Indigenous actors and research organizations. Additionally, a qualitative aspect of the work relying on interviews with Indigenous mappers, scholars, and technicians attempts to provide additional depth to the content analysis.