Loading…
NACIS 2017 has ended
Main Conference Presentation [clear filter]
Wednesday, October 11
 

9:00am EDT

Cartographic Applications I | Applications cartographiques I
Geographic Information System and conservation management: two examples from Uganda's Kibale National Park | Les systèmes d’informations géographique et la gestion de la conservation : deux exemples issus du Parc national de Kibale en Ouganda
Presenter: Dipto Sarkar, McGill University
Copresenters: C. A. Chapman, McGill University, S. Krief, Sebitoli Chimpanzee Project, R. Sengupta, McGill University
Visualization of networks using GIS-based mapping technology is essential to analyze and plan conservation strategies. Local community members surrounding two research sites in Uganda's Kibale National Park were surveyed on different topics (n Kanyawara = 209 — 5 months, 2016; n Sebitoli = 116 — 8 months, 2016). To reduce poaching's impact on the park, one study helps to locate where and to whom local conservation employment is beneficial and the other aims to investigate how communities meet their nutritional needs. At Kanyawara, each person hired by the research project created on average 2.3 additional job opportunities for the community (majority located < 3 km from research station). At Sebitoli, where poaching is predominant, community members travel long distances to access domestic animal proteins (median 3.95 km) within 3 main markets (up to 16 km from the park's edge). This type of representation underlines the importance of visualization of networks for biodiversity conservation.

Roamin' Catholic Churches and Mapping Them! | Flâner entre les églises catholiques et les cartographier
Presenter: Colter Sikora, Colterrific Maps! & Roamin' Catholic Churches
Community institutions, such as places of worship, have been part of our social fabric for practically all recorded history. These places are not always well-mapped, which can prove problematic for historic research and planning for social organizations. This presentation describes the part-freelance, part-volunteer, and all labor of love effort required to uncover and map the locations of over 500 Roman Catholic churches in the state of Wisconsin. Special detail will be given to the different forms of research and stake holder buy-in used to map these buildings and spiritual homes, along with the importance of making this inventory easy-to-access. As a supplement, a consideration of the design techniques used throughout the project can be shared to help inspire alternative cartographic designs. For more context: colterrificmaps.com, roamincatholicchurches.blogspot.com

Building Dynamic Global Maps for a Multilingual Audience | Créer des cartes du monde dynamiques pour un public multilingue
Presenter: John Sylak-Glassman, Mapbox; Nicki Dlugash, Mapbox 
With over 100 official languages in the world, creating dynamic global maps for a worldwide audience requires accounting for linguistic diversity, whether by transforming multilingual source data into comprehensible labels in a single language or accurately displaying multiple languages on the same map. This talk describes the challenges in data transformation, text rendering, and cartographic design processes for such maps. Linguistically, generating new labels involves a mix of translation (e.g. English 'Germany' to French 'Allemagne'), phonological adaptation (e.g. 'Ekurhuleni' to Mandarin 'Àigǔláiní'), and transliteration (e.g. 'Àigǔláiní' to '艾古莱尼'). Rendering accurate letterforms and displaying labels requires complex text shaping (e.g. for Arabic script), flexible directionality and orientation (e.g. optional vertical directionality for Chinese characters), versatile line breaking strategies, font selection, and appropriate text styling. Throughout this presentation, we'll discuss why these processes are particularly challenging for dynamic maps, which constantly transform the size, shape, positioning, and visibility of text labels.

Moderators
Speakers
avatar for Dipto Sarkar

Dipto Sarkar

McGill University
avatar for Colter Sikora

Colter Sikora

GIS Analyst, St. Charles County (Missouri) Government
I am a young mapper with a zeal for the wide world of geographic data. Most of my recent work focuses on using spatial data and mapping applications to share knowledge with my community. I am also deeply involved in proper GIS data management and analysis through my work with St... Read More →


Wednesday October 11, 2017 9:00am - 10:20am EDT
Salons 4 & 5, Level 2

9:00am EDT

It's all about the Visual | Tout est question de visuel
Visual Contrast and Hierarchy Relations of Cartographic Features Across Multi-Scale Map Displays: Map Evaluation Results | Le contraste visuel et les relations hiérarchiques des éléments cartographiques dans les affichages de cartes multi-échelles : résultats d’évaluations de cartes
Presenter: P. William Limpisathian, University of Oregon
Copresenter: Cynthia A. Brewer, The Pennsylvania State University
Visual contrast is a fundamental principle employed in cartographic design to highlight foreground elements on maps. However, limited software resources and research exist on how to maintain consistent visual contrast and hierarchy relations across map scales. This task is especially challenging in map series that are constrained by a color and layout template that affects fore-to-background feature recognition. Four combinations of lightness contrast, ten hue contrast combinations, and two line-width contrast levels are tested in combination with six basemap locations, each with two layout variants, generating 960 individual test maps or 480 map pairs. The results of aesthetic and hierarchy evaluations of five map pairs by each Amazon Mechanical Turk worker are analyzed with a Friedman non-parametric test and linear regression models. The project lays the empirical foundation for an application that provides users with map design schemes that preserve the cartographer's intended visual contrast and hierarchy relations.

Map-based Visual Storytelling: An Assessment of Emerging Design Considerations | La narration visuelle basée sur les cartes : évaluation des considérations émergentes en matière de conception
Presenter: Zihan Song, Esri
Copresenter: Robert Roth, University of Wisconsin–Madison
The use of maps in media increasingly is described as "data journalism," "spatial narratives," or "visual storytelling." Can cartographers actually adapt their visual designs to "tell" a story and, if so, what makes such map-based visual stories more or less understandable and meaningful? To this end, we conducted an online survey with 125 Amazon Mechanical Turk participants to evaluate emerging design considerations for map-based visual storytelling. Participants reviewed stories on two controversial topics—sea-level rise and presidential election campaign funding—and responded to questions on story retention, comprehension, and preference. Designs varied by their genre, or stylistically coherent visual story structures, and tropes, or additional visual design devices used to unfold a narrative. Results showed successful application of a three-act narrative to the visual stories, revealed differences in retention and comprehension by the presented genre or trope design, and illuminated the impact of individual differences on visual story reading.

Visual Hierarchy and Layout in the Practice of Map Design | La hiérarchie visuelle et la disposition dans la pratique de la conception cartographique

Presenter: Alex Tait, National Geographic Society
Writers of map design texts invariably include a chapter or two about the structure and composition of the map image and the map page. The main organizing terms that describe what a map designer should keep in mind when constructing a map are visual hierarchy and layout. Many other terms come into the conversation like balance, contrast, focus, gestalt principles and of course the biggie: figure-ground. My presentation will review many map design texts for descriptions of visual hierarchy and layout and then look carefully at how they work in the practice of mapmaking. Which principles are most important, surfacing in every project? Do all principles apply to both the map itself and the page or screen on which it resides with other components? Is the current body of knowledge for this topic complete and how can it be improved?

Texture Shading 2.0: Directional Texture Shading and More | Ombrage de texture 2.0 : l’ombrage de texture directionnel et autres évolutions
Presenter: Leland Brown
Texture shading is an alternative method for displaying terrain relief that relies on a mathematical operator called a fractional Laplacian. Fractional derivatives are well-suited to processing terrain data due to their scale invariance property, which respects the (approximately) fractal nature of real terrain, and their ability to emphasize ridge and canyon structures in the data. Related techniques are used in medical image analysis and computer vision applications.

New research shows that expanding the repertoire of fractional differential operators used in the algorithm allows a variety of enhancements, while preserving the inherent scale invariance. Incorporating fractional gradient information produces "directional texture shading," which is visually more analogous to traditional hillshading. Another new operator, the fractional Hessian matrix, shows promise in further expanding the versatility of texture shading. Meanwhile, interesting parallels with diffuse sky models have been found, which provide a link between these new methods and physical models of illumination.

Moderators
avatar for Patrick Kennelley

Patrick Kennelley

Professor, Long Island University

Speakers
avatar for Leland Brown

Leland Brown

Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon
My interest in cartography stems from my love of hiking and of mathematics. I'm especially interested in mountain terrain representation and raster images.
avatar for P. William Limpisathian

P. William Limpisathian

Graduate Employee, University of Oregon
avatar for Zihan Song

Zihan Song

Product Engineer, Esri
avatar for Alex Tait

Alex Tait

National Geographic Society


Wednesday October 11, 2017 9:00am - 10:20am EDT
Salons 6 & 7, Level 3

9:00am EDT

Lightning Talks I | Présentations éclairs I
Imagined Battlefields: A WWI Case Study of Maps in Combat | Les champs de bataille imaginés : étude de cas de cartes du front de la Première guerre mondiale
Presenter: Joel Radunzel, United States Military Academy
During WWI's Palestine Campaign, the British Army's Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF) produced a series of operation maps to track and control the progress of their offensive into Palestine. These maps demonstrated innovation in both their form and function, but the extent of their influence upon the decision-making of British commanders remains unclear. This project examines these operation maps during a three-day period of the battle to determine their influence upon the engagement's outcome. This case study reveals how the content of several of the operation maps was a product of negotiation between officers of the EEF's headquarters staff. Thus the maps, rather than displaying the actual situation on the ground, sometimes instead reflected how these officers wished others to visualize the battlefield situation. Overall, this case study provides a fascinating account of how military officers intentionally used maps as tools to influence the actions of other officers.          

Creating a large scale 3D oblique map and maintaining geographic accuracy while using non-geospatial software | Créer une carte oblique en 3D à grande échelle et préserver l’exactitude géographique en utilisant un logiciel non géospatial
Presenter: James Eynard, US National Park Service
I'll be presenting a workflow for creating a large scale 3D oblique map of a historic site. Geographic accuracy was maintained while using the non-geospatially aware 3D software Vue Infinite through the use of scaled transparency masks. The landscape was constructed in Vue using 3D elements from both within Vue and outside sources. Many 3D elements were modeled and textured in Sketchup before being imported into Vue. Other map elements were created in Photoshop or derived from photographs or existing 3D models. The map was finished in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator where several touchups were made to bring together all of the elements in a cohesive way. This brief overview of the process will highlight the steps from start to finish.

Visual Language in Cartography | Le langage visuel en cartographie
Presenter: Geraldine Sarmiento, Mapzen
What is the visual language of cartography? This talk will break down and explore the essential visual elements in the creation of a map. What are its basic elements and how do they fit into a whole? We'll explore dots, lines, shapes in the visual representation of space, form and scale. The primary concern is the act and process of drawing, and exploring what it means when we create. What is a dot in space? What can lines describe? What is the vocabulary of scale? What is the connection of symbol and place? How do we develop a language that is whole?
 
Let's Go Carto-Crazy | Devenons carto-fous
Presenter: Dylan Moriarty
As we all aim to make the best maps possible, we fall into certain habits of best practice. That's generally a good thing—relief done from the bottom right is gonna look weird.

Yet there's a lot to be said for making things for the sake of creation, best practices be damned. We can discover new, potentially better approaches. Odd but surprisingly effective storytelling. Or we can just create something that makes someone smile.

This will be a talk about breaking conventions, making new things, and why while those new things may not make their way into your day job, how they'll certainly enrich it.

Tufts GIS Expo Explorer | Tufts GIS Expo Explorer
Presenter: Patrick Florance, Tufts University
Tufts GIS Expo Explorer is an open source pedagogical tool that provides access to over 1200 student GIS research projects at Tufts University. The Expo Explorer provides students, faculty, and administrators search, discovery, visualization, and analytics of past and current geospatial research at Tufts via geographic extent, topics, methods, academic departments and schools. http://sites.tufts.edu/gis/expoexplorer

Designing With Constraints: How to Maximize Your Creative Control With Needy Clients | Concevoir avec des contraintes : comment optimiser votre contrôle sur vos créations face à des clients au budget limité
Presenter: Soren Walljasper, University of Wisconsin–Madison
As cartographers, we are often working for historians and scientists who know nothing about design, and publishers who only care about what's cheapest. As a student cartographer working for professional clients I am often working around a number of design constraints to create the best map I can. This presentation discusses the techniques cartographers can use to effectively communicate with clients about design, and work with publisher constraints to have the best end result possible.  

Ghost on the Road: A Conceptual Approach to Mapping Montreal's Ghost Bikes Memorials | Un fantôme sur la route : une approche conceptuelle de la cartographie des Vélos fantômes de Montréal
Presenter: José Alavez, Concordia University; Anja Novkovic and
Mira Baba, Concordia University
In Montreal on August 22nd of 2016, Justine Charlene St-Amour, 24, was riding her bicycle when she was hit by a truck. The young woman died on the scene. After the incident, volunteers painted her bike white and installed it in the place of the accident as a memorial to St-Amour's life. Unfortunately, Justine's ghost bike is not the only one in Montreal. Six bicycles have been installed around the city since this symbolic practice started in 2013.

Our presentation will be based on the conceptual and methodological approaches of our project, which aim to map the stories of Montrea's ghost bikes. This project is based on the assumption that maps are far more than expressions of cartography—they are holders of memories. We believe that mapping these stories requires the mobilization of media that offer a greater opportunity to transmit emotional messages than can be done via traditional cartography.  

The Cartographic Pipeline of Information from Humanitarian Actors to Policy Makers | Le pipeline cartographique de l’information des acteurs humanitaires au décideurs politiques
Presenter: Rhys Young, US Department of State
The Humanitarian Information Unit (HIU) is an interagency unit within the Office of the Geographer and Global Issues at the U.S. Department of State. HIU's mission is to identify, collect, analyze, and disseminate all-source information critical to U.S. Government decision makers and partners in preparation for and response to complex emergencies and humanitarian issues worldwide. HIU's cartographers work closely with analysts and researchers to develop a visual narrative to effectively communicate often complex population and humanitarian issues to policymakers. Using a combination of geospatial science and design software, we help shape and display raw data into compelling maps and infographics depicting a range of humanitarian topics. We will explain HIU's research and analysis and how it allows policymakers to bridge the analytical gap between the international humanitarian community and U.S. decision makers...

Moderators
Speakers
avatar for Patrick Florance

Patrick Florance

Director Geospatial Technology, Tufts University
Humanitarian GIS, International Mapping/GIS, Visualization, Data Mining, Drones, Geospatial Humanities, Higher Education, etc.
avatar for Dylan Moriarty

Dylan Moriarty

Cartographer & Designer


Wednesday October 11, 2017 9:00am - 10:20am EDT
Ballroom Centre

10:40am EDT

Cartographic Design I | Conception cartographique I
DEM Brain Hacks | Réveillez vos neurones MNA
Presenter: John Nelson, Esri
Digital Elevation Models are a wonderful and ghostly information layer that enables all sorts of relief representation. Often we take this handy resource and extract realistic and practical incarnations of terrain and texture. But the life of a cartographer is perhaps too short to stay dutifully within the bounds of practicality. What if we were to thoughtfully stray from rote, albeit beautiful, applications of DEMs? What if we coaxed them into slightly more absurd, but engaging, representations of light, depth, and texture? In this presentation we'll cover an array of odd, but fun, contortions of Digital Elevation Models that span from useful, to interesting, to ridiculous.

National Geographic Magazine's Cartography of Antarctica | La cartographie de l’Antarctique par le magazine National Geographic
Presenter: Lauren Tierney, National Geographic Magazine
For over 120 years National Geographic Magazine has mapped Antarctica, and continues to visually illustrate the complex processes that occur on this remote continent. This presentation will focus on National Geographic Magazine's most recent map of Antarctica, featured in the July 2017 issue. Specific topics will include the initial sketch and design steps for the map, the visualization of climate change data, and the reworking of the print piece for digital.  

Adding Context to Colors in Categorical Mapping | Ajouter du contexte aux couleurs en cartographie catégorique
Presenter: Cary Anderson, The Pennsylvania State University
Tools for building categorical color schemes (e.g., ColorBrewer) account for many perceptual constraints, such as color discriminability and colorblindness. However, when deriving color schemes, these tools do not consider the underlying data context. This is likely consequential. For example, in a study using bar charts, Lin et al. (2013) demonstrate that when color assignments are semantically-resonant (e.g., red for tomatoes), users perform graph-reading tasks with greater speed. This effect is presumably applicable to other data visualizations-such as maps. We extend upon the work of Lin et al. (2013) in two ways: (1) We discuss its implications for Cartography, such as its effect on rapid identification of spatial patterns, and (2) We explore the emotional connotations of color (e.g., calming blue), and how these connotations interact with color-concept associations in map perception. We then conclude with suggestions for utilizing semantically-resonant colors in categorical mapping contexts. 

Open-Source Flow Maps with Cubic Splines | Des cartes de flux libres avec des splines cubiques
Presenter: Paulo Raposo, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Satisfying flow maps have been notoriously difficult to automatically draw, both because they have diverse graphic requirements and constraints, and because naive curve-drawing methods run into geometric conflicts. We present new, open-source software for drawing flow maps in which route is unimportant, but origin-destination pairs and magnitudes of flow are. We automatically define cubic splines between origin and destination points by creating a third, across-track point, laterally displaced such that the spline passing through the three points in travel sequence creates a symmetric curve. The user can modify parameters to affect the curve shape. Several methods of geometric conflict resolution are used to ensure the rendered output follows cartographic design principles; relative magnitudes of flows are taken into account with these. The talk will discuss the geometric manipulations involved in the method, as well polygonization of flow lines for alternative display.

Moderators
avatar for Ginny Mason

Ginny Mason

Manager of Cartography, S&P Global Platts

Speakers
avatar for John Nelson

John Nelson

Principal Product Engineer, Esri
https://esri.com
avatar for Paulo Raposo

Paulo Raposo

Asst Prof, Dept of Geography, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
avatar for Lauren Tierney

Lauren Tierney

Graphics Editor, National Geographic Magazine


Wednesday October 11, 2017 10:40am - 12:00pm EDT
Salons 4 & 5, Level 2

10:40am EDT

Cartographic Education I | Formation cartographique I
Web Mapping: What are we teaching? | La cartographie Web : où en est l’enseignement?
Presenter: Carl Sack, Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College
Most maps are now consumed online, and interactive web maps and map apps have continued to proliferate. Clearly there is a need to include web mapping concepts and tools in cartography and GIS curriculum to prepare students to meet the current needs of the industry. But in what form? What concepts and tools should we teach, and how should we teach them? This talk will illuminate the practices of 20 cartography and GIS educators who have "taken the plunge" to incorporate web mapping into their courses. It should spark ideas for anyone who has thought they'd like to do more with teaching web mapping but aren't sure where to start or what to include.

Big Data Visualization for Public Engagement | La visualisation des mégadonnées pour l’implication du public
Presenter: Mike Foster, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Copresenters: Sarah Williams and Carlos Sandoval Olascoaga, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cortni Kerr
How can visualizing and mapping"big data" help policymakers and the public to understand issues around social justice in urban mobility, transit, and equitable housing? To answer this question, students and faculty from MIT's School of Architecture and Planning (SA+P) developed two interactive data visualization exhibitions through a course devoted to learning emerging technologies around data and visualization. The course focuses on relevant social issues around equitable public transit in Riyadh and assessing impacts of the 2016 U.S. presidential election on housing policy. Student teams designed data-driven visualization and mapping projects utilizing social media, cell phone usage, voter registration rolls, election results, and transportation data, to map, visualize, assess, and communicate the social and economic implications hidden in big datasets. The public exhibitions highlight each project to facilitate conversations between citizens, policymakers, and stakeholders around key planning issues that serve to affect and transform urban and social dynamics.

The Power of Maps in Pre-College Education | Le pouvoir des cartes dans l’enseignement pré-universitaire
Presenter: David Glassett, Peaceful Valley Maps 
Have you ever bemoaned the lack of geographic literacy in today's youth? Are you a parent or mentor to children 0–18 and want to know how to incorporate more cartographic education? My wife and I (well, mostly my wife) homeschool our four school-age children (K–6), who are developing a strong cartographic literacy. Additionally, I've used cartographic techniques as a method for teaching teenagers critical thinking. Online and print media resources are abundant in teaching even the youngest children. I'll share my experiences, anecdotes, resources, and children's maps to help us all improve the next generation's geographic and cartographic literacy one child at a time.

Cartography in World Regional Geography textbooks | La cartographie dans les manuels de géographie des régions du monde
Presenter: Kazimierz Zaniewski, University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh
This presentation is a comparative analysis of maps in terms of their quality, typology, and thematic range in seven popular textbooks used for teaching World Regional Geography or similar courses at the universities across the United States. A typical textbook contains some 200 maps occupying about a quarter of the book page space. One-third of all maps can be classified as general reference maps. The remaining 70 percent are thematic maps, and one-third of them shows quantitative information, mainly through the use of choropleth and proportional symbol techniques. The maps vary in size from two-page spreads to less than a quarter-page space. Most of them are of high quality although some contain content and design (sometimes embarrassing) errors.

Moderators
avatar for Martha Bostwick

Martha Bostwick

NSCC - Centre of Geographic Sciences

Speakers
avatar for Mike Foster

Mike Foster

Senior Cartographer, Apple Inc.
DG

David Glassett

Peaceful Valley Maps
avatar for Carl Sack

Carl Sack

GIS Faculty and Program Coordinator, Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College
avatar for Kazimierz Zaniewski

Kazimierz Zaniewski

University of Wisconsin Oshkosh
I love computer cartography, particularly thematic mapping, using various well and less-known software packages.


Wednesday October 11, 2017 10:40am - 12:00pm EDT
Ballroom Centre

10:40am EDT

Cartographic Narratives I | Récits cartographiques I
Tweeted Places as Topological Spaces: An Urban Plaza as Case Study | Les lieux gazouillés comme espaces topologiques : étude de cas d’une place urbaine
Presenter: Emory Shaw, Concordia University
Copresenter: Sebastien Caquard, Concordia University
We increasingly witness and engage in geographies mediated by social media, which is changing how we experience and produce places. This raises questions about how place is conceived as well as the politics underlying its images. I present a case study of Place Émilie-Gamelin in Montreal: a plaza located atop the city's busiest transport hub. Despite its geographic centrality, it is a liminal space appropriated by marginalized groups and contentious political movements. Recently, it has been subject to a city-led revitalization program with intentions of attracting party-goers and tourists. I explore these evolving and conflicting representations by articulating how their aggregation by theme and function can inform us about complex places. I aim to untangle the relationships between virtual representation and physical witness by showing how they anticipate and follow key events and arise from distinct mobilities and geographies, providing more nuanced and relational cartographic representations of places.

Mapping the History of North Carolina's Bull City | Cartographier l’histoire de la Bull City de Caroline du Nord
Presenter: Tim Stallmann, Independent Cartographer
In this presentation, I'll share on-going work to map 150 years of housing history in Durham for a large public history exhibit. We're developing a range of innovative approaches to historical maps, including 3D-printed maps of areas destroyed by urban renewal, using city directories to reconstruct the daily lives of oral history interviewees, and reconstructing detailed demographics using the long-form census releases. The presentation will include sharing these techniques, some practical lessons learned as well as telling some of the Bull City's story.

Moderators
Speakers
avatar for Jia Zhang

Jia Zhang

PhD Student, MIT Media Lab


Wednesday October 11, 2017 10:40am - 12:00pm EDT
Salons 6 & 7, Level 3

2:00pm EDT

Cartographic Applications II | Applications cartographiques II
Who's On First Two Years Later — Theory, Practice and Gotchas : Les deux dernières années du projet Who's On First : la théorie, la pratique et les pièges
Presenter: Aaron Cope, Mapzen
The Who's On First (WOF) project was launched by Mapzen in 2015 with the goal of being a robust and openly-licensed gazetteer with global coverage spanning continents to (20 million and counting) venues, and everything in between. WOF is used by Mapzen for many of its own services but has been designed and architected to be portable, durable and as infrastructure-agnostic as possible.

This presentation will outline the project's original motivations and its current state of affairs, discuss some of the challenges we've faced along the way and review what we're focusing on next.

The UX of navigation: A road trip from NYC to NACIS | L’expérience utilisateur de la navigation : sur la route de New York City à la NACIS
Presenter: Ekta Daryanani, Mapzen
Let's take a drive from NYC to Montreal and think about what your typical navigation app shows and tells you to do as you drive. The objective is to never have to glance at a screen for more than a couple of seconds, coz accidents!

While designing Eraser Map at Mapzen, I learned about the nuances of a navigation experience. How does navigation differ depending on the mode of transportation? Does a cyclist need different audio & visual cues compared to a driver? How can we use the combination of the map display, written and voice instructions, and notifications deliver an experience which takes the stress out of driving instead of adding to it! I will walk through the various user experience considerations made in development of this app and their repercussions; as most people view wayfinding applications as their main exposure to web cartography.

A New Hope: An Esri and Adobe Story | Un nouvel espoir : une histoire signée Esri et Adobe
Presenter: Clint Loveman, Esri
Copresenter: Sarah Bell, Esri
It has been two years since presenting Esri's Maps for Adobe Creative Cloud prototype at NACIS. This presentation will show the latest release of this extension, and how it can be used to download geographic data directly from the cloud into Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. A mapping demonstration in Illustrator will show how the extension can now reproject your map, import shapefiles, and perform global symbol changes, along with other useful and practical mapping techniques. 

Painting with Data | Peindre avec des données
Presenter: Carlos Sandoval, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Copresenter: Wenfei Xu, CARTO
Increasingly, geospatial data are becoming a standard aspect of decision-making in both private and public sectors due to recent strides in spatial data capture. While the data may be plentiful, the technical skills required to understand and analyze it may not always be present. Our tool facilitates the analysis and visualization of spatial data by dramatically reducing the steep learning curve required for most geographic information system (GIS) softwares. Contrary to traditional mapping software, "Painting with Data" allows users to directly manipulate the map itself instead of through abstract numbers and symbols. This creates a more intuitive way of understanding spatial data and creating spatial models, and redefines the way in which users explore and gain intuitions from spatial data. Additionally, the tool introduces a visual coding interface through drag-and-drop building blocks which allows for "real-time" geospatial computing, extending its mapping and analytical capacities. 

Moderators
Speakers
avatar for Aaron Cope

Aaron Cope

Editor At Large, Mapzen
Aaron is Canadian by birth, American by descent, North American by experience et Montréalais au fond. He usually just tells people he is from the Internet.Aaron is currently Editor at Large and the creator of the Who's On First project at Mapzen.Between 2012 and 2015 he was Head... Read More →
avatar for Ekta Daryanani

Ekta Daryanani

Lead, Design and User Experience, Mapzen
Championing design and people @mapzen. Interested in: open data, mobile, maps, user experience, creating and collecting hot sauce
avatar for Clint Loveman

Clint Loveman

Cartographic Manager, Esri


Wednesday October 11, 2017 2:00pm - 3:40pm EDT
Salons 4 & 5, Level 2

2:00pm EDT

Cartographic Research I | Recherche cartographique I
Ghost Cities of China | Les villes fantômes de Chine
Presenter: Wenfei Xu, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Copresenters: Sarah Williams, Shin-bin Tan, Michael Foster, and Changping Chen, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Using social media data to understand real-time urban dynamics can often be difficult due to inherent biases in the data. Ghost Cities tests this notion by employing an amenities-based gravitational model to discover regions of residential vacancy (colloquially called "ghost cities") through crowd-sourced amenities and review data from the online Chinese platform Dianping. With the assumption that well-populated urban areas are equipped with standard amenities such as schools, grocery stores, banks, malls, hospitals, karaoke television, beauty salons, and restaurants, we find "amenities deserts" to proxy vacancy. Using regions with low amenities and population densities, we find the majority located in new suburbs or satellite cities. We verified our results in Baidu Total View and satellite images, then classified them along the development range from empty land to new construction, with a small percentage of our results in halted during construction or abandoned conditions.

Geographical Names behind the names of shopping malls and centers in Abu Dhabi | Les noms géographiques derrière les noms des centres commerciaux d’Abu Dhabi 
Presenter: Naeema Alhosani, United Arab Emirates University
In recent years, the Middle East region has enjoyed rapid growth as a tourist destination. At the forefront of this growth has been Abu Dhabi, a state that has successfully diversified its economy into tourism. Abu Dhabi provides an excellent illustration of diverse cultural and architectural components in its mall and shopping centers' names. Therefore, this paper seeks to classify and explore the malls and shopping centers in Abu Dhabi, focusing on the story behind the designation of their names and architectural components. The study came with some results about the reasons behind the malls, and shopping centers names in the area of study. We concluded that the names of the malls, and shopping centers were due to different categories based on the different geographical names such as: historical, physical, human, environment, local old place and others.

Mapping public perceptions of safety in city parks | Cartographier les perceptions publiques de la sécurité dans les parcs urbains
Presenter: John Morgan, University of West Florida
Copresenters; Snyder, J.A., Evans, S.Z., and Evans, J., University of West Florida
Public parks are ideally places of human recreation and activity that increase physical health and mental well-being. Therefore, it is important that park managers and urban planners have information about how to maximize societal benefits of park usage. In the spring of 2016 a team of University of West Florida students and faculty designed and implemented a park perception survey for five city parks within Pensacola, Florida. We present the results of a project combining questionnaire and sketch mapping techniques that produces a rich spatial dataset on perceptions of safety within city parks. Survey responses across all five parks reveals results generally applicable to the way in which people perceive parks. Image and territoriality are implicated as causes for safety concerns along with specific nuances to individual identity (e.g. gender) and experience. Resulting maps of areas highlighting perceptions of safety in parks should prove useful to park managers and planners.

Cartography and Foreign Policy: One State Department Cartographer's Perspective on Mapping | La cartographie et la politique extérieure : le point de vue sur la cartographie d’un cartographe du Département d’État
Presenter: Brooke Marston, US Department of State
Making maps for the United States' diplomatic and oldest cabinet agency is never short of interesting, requiring in-depth analysis of the world's longstanding conflicts and the latest, breaking hot-button foreign policy issues. But working in this dynamic Department presents its own set of unique challenges. Located in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research—an elite all-source analytical member of the Intelligence Community—the cartographic team supports analysts briefing or providing written products to diplomats, special envoys, congress, and senior policymakers in a fast-paced and rigorous environment. How do cartographers balance pressure, demand, and deadlines with accurate, informative, and aesthetically pleasing and visually stimulating maps? Learn about my experiences working a world portfolio alongside analysts with decades of experience in their subject areas at the Department of State.

Moderators
Speakers
NA

Naeema Alhosani

UAE UNIVERSITY - UAE
avatar for John Morgan

John Morgan

Assistant Professor of GIS, University of West Florida
John D. Morgan (Derek) is the primary faculty for the new online GIS Master's program offered by the Department of Earth and Environmental Studies. Morgan, who is an Assistant Professor, graduated from Florida State University with a Ph.D. in Geography.Morgan has over fifteen years... Read More →


Wednesday October 11, 2017 2:00pm - 3:40pm EDT
Ballroom Centre

2:00pm EDT

Cartographic Software Development | Le développement de logiciels de cartographie
The Lost Art of Cartography, an introduction to the ArcGIS Renderer for OpenStreetMap | L’art perdu de la cartographie – Une introduction à ArcGIS Renderer for OpenStreetMap
Presenter: Marco Boeringa
The result of 4 years of development and cartographic research in a personal project executed by the presenter, this session will introduce the ArcGIS Renderer for OpenStreetMap, a combined Python / ModelBuilder toolbox build on top of Esri's ArcGIS Editor for OpenStreetMap, that allows a sophisticated topographic rendering of OpenStreetMap data in ArcGIS. The toolbox highly automates both the required ETL and database schema creation, and at the same time automates the process of cartographic symbolization, including advanced layered rendering of highways and railways using overpasses based on the OSM "layer=x" key. The ArcGIS Renderer contains a total of 22 user tools implemented as Python scripts with a user friendly ModelBuilder tool interface. The presentation will focus both on the (cartographic) challenges encountered when using OSM data in ArcGIS, as well as touch on the technical aspects of the rendering workflow using this toolbox. 

Cartography in Adobe Creative Suite — MAPublisher Advancements | La cartographie dans Adobe Creative Suite – Les progrès de MAPublisher
Presenter: Nick Burchell
This presentation will provide an overview of advancements in MAPublisher in 2017. This includes MAPublisher 10, one of the most exciting releases of the cartographic product in recent years. I will cover how you can now update your Illustrator documents through a live connection to its origin data source, reduce time to import by cropping data to required extents and by trimming its attributes, and publish more advanced interactive maps to the web through significant updates to the Web Author Tool. I will demonstrate how you can leverage ArcGIS Online, PostGIS and other spatial databases to work with fully georeferenced and attribute rich data in Adobe's Creative Suite. I will show how you can work with vastly improved graphic styles, color palettes and scale bar libraries, as well as some of the other great features that we have integrated into the product this year. 

"What the Street!": An interactive data exploration of urban mobility infrastructure using OpenStreetMap | « What the Street! » : une exploration des données interactive des infrastructures de transport urbaines à l’aide d’OpenStreetMap
Presenter: Joey Lee, moovel Labs
Copresenters: Michael Szell , Stephan Bogner, Benedikt Groß, Raphael Reimann, moovel Labs
What the Street! is an interactive data visualization and research project that uses OpenStreetMap data to better understand how mobility infrastructure is allocated in cities. We attempt to engage our audience to question to what extent the space for bikes, trains, and cars in their city reflects their city's modal split. In this talk, we will present the concept and process behind What the Street! and provide some insights behind developing an interactive geo-data communication project.  

Data-driven cartography for data scientists | La cartographie orientée données pour les scientifiques des données
Presenter: Andy Eschbacher, CARTO
The de facto standard for data scientists to communicate analysis is through Jupyter notebooks, a format for running and communicating code, narrative text, and interactive graphics. But we noticed that good cartographic defaults were either very hard or required dozens of lines of code to get just right.

To support good mapping practices in the data science community, we've created a Python packages that allows for data-driven cartography based on CARTO's services that allows users to embed maps within a notebook to support the overall data analysis narrative. See examples here: https://github.com/CartoDB/cartoframes/blob/master/examples/Basic%20Usage.ipynb

We offload the cartography to rely on CARTO's TurboCarto for creating dynamic styling based on the data in the current view, CartoColors for web-ready cartographic defaults, and defaults that are responsive to the basemap and type of geometry.

See the full project (under active development) here: https://github.com/CartoDB/cartoframes

Moderators
Speakers
avatar for Nick Burchell

Nick Burchell

Director, QA & Customer Services, Avenza Systems Inc.
avatar for Joey Lee

Joey Lee

research associate, moovel lab
Hi


Wednesday October 11, 2017 2:00pm - 3:40pm EDT
Salons 6 & 7, Level 3

4:00pm EDT

Cartographic Design II | Conception cartographique II
Second Home Ownership in Wisconsin's Northwoods: Cartographic Revelations from Wisconsin's Statewide Parcel Dataset | La cartographie et la politique extérieure : le point de vue sur la cartographie d’un cartographe du Département d’État
Presenter: Ezra Zeitler, University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire
Copresenter: Zachary Fischer, University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire
For generations, the Northwoods of Wisconsin has served as a"pleasure periphery" for residents of Midwest attracted by its scenic lakes and quiet forests. Although it is widely understood that many non-residents of the Northwoods own second homes there, exact numbers are nebulous. To address this issue, we conducted a cartographic analysis of more than 800,000 Northwoods land parcels, made available in a statewide parcel dataset provided by the Wisconsin State Cartographer's Office, to reveal where owners of Northwoods properties live year-round. In this presentation, we will explain our cartographic production process, including techniques used and challenges confronted, provide advice for delivering web-based maps products on platforms like Esri Story Maps and Google Maps that are friendly to cartographers new to this genre, and discuss the relevance and applicability of mapping large datasets for the broader purpose of telling innovative stories about places.

Mapping riverscapes of the world | Cartographier les paysages fluviaux du monde
Presenter: Camille Ouellet Dallaire, McGill University
The hierarchical and nested nature of river systems presents a cartographic challenge because their spatial organization is not intuitive from a bird's-eye view. Still, mapping specific information on rivers can help us understand better how these aquatic ecosystems relate to one another and can inform their sustainable management.

Therefore, to support research and outreach related to river systems, it is imperative to design and develop maps that can be easily understood by a broad audience. Using visual hierarchy and color theory, I have developed effective and creative maps that focus on eco-hydrological information for large river basins at global and continental scales. Supporting research aimed toward river classifications and quantification of aquatic ecosystem services, the final maps represent millions of river reaches that flow through a variety of landscapes and enable a quick understanding of (1) the type of rivers, and (2) the intensity of society's reliance on these systems.

Doing Cartography as Professional Amateurs | Faire de la cartographie comme des amateurs professionnels
Presenter: Alan McConchie, Stamen Design
At Stamen we are often called upon to make maps about topics we know nothing about. So why do clients keep hiring us, if we are such amateurs? Well, sometimes you need someone who is good at being an amateur! At Stamen we like to think of ourselves as experts at bringing an amateur's enthusiasm and "beginner's mind" to the data. In short, our job is making maps about topics that are not our job. In this presentation, I'll showcase some recent Stamen projects, and talk about how we use our design process to help clients see their data with fresh eyes. I will also talk about how this approach extends to the cartographic tools we use in our work, where a careful mixture of expertise and naivety lets us break our tools in interesting ways, pushing them to their limits and finding exciting new visualizations in the process.

Fake maps! The cartography of elections | Les fausses cartes : la cartographie des élections
Presenter: Kenneth Field, Esri / International Cartographic Association
Quoting former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson: "a week is a long time in politics". The same might be said about electoral cartography. For many, elections provide a fascinating sideshow in seeing how the results are handled cartographically.

Using recent United Kingdom elections I review shifts in cartographic style and the emergence of a fascinating consensus in terms of map type, style and functionality A new default appears to be emerging. I compare these to maps of the 2016 U.S. Presidential election where greater cartographic diversity exists. The geographies of two massively different countries account for some of this but consumer preference also creates different demands in the map reader.

Approaches range from the purely functional to beautifully imaginative and innovative artistic representations. I finish by sharing my own attempts to map recent political events, both artistically and to challenge and extend the palette of political thematic cartography.

Moderators
avatar for Amy Griffin

Amy Griffin

Editor, Cartographic Perspectives, UNSW Canberra

Speakers
avatar for Kenneth Field

Kenneth Field

Esri
Cartonerd. Ex-academic. Teaches. Talks. Makes. Presents. Publishes. Blogs. Tweets. Journals. Book 1 (Cartography.). Book 2 (Thematic Mapping) MOOC. Kitchen tiles. Snowboards. Drums. Beer. Nottingham Forest. Has a life too.
avatar for Alan McConchie

Alan McConchie

Lead Cartographer, Stamen Design
Alan McConchie works at the intersection of cartography, software, and data science. He loves making cartographic visualizations that reveal new ways of seeing the world, and is passionate about creating tools that help people create their own maps and tell their own spatial stories... Read More →
avatar for Ezra Zeitler

Ezra Zeitler

Geography and Anthropology, University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire


Wednesday October 11, 2017 4:00pm - 5:20pm EDT
Salons 4 & 5, Level 2

4:00pm EDT

Cartographic Education II | Formation cartographique II
Impact of the geographical distribution of private schools in Al Ain city on learning opportunities | L’impact de la répartition géographique des écoles privés sur l’accès à l’éducation dans la ville d’Al Aïn 
Presenter: Mohammed Maali, United Arab Emirates University
Copresenters: Abdulla Al Shekaili, Naeema Al hosani, Sultan Al Mansouri, Abdullah Al Zubaidi, United Arab Emirates University
Academic and learning achievements among elementary school students are highly correlated with their school's ability to deliver functioning and informative educational programs. Schools with large student population and large class sizes are unlikely to deliver functioning educational programs, thus seriously disadvantaging students, preventing them from achieving their educational goals. This has been a problem reported in many cities in the United Arab Emitares.

This research study hypothesizes that the geographic distribution of schools' locations is leading to overcrowded classes and schools, and thus significantly impairing the opportunities of the students. To test the validity of this hypothesis a series of information layers will be integrated into a geographic information systems database that analyzes the impact of a school geographic location and its academic achievement.

How my cartographic education prepared me (or didn't) for a mapping job in tech | Comment ma formation en cartographie m’a préparé (ou pas) à un métier de cartographe dans le secteur technologique
Presenter: Robin Tolochko, Uber
After graduating with my Master's in Cartography & GIS in May 2016, I landed my dream job: designing digital maps at a company with millions of users around the world. What did I learn in school that prepared me for this new role? What have I learned on the job that no class ever contained? This talk will cover a range of learnings that have served me well—from cartographic concepts to user-centered design to soft skills—and how working in mapping in the tech sector has augmented my formal education.

Evaluating Learning Effectiveness Using Cartographic Generalization Techniques: Online, Traditional, or Hybrid Lectures? | Évaluation de l’efficacité de l’apprentissage à l’aide de techniques de généralisation cartographique : lectures en ligne, traditionnelles ou hybrides?
Presenter: Jared Ware, United States Military Academy
The contemporary education environment raises questions about the effectiveness of online courses, particularly as compared to traditional classroom learning and in relation to student needs, perceptions, and learning outcomes. A prevailing thought is that it is often through conversation, discourse, discussion, and debate among students and between instructors and students that a new concept is clarified. I researched learning effectiveness where the objectives were to determine which methods are best for specific cartographic generalization techniques and also to determine if students learn the techniques better online, in a traditional lecture, or a blend of both. The aim of the research is to determine if online, traditional, or a hybrid of the two was more effective in allowing students to learn cartographic generalization techniques. The goal is to assess student feedback, lab scores, and test scores to determine if these techniques enhance learning as well as retention of the subject matter.

Moderators
avatar for Anthony Robinson

Anthony Robinson

Associate Professor and Director of Online Geospatial Education, Department of Geography, The Pennsylvania State University
I direct Penn State's Online Geospatial Education programs and serve as Faculty Director in the Department of Geography's GeoGraphics Lab.

Speakers
NA

Naeema Alhosani

UAE UNIVERSITY - UAE
avatar for Jared Ware

Jared Ware

Assistant Professor, Geospatial Information Science, United States Military Academy
I like maps. I really like traveling around to check out how places on maps look close up and in 3D. I also like discussing, learning and teaching new concepts and ideas. People can talk to me about anything - I enjoy engaging in and listening to good conversation - all I ask... Read More →


Wednesday October 11, 2017 4:00pm - 5:20pm EDT
Ballroom Centre

4:00pm EDT

Cartographic Narratives II | Récits cartographiques II
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.

Moderators
avatar for Hans van der Maarel

Hans van der Maarel

Red Geographics
I'm the founder of Red Geographics, a cartography and GIS company in The Netherlands. We make maps, wrangle data and are a local reseller for Avenza (MAPublisher) and Safe Software (FME)

Speakers
LD

Leo Dillon

Office of the Geographer, U.S. Department of State
avatar for Thomas McGurk

Thomas McGurk

MSc Candidate and Research Assitatnt, Concordia University
My current work is an investigation of online mapping (cybercartography) and its use by Indigenous peoples in the Canadian context. More specifically it examines how online mapping fits into narratives related to colonialization and counter-mapping practices to understand what impact... Read More →
avatar for Juan Francisco Saldarriaga

Juan Francisco Saldarriaga

Senior Data & Design Researcher, Brown Institute for Media Innovation, Columbia University
I work at the intersection of data, GIS, visualization, journalism, architecture, urbanism, and the humanities, and I teach graduate level workshops and seminars on mapping, advanced GIS and data visualization. In the past I’ve worked as a research scholar at the Center for Spa... Read More →


Wednesday October 11, 2017 4:00pm - 5:20pm EDT
Salons 6 & 7, Level 3
 
Thursday, October 12
 

9:00am EDT

Lightning Talks II | Présentations éclairs II
The Constant Atlas | L’Atlas Constant
Presenter: Jia Zhang, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The ability of institutions to utilize data aggregated from individuals has grown significantly in the past ten years. Although projects using aggregate data benefit individuals by improving on their environment at large, a citizen often does not engage with the data collected from them nor the decision making process directly. The proposed research engages citizens directly with publicly available data, giving residents the ability to use their physical location over time as a lens to understand aggregate data of their environment. The Constant Atlas allows users to dynamically generate unique atlases of publicly available data based on their movement. The atlases combine interactive visualizations with the principle of self quantification in order to communicate context to the user about the places they frequent, places that are just beyond their routines, and implications of the self-imposed boundaries etched by their daily movements.

Cartographic Animation — Part 2 | Animation cartographique – Partie 2
Presenter: Joanna Merson, Arizona State University
Animation offers a captivating and informative avenue for representing dynamic data in cartography. Accordingly, leading cartographic research aims to improve animation use through data and user evaluation to establish best-practice guidelines. But how many of these guidelines actually reach the research community? This research follows-up on my presentation last year, which described a framework for investigating how cartographic animation is used in academic journals. Using that framework, I examined the 8 highest impact geography journals to catalog what types of animation were used from 2014–2016, how animations were displayed, and if there was congruence between the animations and the data represented. This analysis is used to explore both how cartographic animation is used outside of the cartographic research community, and if in the era of digital maps, there is a need for better facilitating the inclusion of animations in academic publications.

Navigation System Design at Uber: Maps + Interaction | La conception d’un système de navigation chez Uber : cartes + interaction
Presenter: Cady Wachsman, Uber
In 2016, Uber launched a custom-tailored navigation experience. We want to share some of the complexities that come with designing a global interactive map + navigation system. Come join to learn about the unique cartographic and product design processes and the complicated problem space.

A Body of Knowledge on Cartography and Visualization | Un corpus de connaissances en cartographie et visualisation
Presenter: Robert Roth, University of Wisconsin–Madison
The Geographic Information Science & Technology (GIS&T) Body of Knowledge (BoK) is a reference on core competencies defining geospatial education. The original BoK was published in 2006 by the AAG and UCGIS societies with key input from several regular NACIS contributors and comprised learning objectives for 329 topics organized into 10 knowledge areas, including 27 for Cartography & Visualization. I joined an initiative in 2016 to update the original BoK to account for innovations in research, technology, and practice over the past ten years, and to make the content more useful to student, instructor, and professional audiences. We reenvisioned the new BoK as an open access, community-driven, and living collection of background and instructional materials on GIS&T. In the presentation, I will describe the revised goals and format of the BoK, discuss my own expectations for the Cart/Vis knowledge area, and report on progress to-date in the Cart/Vis knowledge area.

Putting Design at the Forefront of GIS Education | Mettre la conception au premier plan de la formation aux SIG
Presenter: Jessie Braden, Pratt Institute
Pratt Institute's Spatial Analysis and Visualization Initiative (SAVI) has created an innovative certificate program that takes a design and impact-based approach to GIS technology by connecting the physical applications of spatial analysis to the social impact capacity of design. We want our students, after performing rigorous analysis, to be able to create clear visuals that transform data into powerful stories. The GIS and Design program begins with the Spatial Thinking and Design course so students learn cartographic design elements before performing any spatial analysis. This allows students to develop abstract but critical storytelling skills in parallel with their increasing spatial analytical skills, instead of treating cartography as an afterthought. This presentation will discuss our pedagogical approach and the challenges that arise from putting equal importance on analysis and design in a 12-credit program.

Teaching Good Design in Government | Enseigner la bonne conception au gouvernement
Presenter: Lee Pera, US Environmental Protection Agency
Yes, it's possible to have decent design in government! Lee Pera will walk through how EPA has encouraged better design in their map and data visualization products as they have shifted from print to web and creative ways she has found to implement cartographic training and support at the agency with little money. She will talk about the importance of in-person design and collaboration and the Geo Viz Lab she started earlier this year at EPA headquarters. In this time of dwindling federal budgets, well-designed products are important. Not only do they show the importance of our work to the public, but they also increase morale, allowing employees to take pride in the work they do through the products they create.

A Mixed-Methods Cartography of Climate Vulnerability in Coastal Georgia | Une cartographie multi-méthodes de la migration climatique en Géorgie littorale
Presenter: David Rickless, University of Georgia
Predictive models of sea level rise and population growth indicate that millions of coastal United States residents will be forced to migrate or otherwise adapt to climate change in the next century. Some coastal communities are already experiencing "nuisance flooding" on a regular basis; others face mounting insurance costs. The distribution of these impacts is widely understood to be determined by social processes, and quantitative mapping approaches are commonly used to visualize the unevenness. This study builds on established research on social vulnerability by drawing on local knowledge to better understand how vulnerability is produced in the study area. Presented here is a conceptual framework informed by critical cartography and knowledge politics. It is the first step toward an integrated analysis that employs both quantitative mapping and qualitative environmental knowledge.

Moderators
Speakers
avatar for Joanna Merson

Joanna Merson

University of Oregon
avatar for David Rickless

David Rickless

Geography Graduate Student, University of Georgia
avatar for Robert Roth

Robert Roth

Professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Robert is a professor in the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Geography and Director of the University of Wisconsin Cartography Lab.
avatar for Jia Zhang

Jia Zhang

PhD Student, MIT Media Lab


Thursday October 12, 2017 9:00am - 10:20am EDT
Ballroom Centre

9:00am EDT

Social Theory | Théorie sociale
The Map-making Game | Le jeu de la création de cartes
Presenter: Mark Denil, sui generis 
One can think of map making as a game; that is, one of the general class of learned cultural sequences that are culturally determined and characterized by: Roles, Rules, Goals, Rituals, Language, and Values. Of course, cultural stability is maintained by preventing people from seeing any part of society (such as map making) as game structures, and cultural institutions enforce the delusion that games have inevitable givens, involving unchangeable laws and conventions. Thus, while it is seldom advisable to directly or openly challenge the game structures, it can be enlightening to learn to recognize and study them. This talk will explore some strategies and tactics for exposing the game structures underlying the map making activity, and to demonstrate the value of engaging it in this way. It should provide a practical, pragmatic framework for cartographic practice.

Canada, the United States, and Fish: Drawing the Lines | Le Canada, les États-Unis et les poissons : tracer la ligne

Presenter: John Cloud, NOAA Central Library
The neighbors of Canada and the United States are each other, and fish (and, for the United States: Mexico and more fish). The conceptual boundaries of the two countries encode the consequences of imperial wars centuries ago, and the continuing impositions of much upon Indian tribes and First Nations across the continent of North America. The actualizations of the boundary segments have changed and evolved with every human generation since the early 19th century, utilizing the latest and highest level technologies in geopositioning and cartography. The US Coast Survey, now NOAA, has played a major role in defining and mapping the boundaries from the American side since the middle of the 19th century. The lines are both abstractions, and artifacts of very human stories, arcing more towards cooperation between disparate peoples than not. The vast cartographic archives of the Coast Survey reveal much more than the lines separating two nations. 

Humanizing Maps | Humaniser les cartes
Presenter: Meghan Kelly, University of Wisconsin–Madison
Copresenters: Nick Lally, Robert Roth, University of Wisconsin–Madison
Maps have the power to make people legible, knowable, and governable in particular ways while simultaneously erasing certain bodies, identities, and multiplicities. Bringing the hidden assumptions and power relations that underlie mapmaking to the forefront, feminist approaches to mapmaking and data visualization examine who is visible and how they are made visible. This paper draws on critical issues of representation, examining how interactive maps can deploy symbolization and map design techniques that reveal the visibility of people in different ways; increase critical engagement with the map; and develop empathetic connections with those who are made visible. We examine these issues through a critical visual analysis of existing maps and through a user survey of 120 participants using MapStudy—an interactive web mapping survey tool developed in the University of Wisconsin Cartography Lab. Drawing from our findings, we offer some suggestions for how we might humanize maps through design.

Moderators
LD

Leo Dillon

Office of the Geographer, U.S. Department of State

Speakers
JC

John Cloud

NOAA Central Library
avatar for Mark Denil

Mark Denil

sui generis
avatar for Meghan Kelly

Meghan Kelly

Assistant Professor, Syracuse University


Thursday October 12, 2017 9:00am - 10:20am EDT
Salons 6 & 7, Level 3

10:40am EDT

People in Cartography | Figures de la cartographie
Three Pioneering Women Cartographers of the 20th Century | Trois femmes cartographes pionnières du XXè siècle
Presenter: Judith Tyner, California State University, Long Beach
While little is known about female cartographers in the early 20th century, three women stand out. Grace Hebard of Wyoming, with a BS in Civil engineering, who worked as a"draftsman" in the Wyoming Surveyor General's Office, Laura Whitlock, the official cartographer of Los Angeles County, and Gertrude Bracht of the Oklahoma Department of Transportation are worth noting. This paper looks at the contributions of these women in the context of the time.

John Byron Plato: Inventor, Entrepreneur, Rural Advocate, Cartographer | John Byron Plato : inventeur, entrepreneur, défenseur de la cause rurale et cartographe
Presenter: Mark Monmonier, Syracuse University
Scholars have largely ignored John Byron Plato, the early twentieth century American cartographer who invented the"Clock System" a georeferencing technique that used a template of circles and radial lines to give rural residents a "real address" like their urban counterparts. Born in 1876, Plato was an only child whose father died when he was four. He completed high school, served in the Philippines during the Spanish-American War, and patented a device for parking horse-drawn wagons. After patenting the Clock System in 1915, he developed a business plan, recruited investors, and compiled and marketed several maps and rural indexes until his business foundered in the Great Depression. Around 1931 he moved to Washington, DC, and worked as a government cartographer for several years. His invention reflects serendipity, cleverness, initiative, prior interaction with the Patent Office, and work experience as a manufacturer, draftsman, lumberyard manager, livestock and dairy farmer, and machinist.

Elements of Cartography: A Bibliobiography | Elements of Cartography : une bibliobiographie
Presenter: Jenny Marie Johnson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
In 1962, John Kirtland Wright wrote, "Books are not unlike people, and some books, like some people, deserve biographies." Given its long lifespan and impact on the shape of United States academic cartography, Arthur H. Robinson's Elements of Cartography deserves a biography. Using Wright's notes for a bibliobiography of Ellen Semple's Influences of Geographic Environment as a framework for structuring a biography of a book, I will discuss the ancestry, character, personality and career of Elements of Cartography. Much of this bibliobiography relies on citation analysis (ancestry) and close textual reading (career) but external sources such as publisher's descriptions and reviews shed light on this important title's character and personality.

Moderators
avatar for Hans van der Maarel

Hans van der Maarel

Red Geographics
I'm the founder of Red Geographics, a cartography and GIS company in The Netherlands. We make maps, wrangle data and are a local reseller for Avenza (MAPublisher) and Safe Software (FME)

Speakers
avatar for Mark Monmonier

Mark Monmonier

Syracuse University
This spring the University of Iowa Press published my new book, Clock and Compass: How John Byron Plato Gave Farmers a Real Address; they did an excellent job with editing and design and have priced it affordably (under $20). Though Plato was a “minor figure” in the history of... Read More →
avatar for Judith Tyner

Judith Tyner

California State University, Long Beach
Research on women in cartography


Thursday October 12, 2017 10:40am - 12:00pm EDT
Salons 6 & 7, Level 3

10:40am EDT

Symbolization Methods | Les méthodes de symbolisation
Chernoff Zombies | Les zombies de Chernoff
Presenter: Heather Rosenfeld, University of Wisconsin–Madison
Copresenters: Sarah Moore, Eric Nost, Robert Roth, Kristen Vincent, University of Wisconsin–Madison
Chernoff faces are a controversial strategy for multivariate mapping. Chernoff zombies are a likely also controversial way of mapping uncertainty and gaps in a dataset. We use Chernoff zombies to visualize data on the transnational hazardous waste trade, and in doing so, attempt to productively respond to critiques of this mapping practice. This presentation will show a sequence of experimental Chernoff maps and discuss the process of creating them. We experiment with, first, removing or obscuring facial features to illustrate gaps and uncertainties in the dataset-thus, missing eyes, mouths, and other features correspond with missing information about waste processing, type, or quantity. Second, we play with the cartoonish style inherent to Chernoff faces, adding detail and variation to facial features. We attempt to balance the need for consistency with the ability of characters to draw people into a visual narrative.

Pen Craft-ography: The Return of Pen Plotters | L’art de la cartographie au stylo : le retour des tables traçantes
Presenter: Stephen Smith, MapSmith
Pen plotters were once (I'm told) the bane of cartographer's existence. In recent years, the trend has returned in the form of consumer products aimed at small format drawing machines. I've been experimenting with a consumer crafting tool for drawing maps with pens. I'd like to share my findings, experiences, and encourage collaboration.

Drawing a continent by hand | Dessiner un continent à la main
Presenter: Anton Thomas, Anton Thomas Art
Three years ago, I picked up a set of color pencils and began drawing North America. State by state, city by city, I wanted to pay tribute to this vast and beautiful continent by way of pictorial map. Without any idea how long it might take, I stumbled into an extremely dense and lengthy project: The North American Continent. Now, three years and 600 cities later, it is on the verge of completion. In this presentation we will explore methods, techniques and the story behind it — including its peculiar origins right here in Montréal. We will take a tour of the map, unpacking its contents while examining some of the interesting dilemmas one comes across in such a project. Selecting content for an expansive pictorial map is a thrilling but windy road — a search for harmony between the creative freedoms of art and the geographic truth of cartography.

Cartographic design and funding of ecosystem services models | La conception cartographique et le financement de modèles de services de l’écosystème

Presenter: Eric Nost, University of Wisconsin–Madison
In this presentation, I discuss the design features of, and funding mechanisms for, an emerging set of spatially-explicit ecosystem services models meant to inform policy. Ecosystem services are the often unaccounted-for benefits that nature provides to society, like flood mitigation from wetlands, and advocates claim that maps help communicate the value of ecosystem services to decision-makers. While there is much focus on how models calculate ecosystem services across space, a pressing research need is evaluating how map outputs actually represent them. I present two sets of criteria for such an evaluation: 1) map design (e.g. visual variables and hierarchy) and model interface design (especially the affordances of re-expression, re-symbolization, and isomorphic display). I then illustrate an example evaluation of a map from one model. I conclude by highlighting the political economic dimensions (e.g. funding and proprietarity) that may shape design.

Moderators
avatar for Andy Woodruff

Andy Woodruff

Axis Maps

Speakers
EN

Eric Nost

University of Wisconsin-Madison
avatar for Anton Thomas

Anton Thomas

Artist Cartographer, Anton Thomas Art


Thursday October 12, 2017 10:40am - 12:00pm EDT
Ballroom Centre

2:00pm EDT

Cartographic Art, History, and Writing | Art, histoire et écriture cartographiques
The Survey of Manitoba 1869–1881 | L’arpentage du Manitoba de 1869 à 1881
Presenter: Martin Christoher Kotecki, Archives of Manitoba
The survey of the province of Manitoba in the 1870's was part of the much larger survey of the recently acquired Hudson's Bay Company territory in western and northern North America. In 1869 the conservative government of John A. MacDonald had completed negotiations with the imperial government in London for the purchase and transfer of Rupertsland to Canada. Many of the settlers, along the Red and Assiniboine Rivers, at the centre of the fur trade in North America, wanted incorporation as a province of Canada. A delegation was sent, by the Provisional Government at Red River, to negotiate terms of entry into confederation. This paper will examine the records produced by the surveyors of the system established by Colonel S. Dennis, the surveyor-general, for the survey of Manitoba and western Canada, as well as the records of the settlement of Manitoba and the West.

A Field Guide to 20th Century Airline Route Maps | Un guide pratique des cartes des voies aériennes du XXè siècle
Presenter: Victoria Johnson, US Agency for International Development / Macfadden 
Ladies and gentlemen, please make sure your seat backs and tray tables are in their full upright and locked position as we embark on a 20 minute journey through the wild world of commercial aviation route maps. Whether serving a hyperlocal three-stop outfit or a globe-spanning mega-alliance, airline route maps have performed the same function for nearly a century while taking a wide variety of forms. For all of the clever designs, stylish techniques, and innovative cartography, there are also minor mistakes, utter failures, and complete nosedives. This session will introduce you to the thrilling highs and the white-knuckle lows of that little map at the back of the in-flight magazine. Join me, and fly the friendly skies from the relative comfort of a conference room chair!

New Uses for Old Maps — Exploring transforming landscapes online using OCUL's collection of historical topographic maps | De nouveaux usages pour les vieilles cartes – Explorer la transformation des paysages en ligne grâce à la collection de cartes topographiques historiques de l’OCUL
Presenter: Jo Ashley, OCUL - Scholars Portal 
Just in time for Canada's 150th birthday, the OCUL Historical Topographic Map Digitization Project has digitized and made available for public use a collection of over 1000 topographical maps for Ontario. These maps, published between 1904 and 1977, provide historical snapshots that allow researchers, students and the general public to explore changes to an area over time. The technical particulars for this project involved hard-copy digitization, geo-referencing, and a sustainable transformation for viewing these maps in the Scholars GeoPortal web application. Working with this interesting and unique data in this way has enabled the discovery of how the data can be used to identify and highlight issues such as erosion, urban sprawl, transportation growth and disappearing waterways. Details pertaining to this project's workflow & specifications will be discussed followed by an exploration of the maps via the Scholars GeoPortal and related informative website.

A Cartographer's Story | Une histoire de cartographe
Presenter: Daniel P. Huffman, somethingaboutmaps; John Nelson, Esri
Every act of creation is personal. Behind the cartographic theory, tools, and techniques, there is a human being who struggles, who triumphs, and who is driven by more than just a need to earn an income. A Cartographer's Story is a project dedicated to exploring the personal and emotional relationships which so many of us have with our work. During our time together, we'll talk about why sharing these stories is important, give you a sampling of some of the narratives we feature on the site, and give you an opportunity to get involved.

Celebrating 150 years of topographic mapping in Canada, 1867–2017 | La célébration des 150 ans de la cartographie topographique au Canada (1867-2017)
Presenter: Roger Wheate, University of Northern British Columbia
This year marks the 150th anniversary of the Confederation of Canada in 1867. This event spurred extended mapping of the nation's new lands both by incorporating the territories of the Hudson Bay Company and as a counter to westward expansion south of the border. The coincident development of photo-lithography further enabled full colour map production and the proper rendition of halftones. This talk will summarise the sequence of multiple topographic map series that helped cover this northern land, starting with the very Canadian process of phototopography and early imperial map scales in the National Topographic System (NTS). These were replaced by metric scales after World War II along with special topographic map products for example covering national parks and selected glaciers. Into the new millenium, and with the completion of the 1:50,000 NTS maps in 2012, national and provincial agencies have focused on data generation, leaving much innovative topographic mapping to the private sector. These products typically incorporate digital shaded relief and added recreational features which appeal to modern society as much as they did to European travellers a century earlier.

Moderators
Speakers
avatar for Daniel P. Huffman

Daniel P. Huffman

somethingaboutmaps
avatar for Victoria Johnson

Victoria Johnson

Geographic Information Officer / Cartographer, Macfadden USAID/OTI


Thursday October 12, 2017 2:00pm - 3:40pm EDT
Salons 4 & 5, Level 2

2:00pm EDT

Cartographic Research II | Recherche cartographique II
Designing across map use contexts | Concevoir pour tous les contextes d’utilisation des cartes
Presenter: Amy Griffin, University of New South Wales Canberra
Copresenters: Travis White, University of Kansas, Carolyn Fish, The Pennsylvania State University, Beate Tokio, PLATH Group, Haosheng Huang, University of Zürich, Claudia Robbi Sluter, Federal University of Paraná, João Vitor Meza Bravo, Federal University of Paraná, Sara I. Fabrikant, University of Zürich, Susanne Bleisch, FHNW University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland, Melissa Yamada, Federal University of Paraná, and Péricles Picanço, Federal University of Paraná
The explosion of map use in the past few decades as part of everyday activities, accelerated through the digital production and dissemination of maps and the availability of low-cost, location-aware devices, has made the job of cartographers and map display designers more challenging. Yet, how do these recent changes affect effective map design? Can we accurately predict which designs will work for a given context? We investigate the concepts of design transferability and context and their potential to help us create map design outcomes that are effective for varying map use situations. We then present a model for operationalizing map use context to support evaluating map design transferability and pose several open research questions that need to be answered to support operationalizing map use context. We seek feedback from practicing cartographers about this model.

Climate change, maps, and the media | Le changement climatique, les cartes et les médias
Presenter: Carolyn Fish, The Pennsylvania State University
Climate change is a multidimensional and complex issue which has significant and unpredictable impacts on the environment and society. The media is often tasked with communicating this issue and must balance the complexity of the science with accurate and understandable communication of facts. In an effort to attract readers, reduce complexity, and make the issue of climate change tangible and less abstract for their readers, the media often use maps to illustrate news stories of climate change. This study, through a series of interviews with cartographers, visualization experts, and graphic designers at top visual media organizations and government agency outreach programs, investigated best practices and new innovations for how to communicate climate change cartographically to the public. Results from this study illustrate methods of mapping climate change, the goals of a wide variety of media organizations in mapping this issue, and how journalists reduce complexity while still communicating the facts.

Cartographic Coding and the Implementation of the "Grammar of Graphics" | Le codage cartographique et la mise en œuvre d’une « grammaire graphique »
Presenter: Rex Cammack, University of Nebraska Omaha
Currently in the fields of cartography and data science, a majority of maps and graphics are designed by direct or indirect computer coding. The idea of direct coding can be surmised by coded examples of maps/graphics from JavaScript, D3, Leaflet, and R. Indirect coding of maps can be explained when design tools such as Illustrator, ArcGIS, SPSS, and SAS software are used to render maps and graphics. These examples show systems that have complex user interfaces to develop and implement the map production process. The balance between direct and indirect computer coding of maps and graphics has ebbed and flowed since the first computers. In this research, a cartographic framework will be used to understanding the data science conceptualization of the "Grammar of Graphics" (Wickham 2010). The research will investigate the shared origin of thought from Bertin (1983).

mR-V: Line Simplification for Raster Tiled Maps and Discrete Global Grids | mR-V : la simplification des lignes pour les cartes à pavés matriciels/raster
Presenter: Emmanuel Stefanakis, University of New Brunswick
This presentation introduces a new method to line simplification that applies well-known geo-processing tasks, such as polyline-to-raster and raster-to-polyline conversions. This method, named mR-V (mnemonic Rasterization followed by a Vectorization of the original linear feature; [1]), can prevent spatial inconsistencies with neighbouring objects in the embedded space without considering these objects in the simplification process. The method is compliant with the raster tiled maps at various zoom levels, being produced by earth browsers (e.g., Google Maps, Bing Maps, and OpenStreeMap), as well as the discrete global grid systems (DGGS).

[1] Stefanakis, E., 2016. mR-V: Line Simplification through Mnemonic Rasterization. Geomatica Journal, Vol. 70, No. 4, pp. 187-200.

Reflections on organizing the scientific program of ICC 2017, the International Cartographic Conference in Washington DC | Réflexions sur l’organisation du programme scientifique de l’ICC 2017
Presenter: Cynthia A. Brewer, The Pennsylvania State University
A large group of your favorite U.S. cartographers planned the ICC 2017 meeting in the United States for the International Cartographic Association (ICA). I chaired the scientific program (the oral and poster presentations) and lead an 80-member international scientific program committee through reviews and session planning. I'll talk about some of the challenges, such as developing a set of 40 themes covering the entire breadth of our discipline, groan about how to combine topics into sessions using overlapping ICA Commission recommendations, ponder the difficulty of using a conference management company for a one-off conference (ICC won't come back to the U.S. for likely 30 years), and cheer about the many things that went right. Cary Anderson at Penn State assisted me with program planning details. The meeting was at the beginning of July, so October NACIS will be a good distance from which to reflect on the experience.

Moderators
avatar for Martha Bostwick

Martha Bostwick

NSCC - Centre of Geographic Sciences

Speakers
avatar for Cynthia A. Brewer

Cynthia A. Brewer

Professor, Penn State
I teach cartography at Penn State, and I adore the NACIS community. It pulls me back to my map passions when I'm swamped with administrative tasks in my day job.
RC

Rex Cammack

Associate Professor, University of Nebraska Omaha
Geography Professor interested in Map Design/communication and Context based location based services.
avatar for Amy Griffin

Amy Griffin

Editor, Cartographic Perspectives, UNSW Canberra


Thursday October 12, 2017 2:00pm - 3:40pm EDT
Ballroom Centre

2:00pm EDT

Web and Mobile Mapping | La cartographie en ligne et la cartographie mobile
Scalable Static Maps | Des cartes statiques à échelle ajustable
Presenter: Aaron Dennis, Azavea
You've spent months studying Leaflet.js interaction events and D3.js animation transitions to create that sleek, modern, interactive web mapping application only to see its fall from grace when your user grabs a poorly framed screenshot of their hometown, pastes it into their default-themed PowerPoint presentation, and never returns to your website. In this talk, we'll discuss strategies for static image map generation to improve user experience and reduce development effort. Sometimes an atlas of many well-designed infographics is more valuable for your user than applications of exploratory cartographic visualization. We use command-line D3.js and Node.js Canvas to generate shareable gerrymandering infographics on state-by-state efficiency gap scores. We'll discuss methods for web-based static map distribution and scenarios where you might think twice before building that interactive mapping dashboard.

Flyover Country: Mobile Visualization of Geoscience Data | Flyover Country : la visualisation mobile des données géoscientifiques
Presenter: Shane Loeffler, University of Minnesota
Copresenters: Ross Thorn, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Amy Myrbo, University of Minnesota; Simon Goring, Rob Roth, University of Wisconsin–Madison
Flyover Country is a mobile app for geoscience data discovery and exploration from anywhere — from the airplane window seat to a remote hiking trail to a researcher's field area. The app allows users to choose a region of interest, find what data are available there, and save that information to their device for offline use. Visualizing and interacting with complex multivariate/spatiotemporal datasets on a mobile device is a novel challenge due to smaller screens, reduced processing power, and more limited data connectivity than traditional laptop or desktop computers. Flyover Country incorporates solutions to these issues in its most recent update. Specifically, we will discuss: hardware and software engineering challenges when working with disparate and large datasets, multivariate cartographic design solutions for visualizing these data, and the revised UX design to improve support of both general and research audiences.

An Online Code Library for Google Maps | Une bibliothèque de code en ligne pour Google Maps
Presenter: Michael Peterson, University of Nebraska Omaha
The making of multi-scale panable (MSP) maps through Application Programmer Interfaces (APIs) is a central part of modern cartography. The most widely-used API is based on Google Maps. Described here is an online library of Google Maps API code. The library consists of over 100 working examples that demonstrate the full array of mapping possibilities with the API. Examples include the mapping of points, lines and areas in vector format using the KML, FusionTables, GeoRSS, GeoJSON and TopoJSON file types. Also demonstrated is how raster files, both whole images and a set of tiles, can be superimposed on Google Maps. Server-side PHP code is included that extracts data from a MySQL database and outputs the HTML, JavaScript and API code for the making of online maps. Other examples use the location-finding ability of smart phones to map a user's location. Code is also included that demonstrates how to make animations.

Projections and datums in web mapping: an introduction | Les projections et datums en cartographie Web : introduction
Presenter: Lyzi Diamond, Mapbox
Nine out of ten cartographers agree: dealing with datums and projections can be the most annoying part of making a map. While GIS software allows us to quickly convert datums and try out a bunch of projections and see what works best for our use case, web mapping tools tackle this problem completely differently.

This talk is about interacting with datums and projections when making web maps: the choices to make, the vocabulary to use, and the concepts to understand. (Plus a few minutes at the beginning to refresh everyone's memory about datums and projections in general.) Maps are math and so can you!

Interactive HTML5 Data Visualization: See what was inaccessible with CartoVista | La visualisation de données HTML5 interactives : comment CartoVista rend l’invisible visible
Presenter: Dany Bouchard, CartoVista
Geographic data is ubiquitous in the landscape of organizations, corporations and governments. CartoVista allows you to profit from it by building interactive web maps. Leveraging the best of HTML5, CartoVista delivers a rich, immersive mapping experience that can even surpass desktop GIS! Discover how you can tell a story in your web browser and make your GIS data shine! This presentation will highlight concrete examples of cartographic data dissemination with advanced styles. Additional map samples will explore the use of interactive business data for banking (loan delinquencies), insurance (claims) and geomarketing.

Moderators
avatar for Andy Woodruff

Andy Woodruff

Axis Maps

Speakers
avatar for Dany Bouchard

Dany Bouchard

Founder / CEO, CartoVista inc.
Dany Bouchard is the CEO and founder of CartoVista, a Canadian software company specialized in web mapping and data visualization using interactive maps. CartoVista has developed an innovative and unique solution to visualize GIS map data over the web.Love to chat about web mapping... Read More →
SL

Shane Loeffler

Polar Geospatial Center
MP

Michael Peterson

University of Nebraska - Omaha


Thursday October 12, 2017 2:00pm - 3:40pm EDT
Salons 6 & 7, Level 3

4:00pm EDT

A Sense of Place | Le sens du lieu
Mapping a Sense of Place — across academic and community boundaries | Cartographier le sens du lieu – Par-delà les frontières scientifiques et communautaires
Presenter: Diana Hoover, University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point
A designer, a cartographer, and a story mapper walk into a bar and the cartographer says,"cognitive mapping, Bertin, cartouche." This scenario represents some of the fun and challenging aspects of working and playing with individuals to pull off an interdisciplinary course where students learned art, design, history and made multiple maps including story maps. In this presentation I will relay some of the obstacles and outcomes from planning and coordinating the interdisciplinary event series, 'Expressions of Place' through the College of Fine Arts & Communication at the University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point. Included in the series: curated art exhibition with exhibit of historical maps, dance performance, video screening with guest artist talkback, faculty + student research symposium, indigenous perceptions of place speakers circle, and community memory map.

Foggy Spaces, Maps of Nostalgia | Espaces flous, cartes de nostalgie
Presenter: Dylan Moriarty
Before satellites, we as a species had to rely on advanced mathematics & incredible means of measurement to determine where things were.

Before we were adults with an addiction to Mercator web maps, we had to rely on what we bothered to pay attention to out the windows of mom's van.

On a recent trip home I spent a lot of time thinking about how I once viewed the world in pieces, and how mysterious and exciting the space in between was. This talk will go over maps made by people similarly trying represent the great unknown, and my own efforts to do so.
 
A Graphic Typology of Produced Space in the Mojave Desert | Une typologie graphique de l’espace produit dans le désert de Mojave
Presenter: Nicholas Bauch, University of Oklahoma
I present portions of my ongoing research project, A Cultural Atlas of the Mojave Desert. Responding to calls by scholars from historical geography (e.g. Anne Knowles) and information studies (e.g. Johanna Drucker), designing the Atlas is driven by the goal to create graphic spatial forms that represent the plethora of"spaces" in which phenomena are perceived and practiced in the Mojave region. This type of atlas does not, therefore, restrict itself to the commonly practiced cartographic workflow of data-to-graticule. Instead, individual stories are unearthed from primary documents and become moments of bespoke cartographic speculation. Visualizing the many types of spaces—i.e. the many economies, spiritualities, journeys, and environments—that are concurrently produced in the same territory is something that has not been adequately addressed by the intellectual descendants of philosopher Henri Lefebvre, whose Production of Space taught us that space is so much more than a container for data.

Mapping Equity of Mobility on Campus | Cartographier l’équité de la mobilité sur un campus
Presenter: Anna Bard, University of Kentucky
We all experience a range of abilities at different points in our lives. In this talk I'll cover how we organized a multi-disciplinary interdepartmental team at the University of Kentucky to generate and visualize critical mobility related information, curated for a range of physical abilities. Typically, we think of a physical mobility limitation as a disability. However, during this talk we'll consider environmental and attitudinal barriers as the inhibitors of inclusion. We will discuss our team's process from the planning for data collection to embedding the data into the mainstream University of Kentucky web map. The end result was the development of a campus-wide accessible routing service. I'll describe how tackling this work through the lens of justice and equity elevated the quality of the project while preparing us (and others) to use maps as an advocacy tool.

Moderators
avatar for Alex Tait

Alex Tait

National Geographic Society

Speakers
avatar for Anna Bard

Anna Bard

Disability Program Specialist, Accessibility Map Coordinator, University of Kentucky
Talk to me about: Data and social justice, community development, diversity in tech, routing for all abilities, hats, roller coasters.
avatar for Nicholas Bauch

Nicholas Bauch

Artist, Experimental Geography Studio
Nicholas Bauch is a UX designer with professional backgrounds in art and geography.  He holds a Ph.D. in Geography (2010) from the University of California-Los Angeles, and an M.F.A. in Visual Arts (2021) from the University of Minnesota.  He is author of Enchanting the Desert (2016... Read More →
avatar for Diana Hoover

Diana Hoover

Professor, Graphic Design, University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point
I'm all about hierarchy, visual coding of information, symbols and keys. Love these things: patterns, typography, letterpress, 3D and lenticular imagery, printed ephemera. I am a design educator and I do design, too. Strong Heart Design
avatar for Dylan Moriarty

Dylan Moriarty

Cartographer & Designer


Thursday October 12, 2017 4:00pm - 5:20pm EDT
Salons 4 & 5, Level 2

4:00pm EDT

Lightning Talks III | Présentations éclairs III
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.

Moderators
avatar for Amy Griffin

Amy Griffin

Editor, Cartographic Perspectives, UNSW Canberra

Speakers
avatar for Chris Henrick

Chris Henrick

Web Developer, GreenInfo Network
My interests relating to cartographic design and geospatial visualization lie within civic tech, open data, open source software, narrative mapping, outdoor / recreation, and travel.
avatar for Brendan Hoover

Brendan Hoover

Graduate Student, The University of Texas
I'm a doctoral student the University of Texas, Austin (UT) in the Department of Geography and the Environment. I've worked as a graduate research assistant to develop novel approaches for analyzing dynamic interactions within movement data. I've also worked to explore privacy issues... Read More →
avatar for Esther Needham

Esther Needham

Project Manager Data Analytics, Azavea
Leaflet, CARTO, R, Azavea's Summer of Maps Fellowship, urban planning, bike/ped transportation, environmental planning & land conservation
avatar for Andy Woodruff

Andy Woodruff

Axis Maps


Thursday October 12, 2017 4:00pm - 5:20pm EDT
Ballroom Centre

4:00pm EDT

Reflections on the Atlas | Réflexions sur l’Atlas
The Maps Come First: Allowing Crowdsourced Content to Define the Atlas Narrative | Les cartes d’abord : autoriser un contenu participatif à définir le récit de l’Atlas
Presenter: Alicia Cowart, University of California, Berkeley
Copresenters: Darin Jensen, University of California Office of the President, Molly Roy, M. Roy Cartography & Design
Founded on the idea that a new paradigm for cooperative and collaborative knowledge-caching and -sharing could have a transformative effect on the awareness and dissemination of spatial information, Guerrilla Cartography formed in 2012 to create a crowdsourced and crowdfunded atlas. Food: An Atlas was an experiment in guerrilla cartography and guerrilla publishing. As a collaborative and self-published work, this project proved that a community can build an atlas. Guerrilla Cartography's next project, Water: An Atlas, continues to celebrate individual cartographic styles and research methodologies to create an atlas by the people. This atlas is set for release in summer 2017.

Atlas of Lighting | L’Atlas de l’éclairage
Presenter: Jia Zhang, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Copresenters: Sarah Williams, Hayrettin Gunc, Dennis Cameron Harvey, Ege Ozgirin, Kalli Retzepi, and Sera Tolgay, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
With the advancement of satellite imagery, new generation urban researchers are provided with superior data granularity. Atlas of Lighting is an interactive mapping tool that lets users combine, isolate, and cross-reference luminosity data with social media and traditional governmental data about cities to analyze the relationship between lighting and the economy of cities. The atlas uses interactive visualization techniques to enable users to manipulate the data, change the mode of display, and adjust variables of interest. With each query to a dataset, other data sets update themselves automatically, revealing dynamic relationships between variables. Users can also explore the data for individual grid cells, including fine-grained data such as all the geo-tagged Instagram posts in a particular location. Its ability to merge both qualitative and quantitative understanding of cities at large scales makes it a powerful tool for policy making, business analytics, and geospatial analysis..

Historical paper atlases in the Hybrid Age | Les atlas papier historiques à l’âge hybride
Presenter: Gregory Allord
Copresenter: Aileen Buckley, Esri 
As a compendium of maps, atlases provide a comprehensive view of the mapped area through concise but detailed information about a variety of subjects. Historical atlases are generally available only in paper form and these are often difficult for large numbers of readers to find, access, and use. Some atlases had limited print runs, some may no longer be maintained in a map collection, and some have been lost or damaged over the course of time.  We may be transitioning from the Information Age to the Hybrid Age in a technological revolution distinguished by ubiquitous computing, intelligent machines, social technologies, and integrated scientific fields.  If we are moving to a Hybrid Age and if these atlases can and should be preserved, what is the process for doing that?  This presentation discusses ways to help scientific agencies, map publishers, and libraries recognize the need for access to historical.

From multiple historic data sources to a searchable atlas of New York City | Des sources de données historiques multiples à l’atlas interrogeable de New York City
Presenter: Bert Spaan, New York Public Library
At NACIS 2016, I talked about the first phase of NYPL's NYC Space/Time Directory project; how the Library is building a repository of historical open data sets, and how all this data can be used to build new tools and visualizations. Publishing all this data in one place and in one format, however, is only the first step. Only when we start combining historical addresses and street names from fire insurance maps, names of people and businesses from city directories, photos from NYPL's collection of historical street photography as well as data from many other collections, we can make the history of New York City more accessible and start designing a searchable atlas of the Library's collections — with a time slider.

Moderators
Speakers
AC

Alicia Cowart

University of Colorado Boulder
avatar for Jia Zhang

Jia Zhang

PhD Student, MIT Media Lab


Thursday October 12, 2017 4:00pm - 5:20pm EDT
Salons 6 & 7, Level 3
 
Filter sessions
Apply filters to sessions.