NACIS 2015

Got in early? Looking for NACIS folk to hang out with? First time at the meeting and wondering who in the lobby is attending NACIS?

Join Minneapolis locals, Liz Puhl and Brad Neuhauser, for tasty Neapolitan pizza a short walk across the river in Northeast Minneapolis. Meet in the lobby at the Depot Renaissance Hotel to walk over.

Taking terrain to new heights with ArcGIS
20 Minutes
Kenneth Field, Esri Inc
Patrick Kennelly, LIU post, Long Island University

Ever wanted to go beyond default contour or hillshade representations of terrain and make something really stylish in ArcGIS? Yep, me too. Now you can with our new suite of stunning terrain tools for ArcGIS for Desktop. This session will take a single DEM and explore alternative ways to showcase your terrain including beautiful new hillshades that mimic hand-drawn techniques as well as filled contours and illuminated contours. We’ll also showcase artistic techniques such as hachures, shadow lines and sky models as well as historic looking styles, 3D chromastereoscopic mapping and 3D Choropleths. These techniques bring artistry to your maps using easy to use tools that we’ll demonstrate and which support your print and also 2D and 3D web mapping.
http://t.co/JRbwuxVT69 

Redesigning Atlas Maps for Social Media
10 Minutes
Alethea Steingisser, InfoGraphics Lab, University of Oregon 
James Meacham, InfoGraphics Lab, University of Oregon

In partnership with the Wyoming Migration Initiative, the UO InfoGraphics Lab is repurposing cartographic products created for the print atlas, the Atlas of Wildlife Migration: Wyoming’s Ungulates for social media outreach. The social media maps deliver timely stories about migrations and biological research that reflect live field work and satellite data collection while also building a strong social media following. This short talk will explore the design choices we considered regarding long versus short-term publication life, map purpose, and publication method used when redesigning these maps for social media.

 

MaPublisher at National Geographic
15 Minutes
Matthew Chwastyk, National Geographic Society

This powerful plugin for Adobe Illustrator is transforming the cartographic process. Its suite of tools aids in every aspect of the journey a map takes from concept to final proof. I'll detail how the software has been implemented for research, production, and in the editorial stages.

 

A quick guide to U.S. Department of Transportation datasets
15 Minutes
Justyna Goworowska, U.S. Department of TransportationThe U.S. Department of

Transportation provides data, much of which is spatial, on transportation infrastructure, passenger and freight movements, safety, and enforcement. The National Transportation Atlas Database (NTAD) is an annually updated spatial dataset of point, line, and polygon features. It includes multiple transportation-related features, from airports and bridges to highways and railways, as well as attribute information. This presentation will introduce users to the various datasets available through the US DOT and how to access them.

Field trip to the John R. Borchert Map Library & the James Ford Bell Library at the University of Minnesota
Ryan Mattke, University of Minnesota Libraries

This field trip will highlight unique cartographic materials in both libraries. The Borchert Map Library houses an extensive collection of historical maps of Minnesota, the U.S., and Europe, as well as the Ames Library of South Asia maps, with some dating back to the late 1500s. The Bell Library contains many fascinating items, including a 1667 copy of the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum by Willem Janszoon Blaeu, a 1507 copy of Martin Waldseemüler’s Globe Gores (the first map naming “America”), the 1602 Map of the Ten Thousand Countries of the Earth, by Matteo Ricci, portolan charts dating between 1424 and 1489, as well as works by Ptolemy, Münster, Mercator, and more.

Manual Shaded Relief of the World and the Patterson projection
20 Minutes
Tom Patterson, US National Park Service
Bernhard Jenny, Oregon State University
Bojan Savric, Oregon State University

I have two new products that will interest practical cartographers. The Manual Shaded Relief of the World is background art for making small-scale maps of the world and continents. I drew the relief in Photoshop with a Wacom tablet. It features generalized terrain without the busy textures typically found on small-scale digital relief. The manual relief registers with Natural Earth 1:50 million-scale vector data. It is available as a grayscale GeoTIFF (10,800 x 5,400 pixels) in the Geographic projection.

The Patterson projection is a cylindrical projection derived from the Miller 1. From the equator to latitude 55 degrees, the Patterson is nearly identical to the Miller. However, high latitudes on the Patterson are less exaggerated than on the Miller. The result is a relatively compact world map with familiar continental shapes.

I used both of these products to make a world political map that is in the public domain. 

Designer as Cartographer
20 Minutes
Amy Lee Walton, Mapbox

This talk will be an overview / comparison of the basic tenants of graphic design with those of cartography. Including example applications of these principles, for work and play, as completed web maps with accompanying printed versions. This talk focuses more on principles and practices of great map design over technology, but will also touch on these concepts extended from web to print using open source tools such as Mapbox Studio and vector tiles.

Collecting Data from the Crowd - A Leaflet and CartoDB-based Stack
20 Minutes
Mike Foster, MIT Urban Studies and Planning

Collecting data from the crowd? This session details the creation of a crowdsourced data collection application through the use of a handful of popular tools including: LeafletJS, HTML/PHP, and the CartoDB SQL API. In a fast-paced, approachable manner, we will discuss the creation of this application and the development of a set of complementary workshops designed to introduce non-coders and cartographers to web mapping techniques. The tools in the stack for this exercise are entirely free and open source, all you need to provide is the webhosting.
http://mjfoster83.github.io/nacis-2015 

 

Dropchop
10 Minutes
Sam Matthews, Code for America

The Dropchop project (github.com/cugos/dropchop) is an in-browser GIS editor. Using Turf.js and Mapbox.js users are able to upload their data to the website and execute spatial operations without downloading or installing a thing. I'd like to demo the tool!
bit.ly/nacisdropchop 

Lunch is on your own at the University of Minnesota, before traveling back to the Depot Renaissance Hotel via light rail for the afternoon sessions.

All papers in this session are 17 minutes, including time for questions.

Countermapping in Ojibwe Country: Bad River Water&Culture Maps Project
Jessie Conaway, University of Wisconsin Madison, Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies
The Bad River watershed of northern Wisconsin is a natural boundary that encompasses both tribal and non-tribal communities who have mobilized around protection of water against threats of mineral mining, climate change, and aquatic invasive species. The watershed provided a space for community-based research (CBR) that shed light on the importance of water quality to the integrity of the place. Countermapping, which is use of western cartography tools for indigenous purposes (Peluso, 1995), illuminates Ojibwe spatial narratives as undercurrents of relationships to the homeland and the immense importance of water in Ojibwe culture. Participatory mapping that emphasizes cultural “storymapping” is appropriate for work in an indigenous community, as it engages collective leadership and modes of narrative communication. Participatory watershed mapping in the Bad River Ojibwe community involved elders and youth, and resulted in the multi-media Bad River Water & Culture Maps Project. The maps remain in the Bad River community as a durable product of CBR, for use in education, outreach, and policy efforts about water stewardship and sovereignty.

Deep Map: An Open Source Web Map Builder
Deanne Lundin, Penn State University
DEEP MAP is an open source web mapping application that collects--and connects--places and the people interested in them. Inspired by projects like Mapbox and CartoDB, Deep Map also aims to make web mapping easy so users can focus on content. Extending this to better integration of text, media, and other content, Deep Map will be a “place of places” where users develop their own projects using a rich user interface that makes an easy-to-configure layout into a place-centered exhibit or collaboration. Its larger mission is to enable bioregional projects easy to create and to connect. With the addition of spatial analysis tools, custom layers, and tools for text analysis, Deep Map binds geographic data with text data. Using Leaflet and OSM data, DM is built with javascript open source solutions (Angular, Node, PostGIS) so developers will find it easy to contribute, extend, or fork.

Creating and disseminating GIS data for the US and the World
David Van Riper, Minnesota Population Center
Jonathan Schroeder, Minnesota Population Center
Tracy Kugler, Minnesota Population Center
The Minnesota Population Center creates and disseminates GIS data delineating historical and contemporary administrative and statistical units for most countries of the world. This talk describes the MPC GIS data collection, including the National Historical Geographic Information System (NHGIS), Terra Populus, and IPUMS-USA, and the production process we have developed over the last 14 years.
https://speakerdeck.com/nvkelso/creating-and-disseminating-gis-data-for-the-us-and-the-world

Geodata Coverage
Geoffrey A. Forbes, LAND INFO Worldwide Mapping
I will be discussing options for geodata coverage of the US and other countries, with special focus on recent releases; current, updated materials; and previously unavailable datasets. Data layers to be covered will include topographic mapping, aerial/satellite imagery, vector data, DEMs and land-use/land-cover.
 

Repurposing Print Cartography (and more) for a Multi-Resolution World
15 Minutes
Seth Fitzsimmons, Stamen
Alan McConchie, Stamen

Paper and LED touch screens are both amazing pieces of technology, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. National Geographic has been producing gorgeous print work for decades. Stamen has been producing web-native work for years. We recently adapted NG's print production pipeline to produce multi-resolution content for an upcoming project. I'll talk about how.
https://speakerdeck.com/mojodna/print-cartography-in-a-multi-resolution-world 

Mapping the Future Patagonia National Park
15 Minutes
Ross Donihue, Maps for Good
Marty Schnure, Maps for Good

At Maps for Good, we think about a map not just as a tool for navigation, but as a canvas for telling a story. Come hear about our most recent project to make an interactive map of the Farallon Islands. While this refuge is managed by a public agency, it remains strictly off limits to the public due to their sensitivity, importance, and uniqueness of the ecosystem. We can't bring the public to the islands, but we want to bring the islands to the public with a rich interactive map. The talk will discuss our first expedition to the islands, our workflow, field data collection, and techniques for applying principles of print cartography to interactive maps.
http://bit.ly/1M1WAaI 

An Overview of ArcMap-to-Illustrator Workflows of the National Hydropower Asset Assessment Program
20 Minutes
Nicole Samu, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Brenna L. Elrod, Oak Ridge National Laboratory

This paper provides a high-level summary of ArcMap-to-Adobe Illustrator (ArcMap-to-Illustrator) workflows adopted by the National Hydropower Asset Assessment Program (NHAAP) at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) for generating multiple national and regional maps to support US hydropower research on asset management, resource assessment, and environmental barrier analysis. Several general methods that have been useful for the creation of national and regional hydropower maps will be introduced and compared.  Collectively, the goal of this paper is to provide ArcMap-to-Illustrator map production methods that others may benefit from and to spur follow-on discussion and action on ways to improve these methods and overcome some common cartographic production challenges.

 

FixWikiMaps Project
10 Minutes
Brian Davidson, DigitalGlobe
Alan McConchie, Stamen Design
Joshua Stevens, NASA Earth Observatory

On Wikipedia, anyone is allowed to submit changes, updates, and graphics to any page on the site. Along with these graphics, there are a large number of maps and visualizations that are posted. Unfortunately, many of the maps are rarely updated again. To combat this problem, Brian Davidson, Alan McConchie, and Joshua Stevens created the FixWikiMaps Project, with the ultimate goal to correct, update, and beautify the maps on Wikipedia. To begin finding and fixing these maps, The FixWikiMaps Project has teamed up with NACIS to create MapLift, a week long map-a-thon to upgrade existing Wikipedia maps and make new ones.

 

Restyling Old & Cluttered Maps
20 Minutes
Vanessa Knoppke-Wetzel, MacFadden

Many of my humanitarian organization’s map specs have not been restyled in more than ten years and have obvious needs of aesthetic overhaul, and thus can quickly and easily be changed from old to new. Nevertheless, some map style specs have continuously been problematic in their respective visual representations and design because of the amount of information required to be on a single map, combined with the sparse amount of extra time humanitarian aid cartographers can take to experiment and find better means of visual representation. However, I got lucky because as soon as I was employed I was tasked with the aesthetic overhaul of my department's map styles. This presentation goes through my restyling process, with explanations of what changes are needed for each respective map type, the various iterations, and ultimately, the final map styles and why they were (or were not) chosen.
https://speakerdeck.com/vknoppkewetzel/nacis-pcd-talk-2015-restyling-old-and-cluttered-maps 

Terrain Data Sources Online
20 Minutes
Paulo Raposo, Dept of Geography, Penn State

Terrain data for almost of all of the Earth is freely available online in different formats and resolutions. This presentation will review some sources and portals to these data, many of which are related to NASA, the USGS, and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan (METI). Also, the talk will briefly describe how to generate DEMs from publicly-available LiDAR LAS files using the open source GIS SAGA.
http://www.personal.psu.edu/pzr111/publications/Raposo_NACIS_PCD_presentation.pdf 

A Matter of Perspective
20 Minutes
Daniel P. Huffman, somethingaboutmaps

A walkthrough which covers some of the challenges & solutions in creating a map of Lake Michigan from an unusual perspective: one in which the circumference of the lake has been distorted into a straight line.
bit.ly/matterofperspective 

CartoCSS Essentials
15 Minutes
Katie Kowalsky, UW Cartography Lab
Robert Roth, UW Madison

While designing lab work for an advanced graphic design in cartography course, I've been exploring the often impractical, but fun applications of CartoCSS using Mapbox Studio. Through the context of aesthetic mapping, we can learn the essentials of styling a basemap. I'll walk through various tips and tricks to take your vector tileset to the next level.
http://slides.com/kkowalsky/nacis-2015#/ 

Vector Cartography in ArcGIS
25 Minutes
Craig Williams, Esri

ArcGIS has a variety of options for vector cartography. I'll give an overview of recent enhancements to ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS Pro. Finally, I'll explain and show vector tiles in the ArcGIS platform and how they can be leveraged for your mapping applications in the desktop, web, and mobile.

All papers in this session are 17 minutes, including time for questions.

Mapping the Poles - the Polar Geospatial Center
Brad Herried, Polar Geospatial Center, University of Minnesota
The Polar Geospatial Center provides mapping, GIS, and remote sensing support for researchers studying the polar regions. This talk describes the services provided by the Center, including rapid imagery delivery and analysis, custom maps for logistical support, and GIS analysis. Learn about this unique center supporting a fascinating part of the world!
https://speakerdeck.com/nvkelso/mapping-the-poles

Challenges in Data Access and Quality Assessment of Greenhouse Gas Data Sets
Christopher Badurek, Drexel University
Researchers and policymakers are increasingly interested in monitoring greenhouse gas point sources and mapping related atmospheric concentrations using these data. This presentation discusses challenges in acquiring greenhouse gas point source GIS data for the US and internationally, including discussion of related metadata and data quality issues. In addition, challenges in acquisition and use of NASA GIS data sources for mapping atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases and the limits of linking these to ground sources. These issues represent a significant challenge for data curation and prospects for reuse and data provenance lineages.

CIC Geospatial Data Discovery Project
Ryan Mattke, University of Minnesota Libraries
This project will begin in July 2015 and is a collaboration between eight CIC (Big Ten) institutions (through the CIC's Center for Library Initiatives) to launch a joint portal for geospatial data.
https://speakerdeck.com/nvkelso/cic-geospatial-data-discovery-project

The Open Geoportal Dashboard Analytics and Metadata Toolkit
Patrick Florance, Tufts University
The Open Geoportal (OGP) community has developed two new components as part of its suite of tools.  The OGP Dashboard provides interactive analytics to help curators better under federated or single collection composition (data types, data licensing, thematic and geographic coverage, etc.) as well as significant details on collection usage. The OGP Metadata Toolkit is a cloud-based, light weight metadata authoring/sharing environment built on the same code base as GeoNetwork. It provides rapid guided metadata authoring and sharing, employing controlled vocabularies and templates. Users can search, import, and export geospatial metadata in multiple formats from the OGP repository (Solr & GitHub).  http://opengeoportal.org 

Second Annual NACIS Fun Run and Walk

Doing it once just wasn't enough. You know you miss that feeling... heart pounding, pulse racing, sweat dripping... the burning thighs, the hormonal ecstasy... But the euphoria never lasts, and a year is a long time to wait. Soon, though--very soon--you'll get to do it again. Yes, it's almost time for another NACIS FUN RUN! A jaunt through the hippy Big-Ten heart of the Upper Midwest's capital city, with its glittering skyline towering above the roaring falls of the nation's greatest river, is sure to get your heart pounding and provide just the excuse you need for that extra breakfast pastry the morning after... and, let's face it, each day of the rest of the conference.

See the route map below! Download the map to see the fine detail.

The run route's length is 5.3 miles and the walk route's length is 3.25 miles. 

Personal Story as Map
Brenda Laurel, Neogaian Interactive
"'Sometimes,' said Arkady, 'I'll be driving my "old men" through the desert, and we'll come to a ridge of sandhills, and suddenly they'll all start singing. 'What are you mob singing?' I'll ask, and they'll say, 'Singing up the country, boss. Makes the country come up quicker.'"—The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin

As the daughter of a city planner, I spent a lot of my youth looking at maps. My dad would guide me through them with stories. "Here is where a Black neighborhood was shattered by a freeway." When I was a foreign exchange student in St. Brieux, the mayor pointed at a map and said,"Here is Omaha Beach where the gun emplacements were 200 yards farther south because the Resistance member who was measuring the distance with the turn of her bicycle tires got a flat." Decades later a colleague showed me areal photographs of the Southwest saying, "we think this is one of the the trade routes between the Ancient Pueblo and the Maya." A friend of mine who is a self-proclaimed "Antarctican" tells me that her community is starting to believe that personal story is the best way to communicate the science they study. In this talk, we'll look at stories of maps and maps of stories, thinking about new ways to design them.

Elastic Terrain Map ** HONORABLE MENTION
Jonas Buddeberg & Bernhard Jenny, Oregon State University, USA / University of Potsdam, Germany
http://elasticterrain.xyz/
Experience the third dimension of terrain as you have never before. The map covers the entire world including ocean floor. Interactive animations that are coupled to conventional map panning create a 3D effect. A control panel is provided to customize the map. Different base maps can be selected, the look and feel of the animations can be adjusted, and many more parameters such as direction and intensity of lightsource for relief shading can be controlled. A range of interesting examples can be browsed with the help of two arrows. A small indicator displays the absolute elevation value at the position of the mouse cursor. Make sure your browser is up-to-date. Performance is best with Google Chrome.

The North West Bushwick Community Map
Chris Henrick, Michael Mintz, Gabriel Gianordoli, Namtreta Kumar, Daniel Mastretta, Brigette Blood, Parsons School of Design
http://www.bushwickcommunitymap.org
The Northwest Bushwick Community Map was created as a resource for local community organizations and tenants rights groups to easily access disparate information around land use, housing and urban development for the neighborhood of Bushwick in Brooklyn, New York. As it is a public website it is also intended to be an exemplary tool to inform New York City residents about what kinds of indicators may be used to predict new urban development and help prevent displacement of longtime residents in their own neighborhoods.

Your Body, (Not) Your Choice
Robin Tolochko, Katie Kowalsky, Dylan Moriarty, University of Wisconsin - Madison 
yourbodynotyourchoice.github.io
Your Body, (Not) Your Choice is an interactive web map and website aimed to educate the public about the changes in state-level abortion policy in the United States since the landmark Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision. It includes legal data about all 50 states since 1973, allowing the user to explore how abortion policy has changed over time via the map and a corresponding timeline. You can also overlay proportional symbols of abortion clinics and crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) on top of the policy basemap. Additionally, we have provided extensive written background information as well as static maps and charts. We decided to make this map because abortion is continually a contentious political topic in the U.S., but we had never seen the historical data shown over time. We also wanted to learn about the specific types of abortion restrictions and which states have which kinds of restrictive policies. 

A Psychogeographical Archeology of Thomas Clerc’s Paris, musée du XXIe siècle, le dixième arrondissement
Dean Olsen & Geography 575 team members (Adam Gile, GIS Certificate Program,
Sijia Zhang, The Graduate School (urban planning)), University of Wisconsin - Madison
http://deanwolsen.com/Consolidated_Paris/index.html
These interactive maps support a visual exploration of a novel by Thomas Clerc by mapping his "subjective markers" or metaphorical spaces he experienced while walking through Paris' Tenth Arrondissement. Created for Prof. Joshua Armstrong of Wisconsin's Department of French & Italian, these were part of his presentations at Writing & Space, an international conference in Lyon, France in 2015.

Selections from Atlas of the Polar Regions **WINNER
Daniel Stephen, Jane E. Darbyshire, Samuel M. Hooper, Gareth Baldrica-Franklin, Jennifer S. Bohannon, Oregon State University
http://people.oregonstate.edu/~stephdan/SelectionsFromAtlasofthePolarRegions.ibooks
The Atlas of the Polar Regions, an interactive multimedia atlas for iBooks, was formulated to visualize the exploration, settlement, physiography, natural history, and resources of the polar regions and to educate others about changes occurring in the polar regions, particularly due to climate change, through cartographic design. Map-based displays and interactive features present information in understandable and inviting ways, making the information more engaging to readers. The Atlas of the Polar Regions explores new technology for constructing, designing, and formatting an atlas. It combines traditional cartographic tools—ArcGIS, Adobe Illustrator, and Adobe Photoshop—with interactive features of the iBooks Author application to assemble an educational atlas. This submission for the NACIS 2015 Student Dynamic Map Competition is an excerpt from the complete atlas, which is available for free in the iBooks store.

Na Gàidheil Agus An Ainmean-Àite an Albainn Nuaidh
Heather Smith, Centre of Geographic Sciences, Nova Scotia Community College
http://www.nagaidheil.ca/
An interactive map of Scottish Gaelic placenames in Nova Scotia, with audio files of their pronunciations. The map was made using Leaflet, jQuery, QGIS, CartoDB and Inkscape, and was a student-client project for Iomairtean na Gàidhlig, the Office of Gaelic Affairs in Nova Scotia. This map was created to offer Nova Scotians and visitors an opportunity to explore and experience the province in a language which was dominant in the northeast until quite recently. It is a tool for language learners and a means of restoring place names erased by past cartographers.

Unemployment Rate on U.S. Visibility Base Map
Jinlong Yang, San Diego State University
http://jinlong25.github.io/vbm/vbm-demo.html
This map was created in an effort to implement the U.S. visibility base map [1] by Dr. Mark Monmonier for interactive web mapping as well as to help myself learning D3.js. The author found this highly generalized base map very suitable for interactive web mapping for three reasons: 1) easier to read and interact with on small touch screens; 2) tiny base map size (19kb in GeoJSON); and 3) no special treatment is needed for DC. The base map was generously provided by Dr. Monmonier in shapefile format and then converted to GeoJSON format by the author. The unemployment data was from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics [2].
[1] U.S. visibility base map: https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog160/node/1881
[2] http://www.bls.gov/web/laus/laumstrk.htm

The Great Trek
Christine Rosin, California State University, Chico
 http://www.csuchico.edu/geop/current/Student%20Map%20and%20GIS%20Project%20Gallery/2015%20maps%20-%20RenRosin.swf
The Great Trek was a mass migration of Boers, (Afrikaans for farmers) north and eastwards into the interior of South Africa in the 1830’s. Approximately 12,000 people traveled by means of ox-wagons in search of land primarily to escape British rule.   The migrants were descended from Europe, most notably the Netherlands, Germany and France. My map charts the journey of Louis Tregardt and Johannes Jacobus Janse van Rensburg, the first two Voortrekker leaders from the start of the Great Trek in January 1835 until their deaths. I used Natural Earth Data, ArcMap, DEMs, and ArcMap profile builder, Photoshop, Illustrator and Adobe Flash to create this map.

Wikipedia Weather Map
Peter Kerpedjiev, University of Vienna
http://emptypipes.org/2015/09/02/sunshine-map/index.html#themap
This project seeks to display the climate data obtained from Wikipedia on an interactive map. The map is divided into Voronoi cells corresponding to the locations for which Wikipedia has weather boxes. Viewers can select the time of the year and whether they want to see data for sunshine, precipitation, temperature or snowfall. By modifying the selected date ranges, this map makes it possible to observe the global changes in weather as the seasons change. 

Step By Step Service Locator Map
Laura Greenfield, University of Kentucky
http://lfgreenfield.github.io/step-by-step/
The Step By Step Service Locator Map is designed for staffers and participants of Step By Step, a nonprofit organization in Lexington, Kentucky providing assistance for under-resourced mothers, ages 14 to 24. The web-based tool connects mothers with services like counseling and childcare. The map is built with JavaScript using the Leaflet.js mapping library. The user can filter by various resource categories. Entering an address within a search form centers and zooms the map to a specific location, identifying nearby resources. Hover interaction displays specific information. Step By Step uses the map daily to efficiently assist young mothers. The map’s story is shared with the Lexington community through various news articles, including: UK News (http://uknow.uky.edu/content/uk-students-map-project-becomes-resource-under-resourced-young-moms) and a forthcoming article in the Herald Leader (http://www.kentucky.com/). The map represents a nonprofit, community-based GIS practice.

Transit Lens ** WINNER
Lucas Smith, University of Southern California
http://transitlens.org
Visualizations of transportation systems—transit maps—have existed as long as the systems themselves. Today, however, digital technologies have removed the constraints of static transit maps, and the exploration of the boundaries of interactive visualization is just beginning. Transit Lens aims to further the burgeoning development of interactive transit visualizations, advancing visual presentation while keeping honest to accurate and valid transit information. Transit Lens uses real-world data to visualize the effects of frequency and time span of service on access. Unlike some of the flashier online maps, this data uses travel times from actual transit itineraries, rather than heuristics that ignore wait times and transfer layovers. As such, Transit Lens allows users to explore the facets of the transit network and see an accurate representation of what is within reach at different times of the day and week.

Be sure to cast your vote for your favorite student maps! Ballots must be cast by mid-day on Friday.

Bay Area, California

Evan Applegate, University of Wisconsin–Madison

Greenway Location Model
Alexis Athlani, UNCG

Minonibiwan, MinoBimaadiziwin: Good Waters, Good Life   
Jessie Conaway, University of Wisconsin–Madison & the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe

Icebergs: From Fjord to Sea
Nicole D'Entremont, University of Oregon

Got Health Insurance?                                                   
Masami Glines, University of Wisconsin–Madison

Geovisualization of Mitigation Strategies for Pedestrian Evacuation for Near-Field Tsunami Hazards Along the Cascadia Subduction Zone
Shannon Grumbly and Tim Frazier, Binghamton University

Mapping an Epidemic: The Spread of the Mountain Pine Beetle in the American West
Christine Grummon, University of Oregon

Autism Insurance Coverage in the US                          
Katie Hardwick, University of Wisconsin–Madison

Subsidized Rental Housing Unit Density in Minneapolis-St. Paul Metropolitan Area    
Lewei He, University of Minnesota–Twin Cities

The Meltdown               
J. Michelle Hu, University of Wisconsin–Madison

World Cities Population Class  
Thomas Jenkins, University of Arizona

Mapping Borders
Meghan Kelly, University of Wisconsin–Madison

3D Cartography for a Theater Production    
Chad Lopez and Mark Kumler, University of Redlands  

The Ice Age Trail    
Christopher Morgan, University of Wisconsin–Madison

Imagining Jefferson
Connor Mullinix, Humboldt State University

Jefferson - Pondering the State of Mind  
Connor Mullinix, Humboldt State University

Monsters of the United States  
Chelsea Nestel, University of Wisconsin–Madison

Paranormal Madison
Chelsea Nestel, University of Wisconsin–Madison

LifeMapping
Dean Olsen, University of Wisconsin–Madison

Manila, NCR, Philippines  
Joben Penuliar and Harrison Brooks, Humboldt State University

Photographically Inspired Cartography
Brad Peter, Michigan State University

Hydrological Deposition Modeling in a GIS  
Gabriel Rousseau, Portland State University

North Cascades National Park   
Gabriel Rousseau, Portland State University

Repossessing Cars: A Proactive Search
Vijay Sachdev and Fang Ren, University of Redlands

Nautical Chart of Halifax Harbour
Heather Smith, Centre of Geographic Sciences, Nova Scotia Community College

February 17
Alina Taalman, Duke University

The Popularity and Traffic Flow of B-Cycle Stations in Madison, Wisconsin
Joseph Tavano, University of Wisconsin–Madison

From Dred Scott to Mike Brown: How Systemic Racism Continues to Function in the St Louis Area  
Dory Tuininga, University of Kansas

September 11th, 2001: Loss Felt by Many Cities  
Kristen Vincent, University of Wisconsin–Madison

Blue is the New Gold: Analyzing the Effect of Land Value and Housing Value in Minneapolis     
Soren Walljasper, University of Wisconsin–Madison

From Beans to Brew  
William Westbury, University of Wisconsin–Madison

Skiing Scotland  
Patrick T. Wood, Humboldt State University

 

Tactile Map Symbols across Three Media
Megen Brittell, Amy Lobben, Megan Lawrence, and Manny Garcia

Bad River
Jessie Conway

The Western Shore of Lake Michigan and Environs
Jake Coolidge

Terrestrial
Matt Dooley

Coming Together
Steven R. Holloway

Traces I and Traces II  
Jeanne Kitzhaber

The New Portland Bridge Map  
Nick Martinelli

Public Green/Areas Verdes Públicas  
Lize Mogel

Bathymetric Book       
Caroline Rose

Mohawk, Upper Hudson River, and Middle Hudson River Watersheds (New York State)     
Lauren Rosenthal 

Don't miss this year's opening reception! In celebration of International Map Year (2015-2016; mapyear.org), we've got several innovations that will make it worth your while. In addition to printed maps designed by students and professionals, we've also got a display of the 2015 maps from the Barbara Petchenik Children's World Map Drawing Competition from the US and Canada, and a map art exhibition entitled The Tangible Map Exhibit.

This year's map gallery also features a new digital maps component that we're very excited about. Attendees will need to come armed with a QR code reader app on their phones or tablets. If you don't have a smartphone, find a friend! You can download a QR code reader app here for the iOS or Android platforms.


Map Gallery: Digital Maps

Napa Valley Winery Map and Trip Planner
David Heyman, Ben Sheesley, Andy Woodruff, Axis Maps
http://napavintners.com/maps/

Australia's Vietnam War: Exploring the Combat Actions of the 1st Australian Task Force
Amy L. Griffin, Bob Hall, Andrew T. Ross, Peter Kimberley, Derrill de Heer, UNSW Canberra
https://vietnam.unsw.adfa.edu.au  

The World is all Urban
Luc Guillemot, University of California Berkeley
http://lucguillemot.net/maps/urbanworld

Welcome to MSP!
Maptime MSP
http://maptimemsp.github.io/nacis2015-map/

Sea Level Rise in Sarasota Bay
David Retchless, Texas A&M University Galveston
https://secure.geogresearch.org/mapt37-s.htm

Sheinar; Capital of the Six Cities Confederation
Brian Stoll, cartographersguild
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/9086889/Sheinar_base.jpg

Cleaner Air, Cleaner Bay – Communicating an Environmental Success Story through an Interactive Story Map
John Wolf, USGS, Megan Thynge, US EPA; Andy Fitch, USGS; Lewis Linker, US EPA
http://gis.chesapeakebay.net/air 

Map Gallery: Print Maps

Selected Maps from the Textbook Understanding World Regional Geography
Martha Bostwick & Jesse Wickizer, Maps.com

Taking a Ride on the C&T
Doug Cain, City of Fort Collins

Duluth Map: Outdoor Recreation
Kate Carlson & Micaella Penning, University of Minnesota Duluth

Cascadia – A Great Green Land
Cascadia Institute & Neil Allen, Benchmark Maps

Carleton College Arboretum           
Nat Case, INCase LLC

Eating the Ohio River
Laurel L. Cornell, Indiana University

Trivariate Sea Ice Presence: July 16-31, 2007 - 2015    
Mark Denil, US National Ice Center                                                                                                

Welcome to the San Juan Islands National Monument
Paul Fyfield, Jim Rounds, Mattye Walsworth, Bureau of Land Management 

Emerald Ash Borer & Ash Tree Mapping: A Citizen Science Approach
Brandon Garman, Cleveland Metroparks

El Yunque National Forest Atlas - Sample Pages        
William Gould, USFS, Isabel Pares Ramos, Urbanica, P.C., Maya Quinones and Grizelle Gonzalez, USFS, Kathleen McGinley, USFS and North Carolina State University, Pedro Rios, USFS                                        

Sonoma County Outdoor Recreation    
Tom Harrison, Tom Harrison Maps

Moosalamoo Recreation Area  
Bill Hegman, Anna Cerf, Dan Barnes, Middlebury College

Historical Atlas of Maine
Michael Hermann, Purple Lizard Maps
Stephen Hornsby, University of Maine

Seeing History in Eroded and Fragmented Lands    
Jeff Howarth, Middlebury College

Lakes Michigan and Superior  
Daniel Huffman, somethingaboutmaps

Driftless
Daniel Huffman, somethingaboutmaps

Public Life Survey - The Mission District, San Francisco
Adrienne Hyder, San Francisco Planning Department, Robin Abad Ocubillo, Public Life Studies, and Public Life Study Volunteers, http://missionpublic.sfplanning.org

Round The World Race
Kris Johnson

New York Soviet Map; Minneapolis Soviet Map; Washington, DC Soviet Map 
Mark Knapp, East View Geospatial
 
Planting for Pollinators
Jacqueline Therese Kovarik, Minnesota DNR

Custom Cartography of Frank Lloyd Wright Sites for UNESCO World Heritage Nomination
Bill P. Limpisathian, Cynthia A. Brewer, Scott W. Perkins, Penn State University

Cartographic Design and the Representation of Wildlife Migration
James E. Meacham, Lauren C. Tierney, Alethea Y. Steingisser, Riley D. Champine, University of Oregon

Farallon Islands
David Medeiros, Stanford University

Damage Analysis of 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake: Tsunami and Human Impact Study
Akiko Nakamura, St. Mary's University of Minnesota

Mount Rushmore
Alex Tait, Tim Montenyohl, Mark Rabenhorst, International Mapping

Chicago's Architectural Footprint  
Aaron Taveras, Humboldt State University / Map Design Studio

Regional Characteristics of MSU Denver
Stella Todd, MSU Denver

Introductory Cartography:  Infographics  
Barbara Trapido-Lurie, Charlotte Adams, Mohamed Alhmoudi, Deborah Brown, Kenneth Brown, Ryan Hentzman, Jessica Jia, Leanardo Guedes Nevas, Merey Yerdauletov, Arizona State University

Discovering Henry Huntington's Landholdings      
Aldous Tsang, University of Redlands

The Yellow River Watershed
William A. Viglakis, Mapbox

Years of Quantitative Color Schemes   
Travis White, University of Kansas

Pittsburgh's Bridges
Lauren Winkler, Todd Wilson, Helen Wilson, Michael Baker International and Arcadia Publishing

Mapping Neighborhoodness
Andy Woodruff, Axis Maps
Tim Wallace, University of Wisconsin - Madison
Neighborhoods offer a rich, cultural texture to urban landscapes the world over. Some have hard, physical boundaries, like a river or an overpass. Others seem to taper off. Bureaucrats and realtors may have official boundaries for neighborhoods, but what do they know? Bostonography asked citizens to draw their own, collective neighborhood map. The results have been expectedly fuzzy but surprisingly engaging and fun. We’ll show how it was done, the maps it enabled, and lessons we learned from working with crowdsourced data.
https://speakerdeck.com/awoodruff/mapping-neighborhoodness 
https://medium.com/@awoodruff/mapping-neighborhoodness-a536013ed0f5#.e3q757xcb

Mapping for Housing Justice in Bushwick, NYC
Chris Henrick, Parsons MFA Design & Technology
Michael Mintz, North West Bushwick Community Group
The Bushwick Community Map is an interactive web-mapping project that provides local residents and community organizers with access to data relating to housing and urban planning of the Bushwick neighborhood in Brooklyn, NY. It's goal is to help track gentrification and prevent the displacement of longterm residents from illegitimate practices by landlords. This talk will provide an overview of the project's history as well as how open government data and open source web-mapping technology can be used to strengthen the tenants rights movement and the work of anti-displacement activists. 
http://clhenrick.io/presentations/bcm-nacis-2015/#0

Dynamic Madison: Mapping as a Collective
Caroline Rose, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Clare Trainor, University of Wisconsin-Madison
What is the city of Madison, Wisconsin? How do we map the multiplicity of Madisonian experiences? As part of a university class, we approached these questions as an ‘editorial collective’ of eight research groups. Each research group was tasked with creating a critical essay and accompanying map based on diverse interactions with the city. Half of the students had never made a map before, but were now challenged to think cartographically about place. In our presentation, we examine the outcomes of this experience from a few different perspectives. We consider how cartography can portray disparate experiences of place. We also address the challenges and rewards of asking novice mapmakers to incorporate cartography into their critical thinking about place. Other authors, all of UW Madison (Doug Adams, Lucy Argent, Michael Arnsteen, Clara Dockter, Corinne Ehrfurth, Hannah Friedrich, Hallah Ghanem, Greta Hippensteel, Megan Howell, Kyle Hulse, Erik Kramer, Wan-Jun Lu, Andrea Lyke, Chelsea Nestel, Veronica Plum, Caitlin Quintenz, A.J. Rohn, Colton Schara, Griffin Schauer, Molly Schumacher, Laura Szymanski, Adrienne Tracy, Kelsi Wallander, Keith Woodward).
https://speakerdeck.com/nvkelso/dynamic-madison-mapping-as-a-collective

Flow Maps
Kazimierz J Zaniewski, University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh
Flow maps are considered the best ways of showing interaction between two or more places. However, there are at least two major issues related to the design and production of these maps. The amount of information that can be shown on some types of flow maps is limited, and a very few software programs have the capabilities of generating such maps. The first shortcoming can be addressed by certain types of proportional symbol maps, the second by having access to three less known (and relatively cheap or free) mapping packages. This paper presents a series of flow maps showing various types of spatial interaction (airline traffic, inter-state migrations, and road traffic) and alternative ways of displaying similar information.
https://speakerdeck.com/nvkelso/flow-maps

Automatic Flow Map Creation Using a Force-Directed Layout
Daniel Stephen, Oregon State University
Bernard Jenny,  Oregon State University
Ritesh Sharma, Oregon State University
Eugene Zhang, Oregon State University
Ian Muehlenhaus, James Madison University
Creating attractive and easy to read origin-destination flow maps is a time-consuming process, because there are no automatic methods that apply the variety of cartographic principles needed for an effective flow map layout. We present an algorithmic method for quickly creating flow maps that is able to apply several of the most important cartographic principles. Starting with flows drawn as Bézier curves between pairs of nodes, the shapes of the flows are adjusted using a force-directed layout method, where each flow exerts repelling forces on neighboring flows. The forces are tuned to improve readability through a reduction of overlap between flows and to prevent flows from passing through unrelated nodes, while maintaining the smooth shape of the Bézier curves. This method creates flow maps with reduced overlap between flows and nodes in a short time.

Mapping and Analyzing Space-time Data: The Zebra Mussel Invasion
Aileen Buckley, ESRI
Dreissena polymorpha, commonly known as the zebra mussel, has earned a well-deserved reputation as an international dilemma and a national threat. This paper explores the invasive nature of this extremely detrimental species through visual and analytical analysis of its related space-time data. I used ArcGIS to visually explore the spread of zebra mussels. Then I performed spatial analysis to analyze patterns of spread over time. Standard deviational ellipses and mean center points gave clues to the extent and direction of spread. Grouping analysis helped determine in which years the patterns of spread were similar. Hex mapping and density mapping provided insights into hot spots with concentrations of sightings. With a more complete understanding of this devastating invasive species, I created story maps to educate the public about the havoc these mussels can wreak and how people can help to stop the invasion by taking precautionary measures.

Trivariate Climatological Mapping of Historical Sea Ice (10 minute talk)
Mark Denil, US National Ice Center
For several years the question of how to map historical sea ice conditions has been nagging planners, navigators, and scientists. In 2015 the US National Ice Center (NIC) introduced a new set of data and map products to address the understandable envisioning of sea ice conditions over a given range of dates (say, the first 15 days of May 2015), and, optionally, through a given depth of time (the first 15 days of May 2007 through 2015). This talk will describe how the trivariate climo data sets are constructed from publicly available NIC Daily sea ice analysis data sets, and the development of the standard map products for the Arctic and Antarctic. 

The Words We Use: Examining the Terminology of Modern Cartography
Michael P. Peterson, University of Nebraska at Omaha
Rex G. Cammack, University of Nebraska at Omaha
Any new technology is inevitably accompanied by new jargon. The new terms are important to describe new concepts but are also a way to differentiate the groups of people who use them. The creation and acceptance of new terms is often a struggle of competing interests. The term “slippy,” for example, to describe multi-scale pannable (MSP) maps has gained some acceptance. Although memorable, the term seems to trivialize what is perhaps the most important development in online mapping. The wide variety of terms related to online maps are examined that have become part of our language, including terms like “online maps” to more clearly define the new developments related to maps.

Geographic Analysis in Context: A Visual Search Task Comparing Zooming Metaphors
Ryan S Mullins, Aptima, Inc.
Krista Ehinger, Visual Attention Lab, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Avigael Moed Aizenman, Visual Attention Lab, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Chad A Weiss, Aptima Inc.
Jeremy Wolfe, Visual Attention Lab, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Adam Fouse, Aptima Inc.
Stacy Pfautz, Aptima Inc.
Geospatial analysts are seeking more immersive, context-aware interactions with data that emulate the experience of past analytic processes (e.g. light table and magnifier). We present the results from a pilot study, assessing the usability and utility of interactive zoom windows that were designed to emulate and extend the functionality of a tradition Loupe magnification lens in the digital environment. Twelve participants used two styles of zoom windows and a traditional slippy-map interface to identify, classify, and mark the location of buildings that were either damaged or destroyed during the 2010 Haiti Earthquake. Results show that zoom window interfaces perform at the same level as slippy-map interfaces in this simple task, with a single user on a small touch-enabled screen. Future work with these interfaces will evaluate their performance in complex and team tasks.

A New Atlas of American History
Alan McConchie, Stamen Design
Seth Fitzsimmons, Stamen Design
For the past year, Stamen Design has been working with the University of Richmond's Digital Scholarship Lab to build _The American Atlas_, a series of interactive maps of American history.

In this presentation, we showcase the first four maps of the Atlas, which cover the forced migration of enslaved people before the Civil War, migration across the Overland Trails to the West, the movement of people and goods through canals, and the immigration of people to the U.S. from 1850 to today.

We are focused on the richly dynamic capabilities of modern web maps to enable deep digital scholarship of this important historical dataset. The project uses D3 visualizations with cartography based on a combination of Leaflet and CartoCSS. We built all these components on the foundation of CartoDB, creating an extensible, public, open source framework that will support the continued development of future maps in the Atlas.
http://sta.mn/6gk

Beyond Paper: Ideas for Interactive Maps (15 minute talk)
Peter Liu, MapBox
When printed on paper, maps have been severely limited by their medium: two dimensions, frozen in content, space, and time. But even after a decade of digital maps online and in applications, we still use them in much the same way as centuries before: squinting closer or stepping back, looking left or right.

Instead, let's harness the full potential of our new medium. By adding layers of motion and interactivity, we can turn maps into a starting point for exploration of vastly richer forms of information, and better anticipate needs of the user.
http://allthebuses.com/

Picturing Place: Women in American Pictorial Cartography
Judith Tyner, California State University, Long Beach
Pictorial maps have existed from the earliest days of mapping, but became very popular in the early 20th century and remain so. However until recently there was little serious study of these maps and the people who made them. Most of the literature focuses on some well-known men, but women were involved in making pictorial maps from early days. This paper is a discussion of the nature and history of pictorial maps with a focus on women cartographers and their contributions.

Embodying Landscape, Transposing Space: Francois Matthes's 1906 Topographical Map of the Grand Canyon
Nicholas Bauch, Stanford University
Between 1902-1904 Francois Matthes led a team of mapmakers to create the first detailed topographical drawing of the Grand Canyon, using plane table technology to do so. In this presentation I offer the idea that a map cannot be a map without the process of transposition, a term from music that is the operation of moving a collection of notes up or down in pitch by a constant level. The act of transposing from the surface of the earth to the piece of paper is the mapping, the act itself bringing the two realities into a relationship. In the two years it took to move around the dense region and draw the intersecting lines for his map, Matthes embodied this process of map-making. The location of his body and the lines of sight he experienced were in fact the map as much as the piece of paper.
https://speakerdeck.com/nvkelso/embodying-landscape-transposing-space

Remapping Spatial Sensibilities
Nick Lally, University of Wisconsin-Madison
In a number of recent articles, scholars have drawn connections between cartography and the visual arts. These connections are usually confined to questions of aesthetics and representation, eschewing larger conceptual and historical connections. In this paper, I deploy Jacques Rancière's concept of the “distribution of the sensible,” which he uses to describe how art changes what we are able to perceive. Using a number of maps as examples, I use this concept to trace a history of cartography concerned with changing understandings of space. This periodization, I argue, suggests a path forward for cartographic work concerned with developing new spatial cognizance, or using Rancière's terms, re-distributing what is spatially sensible. This path, informed by art theory, opens up exciting new possibilities for cartographic work to exist as an independent knowledge-producing practice, intersect with theories in human geography, respond to the current moment, and produce new representations of space.
https://speakerdeck.com/nvkelso/remapping-spatial-sensibilities

Recognizing Place: Examining Artists’ Use of Maps
DKB Hoover, University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point
Visual artists use maps to represent their personal terrain or suggest shared geographies. They can conjure ‘mental maps’ by using plats or charts as mnemonic devices to trigger recognition of experiences. Cartographic imagery can also be employed to highlight human scale in the physical world, social conventions of organization, vernacular forms of information, or real or imaginary evolution of place.

In her book, The Map as Art: Contemporary Artists Explore Cartography, Katharine Harmon states, “the artist/cartographer is the enabler, subverter, and documenter of experience.” In this presentation I will explore the work of different artists who use maps and mapping and examine their motives. Whether the concept of map is incorporated to evoke a sense of place, to question notions of home, to deconstruct boundaries, or invent something new, my focus is on the artist’s intention and the effects that has on perception of the work.

Open Web Mapping Technologies: How do we Teach this Stuff?
Carl Sack, University of Wisconsin-Madison
First there were paper maps made with drafting equipment. Then there were digital maps made with ArcGIS, Illustrator, Photoshop, and Flash. Now we are making maps designed for the Web using open-source standards and technologies. In this rapidly changing tool ecosystem, Cartography instructors need to teach not only today’s tools, but the skills needed to adapt to tomorrow’s. At UW-Madison, we have developed a web mapping laboratory curriculum based on scaffolded instruction, wherein students’ current understanding is assessed, they are given authentic learning experiences and support needed to move beyond their current skill set, and finally required to apply their skills to real-world collaboration. During the fall of 2014, we conducted student surveys and observation logging to evaluate the successes, challenges, and stress points in the curriculum. This presentation will discuss our pedagogy, its outcomes thus far, and how we will apply what we have learned to the next iteration.
http://www.slideshare.net/CarlSack/open-web-mapping-how-do-we-teach-this-stuff-53979960

How to Teach an Old(ish) Cartography Professor New Tricks: from Advanced Cartography to Spatial Data Viz
Sally Hermansen, University of British Columbia
For 15 years I have been teaching a course entitled “Advanced Cartography” to upper year geography students. The course employs a combination of theoretical lectures, independent labs, and student-led discussions and culminates in a community-based research project. In recent years, I have introduced web mapping using Google Maps mashups and Tilemill, which in turn have imposed limits on the breadth of cartographic design while simplifying community-based research projects. This year, I have completely revised the course to reflect a ‘studio’ based approach, incorporating web-based spatial data mining and munging, programming, and visualization through interactive and dynamic infographics as seen in the modern data journalism curriculum. This paper will reflect on the old and the new, the process, the team and the results thus far realized by this “cartographic overhaul” and its impact on curriculum and on the department as a whole.
https://speakerdeck.com/nvkelso/how-to-teach-an-old-ish-cartographer

Study Abroad: Interactive Map Design in Belize
Kate Carlson, University of Minnesota Duluth
Through an experiential course design model, a group of undergraduate students traveled to Belize and created a collective interactive Story Map Journal (ESRI) that documents topics on culture-cuisine-language and history, conservation-agriculture-deforestation and regional flora & fauna, to past and current issues in the protection of the Maya way of life. Visits with local conservation groups and two Q'eqchi Maya homestays opened their minds to the protection of these resources and the subsistent livelihoods that depend on the land.

This multimedia interactive mapping project provided an excellent opportunity to introduce geospatial technologies and concepts of spatial thinking to a diverse collection of students, many with limited geospatial knowledge. We brought 3 computers, cameras, spatial data, and GPS units. Relying on local Internet connections and informal learning spaces, students were able to individually reflect and collaborate on their experiences in small groups; Story Map Journals were constructed as these experiences unfolded.
http://prezi.com/09gcpfetrtmj/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

Evolving Technology, Shifting Expectations, Cultivating Pedagogy for a Rapidly Changing GIS Landscape
Jim Thatcher, University of Washington – Tacoma
Britta Ricker, University of Washington – Tacoma
As humans and natural processes continuously shape and reshape surfaces of the Earth, there remains a perpetual need to document these changes through Cartographic and Geospatial technologies. As surface processes of the earth continuously change, so too does the technology with which we visualize, analyze, and understand it. For example, the ubiquity of location aware technologies has profoundly altered the public’s expectations for mapping products. In turn, these expectations and technologies have simultaneously affected the technical expertise expected of GIS and Cartographic professionals. Professionals are now expected to have the skills to both inventory and communicate spatial information through a vast and changing array of digital, spatial media; whereas traditional education often kept programming and spatial information separate, this can no longer be the case.Here we pose two interrelated questions: First, as educators, how do we best prepare students for an industry that is constantly evolving? Second, how do we provide the groundwork for a spatially informed education, while not overwhelming students with the array of technologies at work. To answer these questions, we draw from the experiences of twelve National Science Foundation CyberGIS Fellows who met regularly throughout the 2014-2015 year. Grappling with the ‘cutting-edge’ of what GIS and Cartography meant, these fellows discussed, developed, and shared teaching materials. From these experiences, we propose a non-hierarchical system of geospatial education ordered around student outcomes, rather than previous experience.
https://speakerdeck.com/nvkelso/evolving-technology-shifting-expectations 

Some cartographers and data analysts work closely with communities to use maps for spatial justice—equitable determination over and production of space. Meanwhile, there are many in the mapping community who care about social change but don't know how to connect their work to real advocacy. This session creates a space to think through important questions around grassroots mapping and community cartography.

Participants will share, pecha-kucha style, their work in grassroots mapping and counter-cartography. Then, as a group, we'll discuss the ethics of community-based work including questions of representation, authorship, race and class. We'll also talk about what the potential impacts of grassroots mapping can be on policy and on communities themselves.

https://speakerdeck.com/nvkelso/mapping-for-social-justice-workshop

Lunch provided for all conference attendees, NACIS members and non-members. This is also the official yearly members business meeting, find out about the activities of your society!

Map making has experienced a considerable period of growth and change which can largely be attributed to advances in technology. This growth and change has also transformed cartographic instruction in the classroom. Some age-old tenets of cartographic instruction such as map design have remained relevant in today’s technologically based mapping environment. However, adapting other recent developments such as social media, mobile mapping, and the Web into the cartographic classroom is on fertile ground. In order to adequately prepare students to function in today’s technologically grounded mapping environment the cartographic classroom often must quickly evolve and adapt. This panel, composed of all women academic cartographers, will each reflect on how they have balanced teaching traditional precepts of cartographic principles while integrating new technologies into their classroom experience. The panelists will also share with the audience their novel teaching strategies, how technology has shaped their classroom, and what has and has not worked in updating their cartographic curriculum. Participation from the audience is encouraged throughout the panel by entering into a broad discussion on cartography instruction and student learning. It is expected that this panel will not only provide an environment for exchange of teaching experiences but also stimulate possible engagement in research projects and scholarship on cartographic education. 
http://prezi.com/09gcpfetrtmj/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy
https://speakerdeck.com/nvkelso/how-to-teach-an-old-ish-cartographer 

Type on Maps: All the Little Things that Actually Matter
Elaine Guidero, Penn State
Type on maps: just slap on some Arial for your labels (Times New Roman italic for the rivers) and call it a day, right? Wrong! Find out what your choice of type actually says about you. Okay, maybe it doesn't say a whole lot about you, but typefaces are full of designed details (called "microaesthetics") that, together, make a graphic statement and influence the semantic effect, or "feel," of a map. In this session, I present the initial results of my dissertation project, an in-depth survey about cartographic typography intended to reveal similarities and differences between typefaces due to microaesthetics. I'll discuss the nature of microaesthetics, and how to look for them and take them into account when choosing typefaces.
https://speakerdeck.com/nvkelso/type-on-maps-all-the-little-things-that-actually-matter

Every Pixel Counts: Web Map Symbols for the National Park Service
Jake Coolidge, Colorado State University/National Park Service
Clear, legible symbols are essential for any map depicting many features simultaneously. The National Park Service has a long tradition of building a coherent, visually related set of pictographic symbols that highlight a wide variety of visitor amenities and features within the system. This talk will focus in particular on the efforts of NPMap, the web mapping team for the NPS, to adapt these pictographic symbols for use in web maps. As we do so, we encounter new possibilities and challenges unique to this medium. Special design considerations and modifications have to be made to assure both legibility and visual balance with our basemaps, while providing map users with an immediate window into Places, our ever-improving geospatial database of NPS features. This presentation will provide an overview of our efforts to date, discuss upcoming design directions, and hopefully benefit any cartographer engaged in creating custom web map symbols.
http://www.nps.gov/npmap/slides/every-pixel-counts.pdf

Visualizing Ten Years of Quantitative Color Schemes
Travis White, University of Kansas
Terry Slocum, University of Kansas
Dave McDermott, Haskell Indian Nations University
This presentation reports on color usage in quantitative thematic mapping, drawing examples from eight geographical journals over a ten-year period. We systematically reviewed over 400 maps to assess the quality and appropriateness of their respective color schemes, and to identify any persistent or emerging trends. Notably, we found that color hue and lightness have supplanted all other visual variables as the principal method of representing quantitative data on thematic maps. This presentation visualizes many of the trends and key findings from our review, emphasizing the specific color schemes used to represent classed quantitative data. We will also discuss our procedures for cataloguing, evaluating, and visualizing each scheme.
https://speakerdeck.com/nvkelso/visualizing-ten-years-of-quantitative-color-schemes

Natural-Color Maps via Automated Coloring of Bivariate Grid Data
Jane Darbyshire, Oregon State University
Bernhard Jenny, Oregon State University
The creation of natural-color maps requires many steps, a significant time investment, and fairly detailed digital land cover information, which makes this technique impossible to apply to global web maps at medium and large scales. This study takes the first step in automating the creation of medium- and large-scale natural-color web maps by presenting a coloring method based on two grid inputs. We introduce an algorithmic method and prototype software for creating large-scale web maps with this technique. The software allows map authors to interactively assign colors and design the appearance of the map in an automated way, and generates web map tiles at a global level for medium and large scales.
http://terraincartography.com/pyramidshader 

Are You Being Served? Debunking Highway Service Claims through Early 20th Century Population Distribution Reconstruction
Jenny Marie Johnson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
James V. Whitacre, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
During the Good Roads movement era, the National Highways Association promoted the creation of a National Highways network that would be built and maintained by the Federal government. State maps were published illustrating the network and claiming improbable population service levels. Using 1910 Census data, these inflated service estimates can be disproven using geometric and arithmetic techniques explored and developed to overcome the lack of era-appropriate, in particular minor civil division, Census geography.
https://github.com/whitacrej/ILGISA-GIS-Python-Workshops-2015

Census Time Series Tables from NHGIS: An Overview for Cartographers
Jonathan Schroeder, Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota
The National Historical Geographic Information System (http://www.nhgis.org) provides free online access to summary tables and GIS boundary files for U.S. censuses from 1790 to the present. In recent years, NHGIS has begun releasing time series tables, which link together comparable statistics from multiple censuses in customized downloadable bundles. There are now thousands of time series available, organized into hundreds of tables, covering statistics from the 1970-2010 censuses and the 2012 American Community Survey. New tables released this year provide 2000 and 2010 statistics for 2010 census areas, using an advanced areal interpolation method to refine 2000 estimates where boundaries changed between censuses. I provide an overview of current and planned NHGIS time series features, focusing on ways time series tables can simplify and augment census mapping endeavors.
https://speakerdeck.com/nacis/jonathan-schroeder-ngis-time-series-tables

Census Mapping Mashup
Paul Hunt, University of Nebraska - Omaha
By mandate, the United States Census Bureau compiles and distributes data on the U.S. population. Initially made available on paper, the data has been available in computer form since the 1970s. Recently, through open data initiatives, the Census Bureau has made it possible to access and analyze this data with simple web-based services. These tools allow for the access and retrieval of data on-the-fly. Cloud-based methods of mapping can then be used to display the data without downloading the census data. With the ability to access large amounts of data, custom web mapping applications can be developed using readily available APIs for both spatial and non-spatial data. This new method for requesting and processing data from the U.S. Census Bureau is described, along with the development of an interface that allows user-defined requests and mapping of the census data.
https://speakerdeck.com/nacis/paul-hunt-census-mapping-mashups

Where the People Are: A Dot Density Metaphor for Cartogram Construction
Barry J Kronenfeld, Eastern Illinois University
Cartograms have enjoyed growing popularity in recent years due to algorithmic construction tools. A mainstay of these tools is a transformation grid relating geographic space to cartogram space. Typically, a regular grid is constructed in geographic space, and this grid is stretched, compressed or otherwise deformed to create “cartogram space”. This approach, however, leads to poor representation of small densely populated regions – the very regions of interest to cartogram readers. More accurate results can be achieved by reversing the transformation grids. The reverse approach leads to a simple metaphor: grid nodes on the source map represent a constant number of people and can be likened to dots on a dot-density map. I will demonstrate user-friendly software for manual construction of cartograms using the reverse transformation. Examples of cartograms constructed using this software are shown that provide more accurate results than algorithmically produced cartograms, especially for small, densely populated regions.
https://speakerdeck.com/nacis/barry-kronenfeld-cartograms 

Maps Are Hard: Observations from Being Hired to Make Simple Web Maps
Patrick Hammons, Code for America
Spurred on by both the proliferation of online, low-barrier-to-entry spatial tools as well as local education groups like Maptime, many non-GIS individuals and groups have been brought into the mapping world over the past four years. Although this represents a significant shift from the days of ESRI-focused cartographic training and specialization, there exist further barriers, both in terms of pedagogy as well as interface, that coincide with, for example, non-profits hiring GIS consultants to produce simple web maps. This talk seeks to open a discussion about ways forward in non-academic cartographic education, drawing on the presenter's consulting experience with small social-service focused nonprofits. Empowering such groups with the tools and confidence to do their own regular analysis work could bear fruits not only for the groups themselves as they seek support, but for the lived experiences of the communities they serve.
http://bit.ly/spooky-nacis-2015

Starting Conversations for More Accessible Maps
Mitch Schaps, Catholic Charities of Minneapolis and St. Paul
Alison Link, University of Minnesota
Kitty Hurley, State of Minnesota
In today’s age, there can often be a disconnect between the message an analyst wants to deliver with a map or app, and the perception users will have of it. Cartographers’ choices can sometimes cause a map’s message to be misconstrued or lost completely to different groups of users. We’re a group of GIS enthusiasts who have initiated conversations about map accessibility in different spaces--at work, in the classroom, and at community technology events. We’ll share a set of map accessibility guidelines that emerged at a civic hackathon, and that we’re continually working on refining and bringing into community conversations. This presentation isn’t a checklist; instead, it’s a starting point to help stimulate ongoing conversations around map accessibility. We’ll share our stories and provide some resources and strategies for incorporating accessibility conversations into your day-to-day work.
https://speakerdeck.com/geospatialem/nacis-2015-starting-conversations-for-more-accessible-maps

Designing Together (10 minute talk)
Nick Martinelli, TerraSeer
Let’s talk about real time collaboration online while designing web maps. Cartography is often a solitary exercise. But I am sure most of us would agree that our best work comes when we have regular and critical feedback. Those of us lucky enough to have spent time working in a cartography lab at a private or public shop have all benefited from spontaneous and thoughtful interactions with other cartographers. This presentation will focus on a tool that we are building that encourages real time interaction throughout the process of creating of web maps. We hope this will allow some of that spontaneous interaction to happen in an online environment. The project, we have been calling weMap, is mostly a selfish endeavor driven by the fact that I work remotely and crave real time interaction with cartographic collaborators.

GIS for the People, By the People (10 minute talk)
Sam Matthews, Code for America
A classic GIS is like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife. The spatial data world is filled with bulky and dense tools that offer more functionality than required, which clutters our experience and over complicates simple geospatial processes. With community-driven, open source tools such as geojson.io and Turf.js we are seeing GIS become more modular and task oriented. This talk looks at combining these simple tools into a web-based geospatial analysis tool, called Dropchop (https://github.com/cugos/dropchop) and how it has only been possible by gathering input from a community of users who cannot afford expensive, enterprise GIS solutions.
bit.ly/gisforthepeople

Mapping Syrian Refugee Border Crossings: A Critical, Feminist Perspective
Meghan Kelly, University of Wisconsin-Madison
UNHCR calls the ongoing Syrian conflict “the biggest humanitarian emergency of our era.” Since 2011, violence has led to nearly 200,000 lives lost and over 3 million have fled across borders throughout the region. Western media has documented Syrian border crossing stories through riveting multimedia journalism. While the written and photographic reporting of Syrian stories uses captivating imagery and testimonials to convey the traumatic experiences of individuals, these experiences are limited in the accompanying maps. Many cartographic conventions silence the experiences of individual Syrians and negate emotions, perils, and geopolitical issues linked to borders. Through a critical feminist lens, I analyzed 86 maps published by Western sources and developed an alternative mapping technique that more accurately reflects the lived realities of six Syrian women. By rendering Syrian border experiences visible with cartography, my work enhances interaction between mapping, the public, and Syrian stories and gives Syrians a pronounced geographic voice.
https://speakerdeck.com/nvkelso/mapping-syrian-refugee-border-crossings

Transit Map Design
Dennis McClendon, Chicago CartoGraphics
A look at how various designers—including me—have approached the special design challenges of maps showing public transportation networks.  

Alt-Transport Movements of the 1890s (10 minute presentation)
Michael Leverett Dorn, Long Island University
Tim Cresswell (On the Move), and Glen Norcliffe (Ride to Modernity) have directed the attention of mobilities researchers to social movements on behalf of non-dominant transit and transportation modalities. A cultural geographer by training, I propose to highlight early initiatives to improve travel and trade in Great Lakes region of Canada and the United States. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, wheelmen (and wheelwomen) on both sides of the border allied with canal interests to improve local and regional travel. Images to be featured in the talk include a tourists' guidebook published by the Niagara Falls Advertiser in 1899, and a "side path map" published by the New York State Division of the League of American Wheelmen a year later. 
https://speakerdeck.com/nvkelso/road-books-and-side-paths 

Location-Based Navigation: QRCode Positioning and Navigation Integration
Rex Cammack, University of Nebraska Omaha
Paul Hunt, University of Nebraska Omaha
The methods used to locate oneself in an indoor environment have improved over recent years. Triangulation between Wifi hubs is the most common method. In this research we investigate using QRcode signage to aid in location-based navigation. In this case study the research team has saturated an indoor environment with QRcode signs. The QRcodes have embedded web app instructions and locational information. When a user scans the QRcode it passes the embedded information to a navigation web app that will update the users position within the web app. This locating method is a starting point for several supporting tasks within the navigation process. The first task is a proximity search task. Users will be able to find nearby information regarding objects and activities in the environment. The second location based task will be to use the QRcode scan information to initiate a routing task to a desired location. The final QRCode intiated task is to filter the environment based on the type of QRCode locations scanned. This will update the web app to highlight similar objects in the environment. The goal of this research is to develop a system that could be integrated into a mobile app with both thematic context and lower implementation cost.
https://speakerdeck.com/nvkelso/location-based-navigation-qrcode-positioning-and-navigation-integration

Designing an Experience: Maps, Signage, and the Tourist Path through Troy
Chelsea Nestel, University of Wisconsin - Madison
The famous ancient city of Troy, located at Çanakkale, Turkey, is visited annually by about 500,000 people. However, many tourists report that their actual visit is a disappointment, not meeting their expectation of Troy as a place. Three research questions were formed to understand both the problems and opportunities presented by Troy: 1. What are the dimensions of visitor experiences at a tourist site like Troy? 2. What features should be considered in the design of informative and functional maps and signage that support these visitor experiences? 3. What factors should be considered in the placement of signs and maps to improve visitor experiences? The results provide insight into the user experience design at any preserved site of cultural or historical significance, using Troy as a case study.
https://speakerdeck.com/nvkelso/designing-an-experience

The Challenges of Using the Global Position System in Abu Dhabi (10 minute talk)
Amna Mohamed Saleh Alkaabi, UAE University
Dr. Naeema Alhosni, UAE University
This study focuses on the relationship between tourism and geography. It examines the tourists who use the Global Position System (GPS) to arrive to their destination. Some tourists face problems with the use of GPS such as slow connection and lack of familiarity with electronic devices, while tourists who use traditional maps take longer to reach their goal. Consequently, the authors created a simple device that provides the routes for major tourists destinations. It has only one tourist destination with a map on a sheet of paper and via SMS on mobile phones. The methods of data collection were qualitative and quantitative. A sample size of 142 responders were surveyed. The targets area were Abu Dhabi and Al Ain cities. The results showed that Abu Dhabi is the optimal place to implement the device. The authors recommend that the device is highly needed for enhancing the sustainability by providing the guide line via SMS on phones instead of a paper map.
https://speakerdeck.com/nvkelso/the-challenges-of-using-the-global-position-system-in-abu-dhabi 

Meet in the lobby at 5:30 sharp!

Join us at The Aster Cafe for the annual Thursday night social gathering! Includes dinner and a drink. This year's menu includes vegetarian soup, salad, veggie or meat lasagne & desert. 

Cost at the door: $40. ($30 for those who pay when registering for conference.) 

Developing a Language for 3D Cartography
Ken Field, ESRI Inc / ICA
There's always existed a strained relationship between cartography and the portrayal of maps in 3D. Occlusions, changing scale, a static portrayal and fixed viewing position cause problems for map use and interpretation. This talk acknowledges these limitations using examples to illustrate and then asserts that its possible we've reached a point where 3D genuinely brings something useful to the cartographic canon. I'll present a range of examples of 3D cartography where the design of the content and user experience counter previous problems. Technology is now beginning to support useful 3D cartography and I'll assert it may be time to explore the opportunities with a fresh perspective...literally.
https://speakerdeck.com/nvkelso/developing-a-language-for-3d-cartography

Big History, Little History: Cartography in the Twentieth Century
Mark Monmonier, Department of Geography, Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University
Cartography in the Twentieth Century, a million-word encyclopedia recently issued as Volume Six of the History of Cartography, took over two decades to produce. This overview of its development examines briefly its relation to the series started by David Woodward and J. B. Harley, the conceptual basis of its table of contents, the roles of a prospectus and three NSF proposals in vetting the concept and securing financial support, the role of our Board of Advisors in fleshing out the contents and recruiting contributors, the role of the Madison office of the History Project, and various problems encountered as editor of a reference work with 529 entries, written by over three hundred contributors and co-contributors, and including 1,153 illustrations, 5,115 bibliographic references, and 61 tables. I also discuss briefly my preparation of Adventures in Academic Cartography, a personal sampling of five decades of change in mapping technology and cartographic institutions.
https://speakerdeck.com/nvkelso/big-history-little-history-cartography-in-the-twentieth-century

Of Crocodiles and Tea Garden Managers: Mapping Interactions of an Earlier Era
Leo Dillon, U.S. Department of State
Between the cartographic eras of “here be dragons” and “download the shapefile” was a time when mapmakers did whatever came to mind to mark the observations, uncertainties, or oddities of the geography they were trying to portray. Like commenting to a friend on the landscape, cartographers would add personal or observational touches in the body, the legends, or the margins of their maps. Sometimes informative, sometimes whimsical, but always revealing and interesting, this presentation looks at the fading use of textual description in cartography.
https://speakerdeck.com/nvkelso/of-crocodiles-and-tea-garden-managers-mapping-interactions-of-an-earlier-era
 

The Cartographic Poetry of Lucia Maria Perillo
Adele J. Haft, Hunter College: CUNY
To celebrate its upcoming volumes on Renaissance cartography (3.1-2), The History of Cartography Project commissioned Lucia Perillo (1958―) to compose “The Carta Marina (1539),” based on the sea-monster-infested chart of the Swedish mapmaker/historian Olaus Magnus (2000). Earlier, the MacArthur Fellow had published “The Oldest Map with the Name America” (1997–1998), which refers to two rare maps by Martin Waldseemüller (1507, 1516) and to the title of a 1903 edition of his maps. Perillo’s eight-part sequence―alternating between the German cartographer’s endeavors to map “America” and her own attempts to piece together the fragments of what a “weird kid” did to “a little girl” in the woods near her childhood home―became the title piece of her award-winning 1999 collection. My paper examines Perillo’s meditations on these icons of Renaissance cartography and their relation not only to modern science and popular culture, but to her life as a naturalist/academic stricken with MS.

Cartography in Children's Literature
Victoria Johnson, USAID
Beloved books like The Phantom Tollbooth, The Hobbit and The Princess Bride all feature engaging maps that serve as gateways to imaginary lands. "Here," say these maps, "leave your cares behind. You’re in this other world now." From the Hundred-Acre Wood to the Land of Oz, maps have enchanted young readers and enhanced their reading experience. In this presentation, I will cover a selection of maps found in classic and popular children's literature, delve into their origin, design process, and impact on the story, then compare each map to examples of real-world cartography (I will also cover a few unofficial/fan-created maps for books and series like The Hunger Games).
http://www.theawl.com/2012/02/maps-of-fictional-places

Il était une fois: Mapping Balzac's Paris (10 minute talk)
Jennifer Reinke, John R. Borchert Map Library, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
Paris was the cultural capital of the 19th century. Popular French novelist Honoré de Balzac wrote a compilation of short literary works entitled The Human Comedy, using realism and ethically ambivalent characters to depict the complexities and capricious state of Parisian society during the Bourbon Restoration period of 1814-1830. Balzac’s characters often shared a romantic notion of the capital and yearned to join high society. As a means to be part of the elite, they relocate from impoverished to exuberant city quarters in efforts to conform to aristocratic norms and flaunt their newly obtained statuses. The objective of this project was to map the movements of the transient lifestyles of Balzac’s main characters in three novels: Eugène Rastignac in Father Goriot, Lucien de Rebempré in Lost Illusions: A Distinguished Provincial at Paris, and Raphaël de Valentin in The Magic Skin, which reflect the author’s personal struggles and experiences surviving tumultuous Paris.

UAEU Employees' Social Impact Assessment in Urban Development in Al Ain City
Naeema Alhosani, UAE University
Changes in land-use are thought of as being a primary factor through which humans modifies the surroundings leading to major landscape alterations. For example, land clearing for urban expansion is mostly associated with population growth coupled with increased economic, agricultural and industrial activities. Al Ain city in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) experienced rapid population growth and economic activities in the past two decades, due to the increased migrant workers. This has created a particular map of spatial pattern related to the needs of the migrant communities. The primary focus of this research is to study the socio-cultural impact of the international migrant workers on land use and the needed plans for mapping future development. The international staff of the UAE university is taken as the primary target through a questionnaire process to identify the needed urban facilities and map their optimum spatial distribution to better accommodate their demands.
https://speakerdeck.com/nvkelso/uaeu-employees-social-impact-assessment-in-urban-development-in-al-ain-city

Proposed Route for Public Transportation in River Falls, WI (10 minute talk)
Diego Nunes Valadares, University of Wisconsin-River Falls
The objective of this study was propose a route for public transportation to connect the city of River Falls, WI with your larger cities settled around. Iused ESRI Arcmap software, version 10.2.2 and the Network Analysis extension. This proposition comes to try to solve this problem related with public transportation identified in River Falls, WI, which has no public transportation inside the city limits, and surrounding it to connect to the neighbor cities. Helping this way, to develop and understand how to apply Geographic Information Systems - GIS, in a specific area, of interest for public visualization and government management.
https://speakerdeck.com/nvkelso/proposed-public-transportation-route-between-river-falls-and-minneapolis

Voting Patterns and the Geographic Distribution of “Cultural Markers”: A GIS Analysis of the Pittsburgh, PA Metropolitan Statistical Area (10 minute talk)
John Peter Preysner, The University of Chicago
The American political landscape has become a hyper-competitive world in which electoral success is built on the back of powerful data analytics. It is of great importance to campaign strategists to understand the spatial distribution of likely liberal or conservative voters. Towards this end, the goal of this project was to determine an answer to the following spatial question: Is there a relationship between the geographical distribution of select commercial establishments and religious institutions and ideological voting tendencies among the adjacent populace? To examine this question, select “cultural markers” were isolated for study in the Pittsburgh MSA, an area chosen due to its competitive nature in the 2012 presidential election. “Cultural markers” were selected as the result of their institutional stance on same-sex marriage. The liberal “markers” selected were Whole Foods Market and the Unitarian Universalist Association and the conservative “markers” selected were Chick-fil-a and the Presbyterian Church in America.
https://uchicago.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapJournal/index.html?appid=af67338d48ac44529d0788e8e7c4373c

Dasymetric Tesselation (10 minute talk)
Walter Kent Treichel, State of Minnesota
Statewide mapping of Minnesota townships and cities leaves some small areas difficult to see or analyze. One possible solution to this is to implement a tessellation which allows for increasing the size of smaller areas while maintaining overall topology and shape. Once the tessellation was complete, it provided an opportunity to apply a dasymetric process, in this case US Census population by Census block, to identify only those cells with data. This additional step overcame some of the limitations inherent in choropleth maps and allowed for a more detailed areal interpretation.
https://speakerdeck.com/nvkelso/dasymetric-tessellaton 

Improving ArcGIS mapping workflows with Adobe’s Creative Cloud Applications
Clint Loveman, ESRI
Sarah Bell, ESRI 
We understand that many cartographers use GIS applications together with Adobe products, for improved designs. We want to share some background on why map exports currently don’t work the way you may expect. In addition, we’ll share some future concepts we hope will help you with these interoperability workflows.
http://surveys2.esri.com/s3/creative-cloud

Drupalized Web Maps
Tim Stallmann, Savas Labs
Drupal, a widely-used open-source CMS, can be a great choice to build map-centered web apps. In a rollercoaster 15 minutes, we'll: blitz through some of the mapping packages for Drupal, build a simple web map app using Drupal + Leaflet, talk about what you get "for free" by using Drupal (and why not to use it), and show off some projects we've built in Drupal, including a Civil Rights history map.

Planning for Automated Labeling of U.S. Routes with Multiple Shields and Names
Cynthia A. Brewer, Penn State Geography
Elaine M. Guidero, Penn State Geography
Kristin A.Fishburn, USGS National Geospatial Technical Operations Center
We are working toward fully automating labeling of USGS topographic mapping, both US Topo 1:24,000 quadrangle PDFs and cached scales in The National Map Viewer. This presentation solicits opinions and guidance from the NACIS community on how to best handle U.S. roads with multiple labels: multiple numbers in shields of various forms (interstate, state route, U.S. route, county routes) plus words as names. In addition, one road segment may have multiple route numbers within one category. Multiple shields for one road segment may be sprinkled along the line in an intermixed manner, enlarged to enclose multiple numbers, shingled, sequenced, offset, or ignored. Our goal is to arrive at an innovative solution that then guides improvements to labeling software programming.

Cartography Driven Data Collection
Mamata Akella, National Park Service/Colorado State University
Whether for print or web, as cartographers, we strive to make maps that are both beautiful and informative. To make a map, we need data. To make a multi-scale map, we need data that can support a variety of scales and geographies.

The majority of datasets available for map making are not collected with cartography in mind. The result is maps where every place is equal and visually the same. Intricacies of local knowledge, design considerations for urban vs. rural, and other important map details are lost.

Over the past two years, NPMap has been developing a data collection system called Places. Information from Places is used in a variety of data-driven products - including our cartographic ones. This talk covers how we are infusing multi-scale and web cartography into our data at the time of collection, enabling us to improve our maps of national parks.
http://javisantana.github.io/cartodblocks/#a3fb1786688232cd1e45

Am I Rent Stabilized?
Chris Henrick, Parsons, The New School For Design
Am I Rent Stabilized? is a web application that encourages New York City tenants to find out if their landlord may be illegally overcharging them for a rent stabilized apartment and if so, motivates them to take action. It is an attempt at using open data acquired through a Freedom of Information Law request as a prompt for civic action, rather than solely for visualization and analysis. The app asks the user to input their address and checks it against a database of properties that are likely to have rent stabilized apartments. From here the app recommends a course of action and informs the user of their nearest tenants rights group so they may receive help. This presentation will discuss my development of the app and the geospatial technologies used to create it.
http://clhenrick.io/presentations/am-i-rent-stabilized/

The Open Geoportal Cloud Federation
Patrick Florance, Tufts University
The Open Geoportal (OGP) is a collaboratively developed, open source, federated web application to rapidly discover, preview, and retrieve, geospatial data from multiple repositories in a variety of formats and web service protocols. The new Open Geoportal 2.0 will be demonstrated as will the new OGP Suite of Federated Services: OGP Community, OGP Harvester, OGP Metadata Toolkit and OGP Dashboard Analytics. http://opengeoportal.org

Displaying Change Data on a US Topo Map to Assist in Map Revision Decision Making
Andrew J. Stauffer, USGS
Kristin A. Fishburn, USGS
Kristina H. Yamamoto, USGS
The U.S. Geological Survey is evaluating vector-based change detection tools and processes to help reduce costs associated with maintaining 1:24,000-scale US Topo maps. When a feature changes, the current instance of that feature is compared to the same feature at the time it was last published in a map. The degree and significance of change is quantified across datasets within each map footprint. A map can then be scheduled for revision if the total change found exceeds a predetermined threshold. This process can improve map currency while focusing resources on updating map products that require revision. We will provide an overview of our change detection workflow and how change data are displayed on a US Topo map to aid in making internal revision and republication decisions. 
https://speakerdeck.com/nvkelso/displaying-change-data-on-a-us-topo-map
 
Mapping Local Spatial Fitness with Strava (10 minute talk)
Jonathan K. Nelson, Penn State University & Strava
Strava is a social fitness application that allows athletes to track and share rides, runs, and other activities via smartphones or GPS devices. Strava’s Metro Division manages a big data service focused on providing “ground truth” on where individuals exercise. Millions of GPS-tracked activities are uploaded weekly from all over the world, resulting in billions of data points. The Division aggregates and analyzes these data to better understand how athletes interact with the outdoors, as well as to assess individuals’ needs and preferences, provide optimal routing, and evaluate the structure of social fitness networks. Strava users interact with the application differently across place and space. Some users are entirely performance-driven, while others are largely commuters. Time of day further affects activity type. Thus, users benefit from different representations of their data. I will share my experiences in making sense of these unique user characteristics and designing relevant maps, visualizations, and user experiences. 

Mapping Joy & Pain: Connecting Space, Place, and Emotion (10 minute talk)
Maureen McFarlane, John R. Borchert Map Library, University of Minnesota Libraries
Rebecca Krinke, Landscape Architecture, College of Design, University of Minnesota
Kevin Dyke, John R. Borchert Map Library, University of Minnesota Libraries
Our desire to connect stories and emotions to location has exploded on the web, from social media check-ins to Yelp reviews to Instagram food pictures, with maps providing innovative ways of provoking and exploring these narratives. This project began by asking passersby in several public places to identify where they encountered joy and pain in the Twin Cities and illustrate their histories on a large wooden map of Minneapolis-St. Paul. The engaged response to the map inspired an interactive web version of the project that utilizes the ArcGIS Javascript API as the basis for the application and Mapbox Studio for the custom-styled basemap. Visitors use an array of freehand sketching tools to depict their joy or pain as anonymous spatial expressions. The result is a communal archive visualizing the locations that draw out strong emotions around the Twin Cities and the design decisions users associate with these experiences. 

3D vs. Conventional Volcanic Hazard Maps
Charles Preppernau, Oregon State University
Bernhard Jenny, Oregon State University
Volcanic hazard maps are used as public outreach and education tools, but can be challenging for those not trained in map use or geology. We present the results of a user study evaluating the relative effectiveness of four map designs in showing the speed and extent of lahars, a dangerous, fast, and relatively lesser-known volcanic hazard. The study tested combinations of two binary design variables; 2D contours vs. 3D perspective for terrain representation, and point markers vs. isochrones for lahar travel time. We found that users preferred and performed best with the 3D isochrone map.
https://speakerdeck.com/nvkelso/3d-vs-conventional-volcanic-hazard-maps

Evaluating the Effectiveness of Illuminated and Shadowed Contour Lines
James Eynard, Oregon State University
Bernhard Jenny, Oregon State University
The effectiveness of illuminated contour lines, where line width and color vary based on an angle of illumination, has not been fully examined as compared to conventional contour lines. Illuminated contour lines are not widely used in computer-based cartography because they are not included in most GIS and mapmaking software. Improvements to existing algorithms for creating illuminated and shadowed contour lines from digital elevation data are presented. A software package is made available to allow mapmakers to more easily make customized illuminated contour maps. A user study comparing illuminated contour lines to other relief representation techniques with 400 participants was conducted. The results indicate that map-readers can interpret relative height differences between points better and quicker with illuminated contour lines than regular contour lines or shaded relief. These findings suggest that illuminated contour lines could be used more frequently for improved visualization of terrain and other surface data on maps.
https://speakerdeck.com/nvkelso/evaluating-the-effectiveness-of-illuminated-and-shadowed-contour-lines

Planning a Hike with Fifty Shades of Gray
Leland Brown, textureshading.com
Elevation contours can be depicted using stepwise hypsometric tinting or shading, but the human eye can only perceive a limited number of separate shades on a map. By mimicking an optical illusion called the Mach effect, we can generate the appearance of hundreds of graduated shades of gray, each clearly distinguishable. Using a high-resolution LiDAR-derived elevation model, this visualization technique helped me to plan a safe off-trail hiking route through extremely rugged wilderness in the southern California mountains. Example images will be presented, along with photos of the actual hike.
https://speakerdeck.com/nvkelso/planning-a-hike-with-fifty-shades-of-gray

Improving the Representation of Major Landforms in Analytical Relief Shading
Brooke E. Marston, Oregon State University
Bernhard Jenny, Oregon State University
Manual relief shading results in informative and visually pleasing representations of terrain, but it is time consuming and expensive to produce. Current analytical relief shading can be created quickly, but the resulting maps are not as aesthetically appealing and do not show landscape features in an explicit manner. This project introduces an automated digital method that produces shaded relief with locally adjusted illumination directions to simulate the techniques and cartographic principles of manual relief shading. Ridgelines and valley lines are derived from a digital terrain model and used in a diffusion curve algorithm. The direction of illumination is adjusted based on the spatial orientation of ridgelines and valley lines. The diffusion curve shading is combined with standard analytical relief shading to create a final diffusion relief shading. Similar to manual relief shading, major landforms and terrain structure are more clearly shown in the diffusion relief shading.
https://speakerdeck.com/nvkelso/improving-the-representation-of-major-landforms-in-analytical-relief-shading

Join other NACITES in small groups for lunch on the town, each group with a special guest! 

Sign up at Registration Desk.

The last ten years have seen a dramatic shift in geographic education, not just with the tools we teach, but also the types of instruction. More and more opportunities for geographic education are available outside the classroom, both from community-focused learning groups and individual tutorials and classes available online. These rapid and significant changes have inspired a wide range of thoughts and best practices from educators of all types: academic, online, and community-based. Come listen to a panel discussion from a few of these educators on how they view their role, how it's changed over time, and how they see it changing moving forward.

Panel Members:
Matt Wilson, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY
Ryan Cooper, Georgetown-Scott County Planning Commission, Georgetown, Kentucky
Lauren Ancona, City of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Mono Simeone, GIS Education Center, City College of San Francisco
Katie Kowalsky, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin
Ken Kato, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon
Chris Bone, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon

How to Hire or Be Hired: A Jobs Panel
This panel will bring together professionals who have hired cartographers to discuss their hiring processes. The panel includes the following members:

Aileen Buckley, ESRI
Sarah Cordivano, Avazea
Leo Dillon, State Department
Martin Gamache, National Geographic
Andrew Hill, CartoDB

What do people who hire cartographers look for? How do they assess if candidates meet the skills and qualifications that they are looking for? Would they do anything differently next time they go through the hiring process? What can educators do to prepare students for the job market?

The format will include a set of prepared questions that each panelist will receive ahead of time. This panel will be useful both to those on the job market and those involved in hiring decisions.
https://speakerdeck.com/nvkelso/a-jobs-panel-how-to-hire-or-be-hired 
http://tolomaps.tumblr.com/post/131735916683/how-to-hire-or-be-hired-a-jobs-panel-nacis2015 

Benefits and Challenges of the Modern Web Mapping Paradigm
Kris Johnson, North Point Geographic Solutions
The availability of geographic data and aerial imagery has increased in recent years, and has been logically paralleled by an increase with the general public's exposure to, and use of web-based maps. This sort of technological milieu is favorable for introducing map-based tasks into applications that can be made readily available to the general public, while simultaneously improving an organization's efficiency and workflows.

By upgrading existing paper-based application workflows to digital, web-based ones, a number of benefits may be realized, however this digital transition can bring with it new set of challenges for the non-technical end-user. This presentation will utilize a case study for transitioning a paper zoning permit application to a web application. We will focus on some of the favorable outcomes, as well as highlight a few of the remaining challenges that can occur when trying to meet both business and end-user needs.
http://slides.com/krisjohnson/deck

GIS-Ready Templates and Data for The National Map
Kristin A Fishburn, US Geological Survey
Andrew J Stauffer, US Geological Survey
The U. S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Geospatial Technical Operations Center (NGTOC) updated The National Map (TNM) Data Download capabilities in 2015. Eight themes of raster and vector datasets in different data formats and download footprints are available for download as pre-packaged, staged products. This year the NGTOC has also developed a TNM Style Template that is set up to emulate the layout, symbology, and labeling specifications of published US Topo Maps. The Template uses the US Topo Map 1:24,000-scale, 7.5-minute cell size and is intended to be downloaded along with the pre-staged TNM Integrated Vector Product. This product is also delivered in a 7.5-minute footprint and contains data from all TNM vector themes as well as linking to TNM imagery services. With minimal tailoring, the Template and Integrated Vector Product provide GIS-ready data in a map layout which can be easily modified by an end user with their own data, marginalia, and symbology. USGS will discuss the new Template and Integrated Vector Product as well as plans for continued research and development.
https://speakerdeck.com/nvkelso/gis-ready-templates-and-data-for-the-national-map

Automagical Maps
Hans van der Maarel, Red Geographics
I am often called upon to make large volumes of utilitarian maps. They don't need to look pretty, but they do need to show the right information in the right way and there's hundreds, if not thousands, of them per project. This talk highlights my recent project combining the power of FME and MAPublisher. 

Data Processing Workflow for the National Geographic World Atlas Mobile App
Steve Gifford, mousebird consulting inc.
Rosemary Wardley, National Geographic Society
National Geographic recently relaunched its World Atlas app for iPhone and iPad. It was a big effort involving professionals from GIS, design, and software engineering.

Older versions of the NGS World Atlas App used tiled images for the map. This is virtuously simple, but requires a lot of pixels to look sharp. In the new version we used a hybrid of image and vector data to both sharpen the visuals and cut down on data transport and storage.

We’ll discuss the workflow we used to go from GIS data through manual illustration to cloud based dissemination down to the app itself. Each step required a bit more data to flow through the system and uncovered interesting assumptions.

One important goal was to minimize the custom processing steps, relying more on commercial tools and services. That was (mostly) successful and we’ll detail the tools and services we used.
https://speakerdeck.com/nvkelso/workflow-for-the-national-geographic-world-atlas-mobile-app
 

Dynamic Cartography for a GL World
Nicki Dlugash, Mapbox
Maps that change in real time? Web maps rendered client-side are interactive on a whole new level – and seamless zooming, 360-degree rotation, and perspective views are just the beginning. When designing a map that incorporates dynamic style transitions or 3D geometry, new cartographic challenges abound. How do you dynamically change fill patterns? How do you place labels on a map with geometry that dynamically rotates, distorts, or gains another dimension? I'll discuss various challenges and possible solutions using examples of maps created with Mapbox GL for this game-changing world of client-side vector rendering.
http://nickidlugash.com/nacis2015-cartography-for-gl.pdf
http://nickidlugash.com/nacis2015-cartography-for-gl-notes.pdf

Beyond Speed and Accuracy, Let's Focus on Engagement and Memorability: Creating New Instruments for Evaluating Cartographic Animations
Joanna Merson, Arizona State University
Animated maps are captivating, but traditional user studies often write them off as uninformative and distracting. I am seeking to identify the balance point. This presentation identifies common uses of animation in cartography to determine 1) how and why animated techniques are leveraged and 2) how they are evaluated. A critique will be presented to express strengths and limitations of traditional speed/accuracy style assessments. Then I will present the framework and preliminary results for a user study that supplements speed and accuracy with measures of engagement and memorability: the "understanding, engagement, recall" method.
https://speakerdeck.com/nvkelso/beyond-speed-and-accuracy-lets-focus-on-engagement-and-memorability

Psychophysics: Foundation for Map Design
George F. McCleary, Jr. University of Kansas
It is really quite simple. The word psychophysics is not complex: in thirteen letters it combines two basic ideas, psychology (“the study of the mind and how it works”) and physics (“the scientific study of the properties and interactions of matter and energy”) … or combined (and rephrased), the study of how the mind deals with the properties and interactions of matter and energy. The mind “manages” sensations and perception and processes cognitions. There are stimuli, and there are responses. A simple example: there is a person … a map user … and there is a map. The map is a stimulus … it provides information. The person (using his/her mind) responds to the map. This is a behavioral thing: a stimulus-response relationship. Simple maps generate simpler responses than complex maps … and there are very few simple maps. Psychophysics provides a foundation for understanding and explaining the map-user relationship.

The Cartographic Discourse of Human Interactions: A Brief Introduction to the Work of Gunnar Olsson
Christine Bush, autonomous scholar (ideaspeak.us)
Cartography is commonly reduced to the craft of map making without a full appreciation for its legacy as an intellectual framework and cognitive practice that has had profound implications for endeavors beyond the geographical. Gunnar Olsson, author of ten books, is professor emeritus of geography at Uppsala University, Sweden. The International Encyclopedia of Human Geography (2009) describes his work as “a lifelong journey of self-conscious reevaluation” in which Olsson “has pursued his core theme of human interaction in search of its geographical essences.” The culmination of this journey is an epic work, Abysmal (2007, Univ. Chicago Press Books), that offers fascinating insights into the intersection of human reasoning and cartographic rhetoric. My overview of this work will invite cartographers to move beyond thinking about their work in increasingly technological terms and to also engage with the historical and philosophical discourses at play when we think, not about cartography, but cartographically.
https://t.co/5OwdT7DUSC

Telling Stories 
Mark Denil, National Ice Center
It seems, in just the last few years, to have become commonplace to say that that maps 'tell stories', but What does this mean? What is a story, and what does it mean to tell a story? What is the role of a story teller, and can a map fulfill that role? What is actually going on when someone believes that a map is telling them a story?, and furthermore, what (and whose) stories are being told, and to whom? This talk will explore these questions and examine some maps that might be suspected of telling stories.

Introducing Web Mapping to Writing Studies and Journalism Classes at the University of Minnesota Duluth
Micaella Penning, University of Minnesota Duluth
Mapping and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are increasingly recognized as a beneficial component of education in the Liberal Arts. The Geospatial Analysis Center at the University of Minnesota Duluth is fostering collaborations with classes across the University, particularly in the fields of writing studies and journalism. Through presentations, demonstrations, and hands-on tutorials, students are learning to harness the power of web mapping using ArcGIS Online. Students with no prior cartographic experience create media-rich story maps, analyze and visualize quantitative and qualitative data, and learn about real-world examples of how GIS and web mapping is being utilized by professionals in their field. They are introduced to both the idea of telling a story with a map, and visualizing data through mapping to find a potential story.
https://speakerdeck.com/nvkelso/introducing-web-mapping-to-writing-studies-and-journalism-classes-at-the-university-of-minnesota-duluth

Map Design and Software Tools for an Interactive Touch Table Museum Exhibit
Henry Kaufman, Tactable
Aaron Carmisciano / Subluxed
We created a 27-foot long multi-touch table exhibit about human rights violations around the world for the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. Mapping was an important component of the exhibit as it helped tell the stories. We used a non-conventional Dymaxion projection for the initial world view, so it can be viewed from either side of the table. Each event shows a regional map that highlights the area affected. The museum will extend the set of events covered, so we created a custom map-making application in C++ based on Cinder and ModestMaps, and custom map rendering tools in Python based on the open source tools Mapnik, ImageMagick, and data from NaturalEarthData.com. The tools enable the museum to create new bilingual regional maps as needed. We will discuss the design choices that we made in creating the maps, our custom rendering pipeline, and demo the tools.
See www.tactable.com/studyTable/ for visuals.

Mapping Alternate Terrains: GeoHumanities & Cartographic Expression
Kevin Dyke, University of Minnesota Libraries
Ryan Mattke, University of Minnesota Libraries
Across the University of Minnesota Libraries system, several groups are working on projects that touch on different aspects of the GeoHumanities. The projects demonstrate the value of blending domain and technological expertise with the unique strengths of library staff. This blend facilitates deeper collaboration between the Libraries and faculty, students, and researchers and allows for alternate forms of cartographic expression.

Examples include using scraped hip hop lyrics as a case study to produce a customized geoparser, working to create an online version of a map representing geographic areas associated with joy/pain, and geocoding addresses for YMCA locations in New York City from the 1880s to the present in order to visualize patterns in branch openings and closings over time, and working with faculty to enrich the learning experience in the classroom for students creating online exhibits using georeferenced maps as a backdrop for historical site locations.
http://borchert.github.io/joy-pain/
https://www.lib.umn.edu/apps/mhapo/

Pecha Kucha Presenters: 

Maps as Visual Copy
Ian Muehlenhaus, University of Wisconsin-Madison
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZH6eNFfrqTU 

U Got the Look: Fonts on Album Covers by Prince
Elaine Guidero, Penn State University 
https://speakerdeck.com/nacis/elaine-guidero  

Street Name Themes
Dennis McClendon, Chicago Cartographics
https://speakerdeck.com/nacis/dennis-street-names

Iran's Amazing Art, Architecture, and Antiquities - and an occasional map
Barbara Harrison, Tom Harrison Maps 
https://speakerdeck.com/nacis/barbara-iran-art-aesthetics-maps 

The American Geographical Society Library: Beyond the Atlas Obscura Article
Marcy Bidney, AGS Library
https://speakerdeck.com/nacis/marcy-bidney-american-geographic-society-library

The Regional Mobility Corridor Atlas v2 – the end of a printed format
Matthew Hampton, Oregon Metro
https://t.co/WkzhDSbqm3 

Trust the Surveyor About As Far As You Can Throw Him
Nat Case, InCase LLC
https://speakerdeck.com/nacis/nat-case-trust-the-surveyor-as-far-as-you-can-throw-him 

The Name Game: Mapping Toponyms
Leo Dillon, US State Department
https://speakerdeck.com/nacis/leo-dillon-toponyms 

Play GeoDweeb Geopardy with Dennis McClendon channeling Art Fleming (the original Jeopardy host). Form a team and test your geographic knowledge. Sign up at registration desk and remember at least one team member must be new to NACIS!

University of Minnesota researchers developed three geodesign applications to assist stakeholders explore land-use decision making in various settings. The applications allow stakeholder groups to draw design scenarios on 55” touch-sensitive displays, receive real-time feedback on various parameters related to land use change (e.g. water quality, carbon sequestration, biodiversity, development suitability and impacts), and discuss and revise plans until scenarios achieving the “best fit” among multiple criteria are realized. Through “hands-on” use of the system, workshop attendees will learn: 1) the computer technology needed to create a geodesign system, 2) the soft technology needed to engage stakeholders in collaborative and iterative geodesign processes, 3) use of an “adaptive design” process to engage multiple stakeholders in constructing and evaluating alternative design scenarios, and 4) evaluation of the social and transformative learning that occurs among stakeholders engaged in collaborative geodesign processes.

Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are function libraries that support a system of cloud-based map distribution. Many different mapping APIs have been written for the user-driven web. While the Google Maps API remains by far the most commonly used, a variety of other APIs have been introduced. The ease of mapping with APIs has resulted in all kinds of different maps, many showing information that has never been mapped before.

This workshop examines the variety of mapping APIs and alternatives for data input. Files types to be examined include KML, FusionTables, GeoJSON, and TopoJSON. The workshop will also show how to map data from a MySQL database using a server-side scripting language called PHP. During the 3½ hour workshop, participants will create their own free cloud-based website to implement the examples.

Join us for a hands-on, explosive workshop in Gunpowder Mapping at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls. We will begin in the GIS lab, using software, printers, and cutting tools to make paper stencils. In the afternoon, we will assemble and ignite our maps using an outdoor, fire-safe area.

Fee includes round-trip transportation from conference hotel to River Falls and all materials needed for the workshop. You take home your original maps and artwork! Bring your own lunch or go to one of many eateries nearby. Find out more at gunpowdermappingworkshop.blogspot.com.

Spin your wheels with Nice Ride, the Minneapolis bike share on a guided tour of Minneapolis maps & monuments.

The maps in unexploited library map drawers, inaccessible stocks of map publishers, under-utilized archives in museums, and even unexplored private collections could prove invaluable in providing views into the past if shared with wider audiences online. A good example is the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Historical Topographic Map Explorer which provides access to almost 180,000 scanned maps through an interface that offers easy exploration, visual comparison, and speedy download of maps in the collection. Using this web app as an example, our workshop takes you step-by-step through a solution for converting map collections to a format that can be shared online. You’ll learn how to scan, georeference, and build metadata for the maps; how to convert the scanned map images to image services; and how to create and use web maps in a web app that provides the user interface and functionality for useful and engaging online map exploration.