GIS Day to highlight growing career field
Augustana College faculty and alumni will hold GIS Day on campus Nov. 21 with demonstrations, workshops and panel discussions highlighting a fast-growing career field.
The free sessions will be offered online. GIS Day is open to everyone, although some of the workshops will require participants to have access to ArcGIS software.
A geographic information system (GIS) is a framework that provides the ability to capture and analyze spatial and geographic data. Geospatial technology is used in everything from GPS navigation, to wildlife and forestry management, to tracking the COVID-19 pandemic.
Next year, Augustana will offer a new experiential minor in Geographic Information Science and Technology.
Schedule
Note: All sessions will be virtual using Zoom.
→ RSVP for the Saturday morning program.
→ RSVP for the Saturday afternoon program.
9-9:15 a.m. — GIS Days introduction.
9:15-10:45 a.m. — A panel discussion will include Stephi Drago '15, Matt Hiett '09, and Andrew Johnson '10.
Drago is a GIS analyst and second-year grad student at University of Vermont. Hiett is a geographer at ERDC-CERL laboratory (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers). Johnson is a senior product engineer at ESRI (Environmental Systems Research Institute).
They will discuss GIS and jobs, graduate school and more. Panel member will discuss their professional lives and use of GIS since graduating from Augustana.
11 a.m.-noon — Drone mapping workshop by Dr. Reuben Heine, professor of geography: 3D analysis of drone data using ArcGIS. Prior experience using ArcGIS software will be helpful but not required.
1-2 p.m. — Andrew Johnson will give a presentation on space-time mapping using voxels in ArcGIS.
2-4 p.m. — Johnson will lead a workshop on visualize social distancing across California with space-time pattern mining. (There will be a limited in-person attendance at this session; contact Jennifer Milner.)
Description: SafeGraph allowed ArcGIS users to track changes in social distancing behavior with timely statistics. SafeGraph creates this data from mobile apps that collect location data, and has developed algorithms to quantify behavior patterns into simple, understandable metrics.
In this workshop, participants will explore a prepared set of block group level SafeGraph social distancing metrics from May 1, 2020, to June 14, 2020, with charts and animations, and use space-time pattern mining tools to assess patterns and visualize the data as a multidimensional voxel layer. Prior experience using ArcGIS software will be helpful but not required.