News

CaGIS BOARD CALL FOR NOMINATIONS 

The CaGIS Board is calling for nominations to the Board to serve starting spring of 2022. 

There are 3 positions open: the Vice President, and two Director positions. Membership on the CaGIS board requires current membership in CaGIS while serving on the Board. The CaGIS bylaws state that the Vice President position for this next year be filled with a person in government or in the private sector. However, if such a person cannot be recruited the position can be filled by an academic member. The two director positions are open to anyone in academia, government or private sector.

The responsibilities and expectations of these positions are as follows:

The Vice-President shall be elected by the Voting Members for a term of one (1) year. The Vice President shall preside at the meetings of the Society and of the Board in the absence of the President and President Elect, and discharge the duties of the President in the event of disability or in case of a vacancy in both that office and the office of President Elect. 

The Vice President shall automatically succeed to the position of President Elect for a term of one (1) year at the end of their term as Vice President, and then automatically succeed to the position of President for one (1) year at the end of their term as President Elect, and then automatically succeed to the position of Past President for one (1) year after their term as President.

Directors shall be elected for four (4) – year terms by Voting Members. The term of the Directors shall be staggered so that no more than three (3) Directors are elected in any one-year. No more than three (3) Directors may be employed by the Federal Government at the time of their election. A director may serve no more than two consecutive terms on the Board. The Directors shall aid in the management of the affairs of the Society, shall furnish counsel, and shall participate in all official actions of the Board.

Board Responsibilities:

The primary responsibility is conducting the activities of the Society. The Board has the authority to determine policies and procedures of the Society; providing such actions are in conformity with the provisions of the CaGIS By-Laws. The President, in consultation with the Treasurer, the President Elect, and the Vice President, shall prepare an annual budget including dues paid annually by the members to cover costs of Society programs and activities. The President shall submit the budget to the Board for approval.

Please contact Scott Freundschuh (scott.freundschuh@gmail.com), Exec Dir with nominations by replying to this email. Self nominations are welcome. Nominees must submit a brief bio, and a statement of their interest and what they could contribute to CaGIS and the Board.

The deadline for receiving this information is January 1.

The US National Committee (USNC) is proud to announce the ten Early Career Scholars who were awarded ICA scholarships to attend the 30th International Cartographic Conference and International Cartographic Exhibition in Florence, Italy, on December 14-18, 2021. Congratulations scholars!

Johanna Avelar (U Southern California)
Harrison Cole (Pennsylvania State U)
Nick Lally (U Kentucky)
Andong Ma (Texas A&M U)
Chelsea Nestel (U Wisconsin – Madison)
Lois Park (U Southern California)
Tim Prestby (Pennsylvania State U)
Gene Trantham (Pennsylvania State U)
Yanan Wu (U Texas – Dallas)
Lei Zou (Texas A&M U)

The Cartography and Geographic Information Society (CaGIS) invites proposals for research or outreach projects that have the potential to transform global challenges into new opportunities that advance and promote Cartography and GIScience.

Creativity, novelty, and the potential for broader impacts to society will constitute key criteria for evaluating these proposals for funding.

Proposals may request a budget up to $10,000, and CaGIS expects to fund four total projects in 2022. We welcome early-career individuals or teams to submit proposals, and at least one person on the project team must be a current CaGIS member (visit cartogis.org/membership to join CaGIS).

Please see the CaGIS Rising page for more information!

The Barbara Petchenik Children’s Map Competition entry deadline has been extended to June 15!

Organized by the Cartography and Geographic Information Society, the Children’s Map Competition is a map competition for all children ages 15 years or younger. The goal of the contest is to promote the creative representation of the world in graphic form by children. It is offered every two years to celebrate the creativity, imagination, artistry, and wisdom of child mapmakers.

Children are encouraged to submit a handmade map for this national competition. Teachers are encouraged to promote this competition to their students. First, second, and third place winners are selected in four age categories: under 6 years old, 6 to 8 years old, 9 to 12 years old, and 13 to 15 years old. An entry can be drawn by a single child or multiple children (up to three within the same age category).

Katie Patrick will be presenting “Saving the Planet with Maps + Gamification” at the next GeoBytes webinar on Friday, April 9th at 12:00 pm EST. The webinar is FREE for all CaGIS members.

Please see the CaGIS GeoBytes page for more information on registering.

Abstract

Games are a big deal. But can they save the planet? Since the recent tech startup boom, entrepreneurs have been investing in the art of getting their users to do stuff – triggering a renaissance in the field of behavioral psychology. Designers then took another step, looking to understand why games are so effective at getting their players hooked – and called this new approach gamification. What happens when you put behavioral design, gamification, and technology entrepreneurship together with big environmental causes like climate change, air pollution, and deforestation? Can we change people’s environmental behavior using gamification techniques? Can we make saving the world as fun as a game?

“There is a powerful wave of environmental innovation building. We’re building a distributed operating system for the planet, an Earth OS. When we show environmental data to humans in a real-time feedback loop, it becomes like game, and really gives them the feeling of agency that makes change happen. The “Fitbit for the Planet” movement holds great opportunity for startups, innovation, and environmental action, yet few people know yet what a big deal it is. I hope my book will help unlock our imagination to make gamified apps and projects that make saving the world the greatest game on Earth.”


Katie Patrick is an Australian-American environmental engineer, designer, and author of How to Save the World: How to make changing the world the greatest game ever played. She specializes in applying data-driven, gamification, and behavior-change techniques to environmental problems which she calls “Fitbit for the Planet” design.

Katie is the founder of UrbanCanopy.io, a map-based application that uses satellite imaging of urban heat islands and vegetation cover to encourage urban greening and cooling initiatives. She is also the co-founder of Energy Lollipop, a Chrome extension and outdoor screen project that shows the electric grid’s CO2 emissions in real-time.

Katie has been a media spokesperson on environmental issues and has been featured on TV, radio and in magazines including the BBC, Vogue Australia, and ABC. She was CEO of the VC-funded green-lifestyle magazine Green Pages Australia and was appointed environmental brand ambassador by the Ogilvy Earth advertising agency for Volkswagen, Lipton Tea, and Wolfblass Wines. She has served on the board of Australia’s national eco-label, Good Environmental Choice Australia, and won the 2008 Cosmopolitan Woman of the Year Award for entrepreneurship.

After graduating from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology with a B.Eng in Environmental Engineering, she worked as an environmental design engineer for building engineers Lincoln Scott in Sydney Australia on some of the world’s first platinum-LEED-certified commercial buildings.

Katie lives in San Francisco with her young daughter, Anastasia.

The US National Committee (USNC) has secured funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to support US based early career scholars (ECS) participating in the 30th International Cartographic Conference and International Cartographic Exhibition in Florence, Italy, on December 14-18, 2021. ECS participating in this hybrid conference remotely can seek support to cover registration fees. ECS attending the conference in person can seek travel support to help offset the costs of travel, lodging, and per diem costs in addition to registration. The ECS funding is available to American and international scholars at U.S. institutions, including undergraduate and graduate students, and those with PhD or master’s degrees earned within the previous five years. Please visit cartogis.org/usnc-ica for up-to-date information about submission deadlines and application materials. Support is based on a competitive evaluation of submitted materials.

Pete Chirico will be presenting “Temporal Geomorphic Change Mapping using SfM DEMs from Historical Aerial Photography as a Complement to 3DEP Lidar Data” at the next GeoBytes webinar on Friday, March 12th at 12:00 pm EST. The webinar is FREE for all CaGIS members.

Please see the CaGIS GeoBytes page for more information on registering.

Abstract

Increasing urbanization and suburban growth in cities globally has highlighted the importance of land planning using detailed geomorphologic maps that depict anthropogenic landform changes. Such mapping provides information crucial for land management and the challenges arising from urbanization. The development and use of quantitative and repeatable methods to map anthropogenic and natural processes are required to advance the science of urban geomorphological mapping. This study created digital terrain models (DTMs) from historical aerial images using Structure from Motion (SfM) for a variety of image dates, resolutions, and photo scales. Accuracy assessments were performed on the SfM DTMs, and they were compared to the USGS’s three-dimensional digital elevation program (3DEP) light detection and ranging (lidar) DTMs to evaluate geomorphic change thresholds based on vertical accuracy assessments and elevation change methodologies. The results of this study document a relationship between historical aerial photo scales and predicted vertical accuracy of the resultant DTMs. The results may be used to assess geomorphic change thresholds over multi-decadal timescales depending on spatial scale, resolution, and accuracy requirements. Further, the work presented contributes to a discussion about the growing importance of sequential elevation change detection to complement land-cover/land-use change mapping in urban and natural environments.

Pete Chirico is the Associate Center Director of the USGS Bascom Geoscience Center in Reston, VA. In over 24 years at USGS, he has focused his research on various aspects of remote sensing and geomorphology including anthropogenic landform change and mapping and monitoring illicit small-scale mining in conflict zones. Pete develops tools and techniques to map elevation change from sequential digital elevation models from a variety of remote sensing sources including aerial photography, satellite imagery, lidar and structure-from-motion photogrammetry. He has worked extensively with the U.S. Government, the United Nations, and the Kimberley Process to understand how natural resource exploitation contribute to conflict financing. While his regional expertise is Sub-Saharan Africa, he has led or been a member of more than 30 field expeditions throughout Central America and the Caribbean, the Middle East, and Africa. He is author/coauthor of over 50 peer reviewed scientific reports and journal articles in the fields of geography, geomorphology, remote sensing, and natural resources. Since 2017, Pete has served as scientific
and technical advisor to the Office of Threat Finance Countermeasures in the Department of State’s Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs. In February 2021, Pete was awarded a US Embassy Science Fellowship to the US Embassy in Georgetown, Guyana to focus on mapping forest and land-cover changes due to small-scale gold mining using radar remote sensing and geospatial modelling techniques. Degrees: PhD Candidate (expected 2022) in Geography and Environmental Systems, University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC); MA in Geography, University of South Carolina; and BA in Geography, University of Mary Washington.

30th International Cartographic Conference and International Cartographic Exhibition
Florence, Italy, December 14-18, 2021

The U.S. National Committee (USNC) for the International Cartographic Association (ICA), a standing committee of the Cartography and Geographic Information Society (CaGIS), acts as the liaison between ICA and CaGIS, as well as the larger the U.S. cartographic community. The USNC is pleased to announce the following activities in support of the 30th International Cartographic Conference (ICC), the biennial conference of the ICA, which will take place 14–18 December, 2021, in Florence, Italy (discussion of a virtual-only or partly virtual conference is still underway):

USNC Funding to support U.S. participation in the ICC (whether or not it is held virtually) Nominations for ICA awards, primarily ICA Scholarships for early career scholars or professionals U.S. entries in the International Cartographic Exhibition U.S. entries in the U.S. National and Barbara Petchenik International Children’s Map Competition

Although there is no National Report required for ICC 2021 (they must be submitted every four years in conjunction with the ICA General Assembly; the last report was submitted in 2019), CaGIS maintains an archive of previous U.S. National Reports.

Please contact the USNC Chair, Aileen Buckley, at abuckley@esri.com with any questions about the committee and its activities.

It is with great pleasure that we announce that Xiaobai Angela Yao (University of Georgia) has been elected as Vice President of CaGIS, and Gaurav Sinha (Ohio University) has been elected to the Board of Directors. Both will begin their terms of service at the Spring meeting of the Board of Directors. Congratulations Angela and Gaurav, and thank you for your service to CaGIS.

Xiaobai Angela Yao has been a devoted member of the GIScience and Cartography community. Her current services in the discipline include serving as chair of the International Cartographic Association (ICA) Commission on Geospatial Analysis and Modeling (2015 – 2023) and as a director on the Board of Directors of the University Consortium of Geographic Information Science (UCGIS) (2020-2023). Previously, she also served on a few committees of AAG and SEDAAG, and as a board member of the International Association of Chinese professionals in GIScience (CPGIS). To fulfill responsibilities in these leadership roles, she has regularly organized or co-organized international symposiums, workshops, and other professional activities in the past decade. She also edited research volumes, guest-edited journal special issues, and served as a referee for dozens of journals and as a panelist for the National Science Foundation.

I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography, Ohio University. I have published on a broad swath of GIScience topics, but I am most attracted to spatial cognition and geospatial ontology and applying such knowledge for computational representation of both common sense and geoscientific concepts of the landscape. My academic service record has been rather standard so far: serving as reviewer for many journals and on the conference committees for GIScience, COSIT, Auto Carto and FOIS conference series. I am now seeking additional and more complex professional service opportunities to make diverse and more long-term contributions to the geospatial information science community.

Join the largest Cartography and Geographic Information Science network.