NACIS 2020

Welcome to Virtual NACIS! Join us for our 40th Annual Meeting kick-off event.

Marusia Musacchio is the founder of Tierra, a geographic data analysis platform that maps crime and violence in Mexico. Location intelligence was also the focus of the first company she started, which pioneered interactive travel guides to cities in China. She moved to China in 2005 after finishing a master’s in East Asian Studies at Harvard and ended up living there for a decade, working as a journalist and political commentator while growing and eventually selling her start-up. Marusia took a break from entrepreneurship between 2015 and 2017 to co-coordinate the Seminar on Peace and Violence at El Colegio de México, her alma mater, before moving to San Francisco. She now leads Tierra’s globally distributed team of engineers, cartographers and data scientists in their quest to build a safer Mexico by helping companies and the government make safer, more informed decisions about violence and risk.

Carto-Design of the Three Florida State Plane Coordinate System in ArcGIS Pro
Presenter: Moses Thiong’o, Esri
ArcGIS Pro is a quickly evolving geospatial analysis and cartographic design tool. This means that you can achieve a lot with a few clicks of a button. However, that may sound too easy until when you are presented with a task that needs to be executed in an accurate way. In this exercise, we will see how we can cartographically deliver the three Florida State Plane Coordinate Systems in one page. The standard parallels, false origins as well as false origin axes will be plotted and labelled!

Contextual Labeling: Bringing Thematic Mapping to the Next Level
Presenter: Soren Walljasper, National Geographic
Each map we make can has an infinite number of labels that could be placed on it, but as cartographers, we make decisions as to which ones we show in our final designs. We clearly wouldn’t include a record-store label on a reference map of Minneapolis Parks, but when we’re making a thematic map, these decisions can be a bit more nuanced. Adding explanatory labels in the right way can help pull apart the story the data is trying to tell. This presentation draws on examples from National Geographic’s recent print and web maps, pulling out strategies and techniques on how to bring thematic mapping to the next level with contextual labeling.

Illustrator Scripts and Shortcuts - Text Selection Wizard
Presenter: Jamie Robertson, Adventure Cycling Association
At NACIS 2017 Montreal, I gave a presentation titled "Enhance Productivity with Illustrator Scripts and Shortcuts". (http://cairn.pw/nacis2017) This script repository has been updated to include powerful text-selection scripts including select by font size, font-family, font style and regular expressions. Additionally, the shortcut software has been updated to use the powerful BetterTouchTool. Join me to see why these scripts and shortcuts are used by many in the NACIS community and enhance your illustrator productivity.

Map Text in ArcGIS Pro
Presenter: Heather Smith, Esri
Create polished labels and other map text in ArcGIS Pro. Learn some recommended workflows, tools, tips, and tricks to make and manipulate effective labels, annotation, and graphic text. Take advantage of knockouts, map notes, symbology classes, and unplaced annotation.

Designing Page Layouts for Bookmark Map Series in ArcGIS Pro
Presenter: Aubri Kinghorn, Esri
Map series in ArcGIS Pro allows you to create multiple pages showing different map extent based on a single layout. It can be tricky designing a single layout that works well for every map extent in the series. Using the new bookmark map series capability, I will demonstrate creating a map series layout. I will show how to take advantage of anchor points, dynamic elements, transparency, graphic editing tools, and other features to design a layout that will work for each page in the map series.

Mapping for News 101
Presenter: Hannah Dormido, Bloomberg
This will be a behind the scenes demonstration of my map-making process, highlighting a few of Bloomberg Graphics projects as examples. The presentation will include common tools and methods for generating maps from raw data material to production-ready output for news usage.

The Myth of Enhance: Tips and Tricks for Storytelling with Satellite Imagery
Presenter: Leanne Abraham, Planet
Satellite imagery offers a unique medium for storytelling, if you can wrangle it. As the industry rapidly evolves and an increasing array of sensors make previously unseen aspects of our world visible, as cartographers we have to wonder how to make best use of newly available data and what stories we can tell. This talk will offer some clarity on what can and cannot be seen in different types of satellite imagery, as well as guidance on how to best utilize different data sources. I will break down common storytelling techniques using satellite imagery, taking advantage of color, resolution, and time.

Viz Ideas to L.A.T.C.H. on to
Presenter: David Glassett, Peaceful Valley Maps
Have you had that experience of staring at your data and thinking, “I’m sure there’s something here, but I just can’t figure it out”? The acronym L.A.T.C.H. provides a simple mnemonic for organizing and visualizing your data in ways that will open your eyes! Using data compiled from the last 40 years of NACIS annual meetings, we’ll explore Location, Alphabetical, Time, Category, and Hierarchy methods for mapping and other data visualizations.

So You Want to Collect Aerial Data Using a Drone: Here’s How
Presenter: Justin Roberts
If you want to use a drone to collect aerial data or gain a new perspective on the world, I’ll give you a roadmap of where to start, what data you can collect, how to conduct flights, how to process the data, and how to have fun through the whole process.

Building the Dataset
Presenter: Alice Goldfarb, The New School
When we're assembling the data to make a map, how do we keep track of the choices we've made? When we're using open data or another source, what do we assume is there or missing? How do we make the work of creating the dataset visible, both so that we feel responsible to the people who will use it later and as a way of acknowledging the work that goes into a project? I will discuss how I considered these questions while mapping the postal landscape of the United States.

Experiences of a Newbie Cartographer
Presenter: Inge van Daelen, Red Geographics
What it's like to become a cartographer for someone with no background in cartography. At all. Fights with Adobe Illustrator and crash courses in topography are only the beginning. Enjoy a different view on topics you've been familiar with for years.

Star Tracker On: Coordinates Systems in Space
Presenter: Ramiro Aznar, Planet
What do the window of Apollo's Lunar Module, a drawing on Voyager's Golden Record and a tiny satellite's camera not pointing at Earth have in common? Each of these are tools to help us navigate in Space. In this short talk, I will cover the most interesting coordinate systems and methods used in the space industry and the human stories behind them.

International Cooperation for a Tourist Map of Luxembourg
Presenter: Hans van der Maarel, Red Geographics
How a Dutch and a Belgian company, Red Geographics and Nordend, ended up making maps of Luxembourg together. This presentation describes the cartographic design, the underlying workflow but also the practical considerations of a truly international project: making tourist maps for Luxembourg. Getting to grips with 5 regional Luxembourgish tourist boards, data from 4 countries in 3 different languages and a project team of 2 separate companies results in 1 map for the entire country… of Luxembourg.

From Cartographer to Client: Five Lessons Learned from Switching Roles
Presenter: Jennifer Mapes, Kent State University
This is the story of a geographer who didn’t do cartography, a cartographer who didn’t code, a programmer who didn’t make maps, and how we came together to create a beautiful website. I’ll be talking about the challenges and triumphs of collaborating on the MappingMay4.kent.edu website. The site, created using Mapbox, geolocates short stories from oral histories of the May 4, 1970 shooting at Kent State, offers virtual and mobile tours, and allows visitors to add their own stories and photos.

Bike Mapping: Process and Insights - Riding Every Single Street in Huntsville
Presenters: David Nuttall, Artimaps and Ned Drummond, Freelance Cartographer and Designer
An “accidental quest” to ride every single street within the city limits was born from the idea to exercise more and lose a little weight. This morphed into a mapping project using the city GIS data as a base and MapMyRide to track each route. This talk will explain the methods used to select each route, how the overview map was updated, the other maps created and the many lessons and observations of seeing an entire city at an average speed of 10 mph in exceedingly bright yellow.

Mapping COVID-19 Coast to Coast, and Around the World
Presenter: Alan McConchie, Stamen Design
In developing an interactive map for the COVID-19 Mobility Network, we developed a unique set of map projections and dynamic map labels for the clearest and most effective communication of our data. In this session I’ll walk through the stages of developing and refining several iterations of our map, starting with a US-only Albers projection customized to include all US territories and possessions, to a global map combining hierarchical administrative data from many different sources. I explain how we used a variety of open source tools (from D3, Dirty Reprojectors, GDAL/OGR, MapShaper, Makefiles, and numerous Mapbox command-line tools and APIs) to create a repeatable and highly customizable workflow.

Cartography in Adobe CC - MAPublisher and Geographic Imager Advancements
Presenter: Nick Burchell, Avenza Systems Inc.
This presentation will provide an overview of advancements in MAPublisher and Geographic Imager since the last NACIS conference. Topics will include how to work with the new Spatial Join and Line Plotter tools in MAPublisher for Illustrator, and how you can solve complex workflows through the import and export of geospatially aware vectors in Photoshop with Geographic Imager.

It's Finally Here! Maps for Adobe and ArcGIS Pro Integration
Presenter: Sarah Bell, Esri
In 2015, I gave my very first NACIS talk on a fun mapping tool prototype we were calling ArcGIS Maps for Adobe CC, co-presented with Clint Loveman. Over the past 5 years, this prototype has grown from a plug-in prototype for bringing online GIS data into Adobe Illustrator to a robust mapping & design tool with features such as data visualization & data filtering, labeling - and much more! In Spring 2020, we released Maps for Adobe 2.0 - an upgrade that allows users to open their ArcGIS Pro-created maps into Illustrator, with layering, labeling, and styling preserved. In this talk, I will demonstrate this new 2.0 feature, along with a lot of additional cartography tools that we've added to Maps for Adobe.

The Business of Printing Maps and the Pull of the Blank Canvas
Presenter: Anton Thomas, Anton Thomas Art
Five years to hand-draw a big map of North America. Another year to grasp the business of printing it from Australia. Then, as I finally launched, a global crisis cast every aspect of fulfilment into uncertainty. The pre-orders rolled in, and what would’ve been challenging in ordinary times was intensified to the extreme. The experience was exhilarating, stressful, and wildly unfamiliar. Through that story I will discuss releasing a map in print. And then, how does one move on after years immersed in a project? With new maps (of course)! I look forward to introducing my new project - Wild World.

Aiding or Abetting? Encouraging Informed Mapping During a Global Pandemic
Presenters: Kelsey Taylor and Megan Danielson, Mapbox
Just as we don’t spend every moment thinking about how to track and slow the spread of infectious disease, most public health teams we work with are not experts in spatial data visualization. In the environment of a growing epidemic, maps have a way of spreading quickly, too — making it imperative that they are accurate, informative, and thoughtfully designed. To answer common questions and help organizations make thoughtful design decisions while mapping this and other health crises, we have put together a number of best practices and common pitfalls to avoid.

Putting Science Communication on the Map: How and Why we Built the Earth Observatory Explorer
Presenters: Joshua Stevens, Paul Przyborski, Kevin Ward, NASA Earth Observatory
For more than two decades, NASA's Earth Observatory has been sharing visual science stories with the world. Our archive contains more than 11,000 of these stories that have been tagged with the coordinate locations of the featured imagery. We will discuss how and why we built an interactive map to enable spatial browsing of this database and the challenges and considerations we encountered. We also introduce a new set of base map tiles that are open to the public and available for use in applications today.

Tips for Creating Effective 3D Maps
Presenter: Joe Milbrath, US National Park Service
3D maps can be alluring and especially easy to use for the non-map reader. However, there are key factors that make a 3D map successful and a number of pitfalls that can consume valuable time and still result in an ineffective map. This presentation will walk through the design stages of creating a 3D map and highlight a few key elements to guide you through the process.

Learn more about our 2020 Virtual Map Gallery, updates on this year's Atlas of Design and closing remarks for Day 1 of Virtual NACIS.

Catch up with friends and meet new ones at this casual social event! We’ll meet in a virtual space with tables to emulate the pub experience with small group conversations and mingling. Live background music will be performed by Ross Thorn. Join the event here: https://live.remo.co/e/wednesday-night-meetup

Note: using a camera and microphone is highly recommended for better personal connections. Event capacity: 500 people

HistoryForge: Community-sourced Local History    
Robert Kibbee, The History Center in Tompkins County
HistoryForge, (historyforge.net) is an open-source community-powered web environment for exploring local history. In the context of current trends in mapping history, we will demonstrate how HistoryForge delivers an individualized history in which demographic and spatial relationships can be examined at the granularity of persons, families, buildings, and neighborhoods against a backdrop of large-scale contemporaneous historic map layers. Users can filter the attributes from over 70,000 volunteer-transcribed census records and display the results on historical map layers. Data and maps can be freely exported. The result is an environment that encourages historical narratives, engagement with history, and a sense of place.

Data Curation for Historical Mapping: Lessons from the Depths of Graduate School 
Alex Fries
Mapping historical places and events involves challenges that few other types of projects have to tackle—for example, in many cases the data you need to make your maps *isn't* a mere Google search away! Using the datasets I compiled for analyzing nineteenth- and twentieth-century urbanization in Alabama as examples, this talk will go over some of the tools and resources that can be used to overcome the initial lack of data you might face in historical mapping and thus allow you to more fully flesh out your maps of the world as it once was.

Edna Eisen, Accidental Cartographer
Judith Tyner, California State University, Long Beach
Edna Eisen began her teaching career after graduating from a normal school in Wisconsin. After about 15 years she entered the University of Chicago to earn a Bachelor’s degree and in 1936 began a career at Kent State College, focused on geographic education. However, when WWII began she became one of the teachers of the military map making classes that attracted and trained many women in the field. After the war she earned her PhD and wrote books and articles on maps, globes and airphotos. I look at Eisen’s contributions and career in geography and cartography.

Cartographic Symbologies: The Art and Design of Expression in Historic Maps
Andria Olson, David Medeiros, Meagan Trott, Peter Crandall, Chris Hacker, Stanford University
A map librarian, a geospatial instruction specialist, and a team of map digitization specialists walk into a shelter-in-place and...create a digital exhibit to showcase the myriad symbologies found in historic maps. From directional indicators to meandering rivers to witches flying above mountains, we have compiled hundreds of our favorite maps from collections held by Stanford University Libraries and highlighted them based on a large set of granular categories. And in the spirit of giving, we have extracted many of our favorite features which are freely available for download in multiple formats for your own creative endeavors!

The Quest of the Missing Maps: Copyright, Deposit Copies, and the Pamphlet Curse 
Mark Monmonier, Syracuse University
The Copyright Act of 1909 required submission of two “deposit copies” of any map registered for copyright: one as a referent for assessing originality or warding off infringement and the other to enrich the Library of Congress. Research for a biography of Ithaca, New York map publisher John Byron Plato found only two of his firm’s 29 submissions extant in the Map Division, and one of these was donated 65 years later. Attached to a thin directory of farmers’ names associated with the map, most were apparently deemed too quotidian for the national map collection and either lost or destroyed.

Choropleth Maps Normalized for Social Distance in the Classroom 
Lucas Martin, James Holcomb, Dr. Patrick Kennelly, Central Oregon Community College
With the application “COCC Social Distance 2019-20” college administrators can perform time-enabled, multivariate investigations regarding which and to what degree classes in 2019 were above social distancing capacities established for 2020, thus identifying which classes need special accommodations for the COVID-19 era. Classrooms are symbolized according to 2019 event attendance as percentage of social distance capacity and records are filtered using time-sliders and attribute-parameters. Maps were created by joining non-spatial attendance and social distance data to existing classroom footprints using Make SQL Table, which created a ‘stacked’ feature of multiple records in one location, filterable according to time-stamp.

Fighting COVID-19 through Spatial Data Science and geospatial data  
Miguel Alvarez, CARTO
The SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus has spread all over the world causing a global health, economic, and political crisis. In these circumstances, the use of Spatial Data Science and location-based data streams is more important than ever. In this talk, I will present the work done at CARTO to help fight COVID-19. I will walk through the different analyses and models we have worked on, from understanding and predicting the dynamics of the COVID-19 spread over time and space in the US and Italy, to empowering public administrations in NYC and Spain with insights and tools to better plan and respond. A special focus will be given to how insights and results were visualized using CARTO’s technology with plenty of examples.

A Travel Health Perspective on Mapping COVID-19 at the CDC
Ellie Milligan, CDC Travelers' Health
The CDC’s Division of Global Migration and Quarantine routinely monitors and analyzes public health data needed to issue Travel Health Notices (THN) about health threats outside the United States. As the global and national epidemiology of COVID-19 evolved, so did CDC protocols for data analysis and visualization. An interactive map was created to display COVID-19 travel recommendations, THN level, and recent COVID-19 case counts, by country. This talk summarizes how the CDC created the map, describing the processes used to synthesize and visualize the data, and the corresponding travel health recommendations CDC made as our understanding of the pandemic changed.

Revamping an Introductory GIS Course for Online Delivery 
Nathaniel Douglass, Carolyn Fish, University of Oregon
The rapid switch to online teaching is something nearly all students and teachers experienced during the COVID-19 crisis. Without physical access to lab spaces and in-person support, GIS courses had to adapt quickly to provide students with valuable course material that was both engaging and accessible. This presentation explains the process of developing an online Introduction to GIS course at the University of Oregon. We share what went well, what could be improved, as well as helpful tips to run an online course.

Challenges in the Museum World in the Covid-19 Era
Daniel G. Cole, Smithsonian Institution
Maps in the museum environment vary between static, animated and interactive displays in association with exhibits. But after Covid-19 arrived on the stage, interactive kiosks and other devices have needed to be eliminated since their use would require a constant repetitive cleaning by staff, which is not a realistic option. Nonetheless, turning interactive maps into animated and static maps requires rethinking and retooling the map’s message. I will be focusing on two exhibits at the National Museum of Natural History that deal with this problem: the Geology, Gems and Minerals hall, and the relatively new Outbreak exhibit.

Promoting Cartographic Literacy (and Recruitment) through Campus Partnerships with Writing Faculty
Joy Santee, University of Southern Indiana
At NACIS in 2016, I presented on promoting critical thinking in general education courses through cartography, but an audience question about what cartographers could do stuck with me. In 2020, I want to share how cartographers can partner with writing faculty. Each year, more writing faculty in first-year composition and technical writing incorporate visual literacy into their courses, creating an opportunity for partnerships with cartographers. Such partnerships can promote cartographic literacy to students while also providing a recruitment opportunity for cartography faculty. This presentation will help cartographers identify possible partners among writing faculty and introduce strategies that can begin with low investment interventions that lead to longer-term, higher impact practices.

Teach with Story Maps: Spatial Thinking in Unexpected Places
Shana Crosson, Melinda Kernik, University of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota has been promoting StoryMaps as a powerful tool to empower students to become mapmakers. The platform has enabled faculty who do not know anything about mapping software to add impactful projects utilizing spatial thinking and analysis to their classes. Our goal has been to support faculty in classes and subjects that do not traditionally focus on spatial thinking, such as history and foreign language education. The session will demonstrate several successful approaches to these and discuss the essential components of building StoryMaps assignment.

Teach with GIS: How GIS professionals can help build the next generation of solution-seekers
Riley Peake, Esri
The next generation workforce is ready for game-changing tools to secure their future and tackle our world’s most pressing problems. Teachers are simultaneously searching for ways to make their classroom more engaging and modern, but often lack the time and resources to make that happen. So, how can we as non-educators share what we know, and help teachers build skills and confidence using GIS tools as a central pillar of their educational practice? Join us for a discussion about this intersection of technology and education, and learn about the tools, resources, and guidance available to you and your community to start developing the next generation of solution-seekers for the planet.

Visualizing Ancient Greece: A Case Study of Collaborative Mapping in the History Classroom
Chris Saladin, University of Minnesota, U-Spatial
Digital mapping is a powerful method for visualizing the distant past in the history classroom, but it is difficult for students to complete large mapping projects in already busy semesters. However, collaborative mapping platforms, such as Survey123 for ArcGIS, allow students to easily enter spatial data and create expansive class maps that shed new light on course content. This presentation focuses on a collaborative mapping project completed by students in an ancient Greek history course. It examines the assignment’s planning, implementation, the challenges it posed to students, and how collaborative mapping transformed the way students understood the course content.

Mapping perceived accessibility on public beaches
John Morgan, Jocelyn Evans, Elizabeth Barrett, University of West Florida
Like many public spaces, community beaches are complex legal spaces, which often result in nuanced territorial tension. These tensions are not limited economic class and extend to different classifications of coastal stakeholders such as residents vs. more transitory uses of these spaces, such as seasonal vacationers. This presentation discusses the use of sketch mapping exercises designed to measure the perceived territorial tensions across several beaches. Observers traveled the length of a beach and used the legend to identify and describe inaccessible areas. The results of these surveys is a cartographic picture of each beach as a nuanced public/private space.

Mapping dispossession: Collaborative mapping around histories of racial exclusion
Jerry Shannon, Aidan Hysjulien, University of Georgia
This paper describes a collaboration between University of Georgia students and a local organization, The Linnentown Project. The focus of this partnership was the 1960s demolition of an African-American neighborhood near the University of Georgia campus, to make room for new student dormitories. Working from archival data, census microdata, and conversation with former residents, students mapped the neighborhood and its destruction. The results of this project demonstrate the limitations of relying solely on archival data, impact on students involved in this work, and the role maps can play at supporting residents’ claims to past and present territories claimed for redevelopment.

Visualizing 60 years of glacial change in the Khumbu region
Sam Guilford, National Geographic Society
As part of the larger scientific efforts being conducted in and around the Everest region in Nepal by National Geographic Society (NGS) and related scientists, NGS has been collaborating with Dr. Tobias Bolch and his team at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland to investigate glacial change in the Khumbu and surrounding valleys. This work uses decadal satellite imagery dating back to the 1960s to look at changes in glacial extent and, by generating DEMs from stereo photo pairs, changes in glacial volume. In this presentation, I will present aspects of this research and show some of the methods I’ve used to visualize ongoing glacial loss and subsequent threats to global water resources.

Chasing rainbows: Revisiting the prevalence of the rainbow color scheme in scientific publications
Izabela Gołębiowska, Faculty of Geography and Regional Studies, University of Warsaw, Poland
Arzu Çöltekin, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland, Institute of Interactive Technologies
Even though using a rainbow color scheme to represent quantitative data is strongly advised against in scholarly work for decades, it remains popular in media and in scientific publications. To get a sense of its level of popularity in recent years, we sampled current scientific publications in familiar domains with large audiences: Remote sensing and planetary science. For each field we chose two journals with impact factors above 3.5. In total, we queried 355 papers published at the end of 2019 and beginning of 2020 and examined how often they use the rainbow color scheme, and for what kind of data.

Mapping Bird Migrations Across the Western Hemisphere
Erika Knight, Lotem Taylor, William DeLuca, Chad Witko, Miguel Jimenez, Melanie Smith, National Audubon Society
Audubon's Migratory Bird Initiative brings together spatial information for over 500 species of migratory birds to engage people in the joy of migration and identify places that birds need to thrive so we can protect them for future generations. We create animated maps that summarize the migration journey of each species across the year, bringing together information gathered by numerous researchers and institutions tracking individual birds with locating devices. We carefully apply principles of cartography to ensure maps are engaging and understandable while generating maps through an automated process that allows us to create and update hundreds at a time.

A Field Guide to Mapping with Quantitative Color
Travis White, Kansas City
Here’s my elevator pitch for this talk: ColorBrewer crossed with an Audubon Field Guide. Over the past year I have adapted my quantitative color research into a near-encyclopedic visual compendium of historical and modern color schemes. Taking organizational cues from popular birding guides, my guide contains relevant definitions, step-by-step color scheme selection and identification processes, reviews of existing color research, rules of thumb, plus illustrations of over one hundred color schemes. In this talk I’ll discuss my reasons for creating the guide, its design principles, and why I think the community can benefit from yet another color selection guide.

Six Feet Under: Visualizing Sea Level Rise with Laser-Cut Maps
Ned Drummond, The Pew Charitable Trusts
Laser-cut maps can elicit feelings of nostalgia for the places we love. But what’s in store for those places as sea levels rise? What do we stand to lose? Six Feet Under is a series that utilizes NOAA data to depict hypothetical future coastlines of US cities under a high-emissions scenario. The resulting maps draw upon the visual language of this distinctive medium to communicate a sense of loss. This session will cover the creative journey from concept to completion, and give an overview of the GIS-to-laser process with practical tips for mappy makers.

Maps in Popular Fiction
Adonna Flemming, University of Nebraska - Lincoln Libraries
Many authors of popular fiction include maps as a way to tell their story. This presentation explores some recent works that include maps. The presenter would also like to discuss some of the problems some e-book platforms have with displaying maps, and have a dialog with the audience about possible solutions.

Planned Destruction
LaToya S. Gray, Master of Urban & Regional Studies, Virginia Commonwealth University
During the Urban Renewal period, planners used maps to display density and racial boundaries. These maps would establish the future of development in an area. Despite severe restrictions during this period, African Americans were able to create thriving neighborhoods which would be intentionally targeted and destroyed through “slum clearance”. This story map offers a historical primer on the maps used to destroy black neighborhoods in Richmond, Virginia. It also includes a reconstructed map displaying the original residents and establishments displaced from downtown Richmond. The purpose of this map is to educate and encourage public engagement in the planning process.

Geochicas and the path into mapping more inclusive spaces for women
Selene Yang Rappaccioli, National University of La Plata, Argentina
Within the mapping community, data is often presented as objective, and we have yet to generate a sustained analysis of gender bias as a structural problem. The data structures, meanings, symbols and epistemologies that are expressed in voluntary geographic information (VGI) projects (such as OpenStreetMap) generate “invisible” exclusion factors that do not encompass the diversity of experiences of some social groups that participate in their creation. In the case of OSM, the ratio of participation by gender is 97% male and 3% female (Budhathoki,2010), resulting in cartographies that reproduce male-centered experiences of space. The change of paradigms on the construction of cartography has made evident that regardless of the massive amounts of VGI that’s put into the collaborative mapping projects, truly only a few people’s experience is part of the creation of the maps. The technological and academic communities that I belong to do not have the tools to analyze this type of bias and the consequences it has in the field of research. My work intends to generate the data that might make this kind of analysis possible.

Mapping with Action: serving underrepresented communities
Raynah Kamau, Whitney Kotlewski, Black Girls M.A.P.P
Black Girls M.A.P.P. is a community that started out to celebrate black women in the field of mapping and then later evolved to evangelizing mapping by using it to visualize and amplify social issues often faced by underserved communities. Join founders Raynah Kamau and Whitney Kotlewski in an example-rich discussion on the projects they have worked touching on community disparities while dealing with the pandemic, social justice and most recently their latest project in the electoral realm.

Our Home on Native Land: Connecting People and Stories using Indigenous Geographies
Christine McRae, Executive Director and Rudo Kemper, Board of Directors, Native Land Digital
You may be familiar with the native-land.ca website being used in land acknowledgments or seen the colorful tapestry of Indigenous lands go viral on social media on Columbus day and Thanksgiving. What you may not know (yet!) is that Native Land is evolving as a not-for-profit organization, with an Indigenous Executive Director and majority Indigenous-led Board of Directors and Advisory Council who are passionate about thinking creatively and critically about using maps to share stories about Indigenous territories, challenge concepts linked to settler colonialism, and increase Indigenous community sovereignty over their own data. The goal of this presentation is to stimulate a lively discussion around what it means to map native lands from an Indigenous perspective.

Meet this year's distinguished awardees Tonika Lewis Johnson and Paola Aguirre Serrano, for their work on the Folded Map project and map installation!

NACIS Night Out is a premier social event at our annual meeting, and we don’t want to miss it this year. Join us in a virtual gala space with tables to mingle and connect with our cartographic community! You will be able to change tables when you like, or start your own. Join the event here: https://live.remo.co/e/nacis-night-in

Note: using a camera and microphone is highly recommended for better personal connections. Event capacity: 500 people

Feminist visualization of the spatial and emotional dimensions of inequalities: development of the Relief Maps model through GIS tools
Maria Rodó-Zárate, Universitat de Barcelona
Meritxell Gisbert, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Critiques of geographic information systems (GIS) have aimed at showing it as a tool for empiricist and quantitative analysis. However, feminist GIS scholarship has demonstrated that it can also be a tool for feminist visualization. Following the works of feminist geographers on critical visual methods, we have engaged with GIS to visualize data on geographies of intersectionality based on the Relief Maps model. This model systematizes the data on intersecting inequalities in an image that relates emotions (the psychological dimension), intersectional power structures (the social), and places (the geographical). The recent development of the Relief Maps as a website and App that collect, organize, and visualize data have shown the potentialities of the digital for engaging with mixed methods. With the GIS development, we aim to expand its potentialities through the application of georeferentiation tools and 3D mapping in order to visualize how inequalities are lived in the places of everyday life in a city. Here we will present the results of a pilot study carried out in Barcelona with the aim of analysing the spatialities of the emotional effects of discrimination and inequality.

Navigating risk: The challenges and rewards of working with crime data
Anthony Sardain, Tierra  
In Latin America, crime and violence are the single biggest concern for governments, companies, and the 639 million people who live there. But data on crime risk is often scant, poor quality, and difficult to work with. Focusing on Mexico―which has one of the world’s highest homicide rates―I examine the complexities of working with crime data and discuss how these can be overcome. I then show how these results can be used to generate insights into security and other social issues beyond this.

Mapping and Safeguarding Indigenous Oral Histories using an Open Source Tool
Rudo Kemper, Amazon Conservation Team and Terrastories
For the indigenous communities of South America, an intimate knowledge of their ancestral territory helps inform where food or resources are located, and reinforce their historical and cultural connection to their homelands. Today, oral history storytelling traditions are at risk of disappearing as younger community members leave their villages recurrently or permanently in search of work. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is currently exacerbating this situation, since it affects the lives of the most vulnerable and that includes community elders, who are the keepers of stories, songs, and all other kinds of traditional knowledge. To prevent invaluable community oral histories from disappearing into oblivion, we are developing a methodology and building a FOSS and offline-first application called Terrastories to help communities map their oral histories, and maintain sovereignty over their own data.

Spatial Data and (De)Colonization: Incorporating Indigenous Data Sovereignty Principles into Cartographic Research
Annita Lucchesi, Executive Director of Sovereign Bodies Institute, PhD student at the School of Geography, Development & Environment at University of Arizona
This presentation examines how a better understanding of Indigenous cultures as inherently scientifically rigorous can change how academic researchers do work in Indigenous communities, and how non-Indigenous researchers, particularly those in fields like cartography and geography, can learn from Indigenous ideas of protocol and sovereignty as part of the scientific process to transform their work in our communities into something that truly benefits Indigenous peoples. In exploring these topics, this presentation posits Indigenous data sovereignty and traditional diplomatic protocols as a means of strengthening cartographic and geographic research in collaboration with Indigenous communities and argues that integrating these principles into such research is necessary in work that strives towards decolonization.

Evaluating the Cartographic Quality of Orthophotos Produced with a Refined Photogrammetric Point Cloud
Monica Chism, Pennsylvania State University
Aerial photography can provide a detailed base for cartographic displays. Issues arise, however, in areas of variable z-values. This study investigates the accuracy and visual appeal of orthoimagery with the primary surface derived from phodar, a technique that uses photographic and orientation data. This research uses a stereo image matching technology called Semi-Global Matching and Trimble’s Inpho Match-3DX to generate a phodar surface. Orthoimagery resulting from refined phodar is compared to those generated with Lidar-based surface models. The results indicate accurate 3D placement of surfaces and associated orthoimagery, enhancing the cartographic quality of such imagery.

What is left bias, and why is it relevant to cartography?
Arzu Çöltekin, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland
Amy Griffin, Oscar So, RMIT University, Australia
Victoria Rautenbach, Serena Coetzee, Tebogo Mokwena, University of Pretoria, South Africa
We describe a phenomenon in vision called 'left bias' observed in connection to a perceptual illusion. The illusion causes inversion of 3D shapes if the main depth cue is shading, particularly when the illumination is from southern and eastern angles. The upper left (north-west and north-north-west) angles lead to better perception, but “how left” may depend on handedness, and on whether one lives in northern or southern hemispheres due to the differences in how people experience light over their life course. We examine if this is so, and showcase a replication study we conducted in northern and southern hemispheres.

New Relational Approaches to Cartography: Pseudo-Spatial Workflows
Evangeline McGlynn, University of California, Berkeley
Will Payne, Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, Rutgers University
How do we tell stories about spatial structure without cartesian distance obfuscating the message? We originally built the Psuedo-Spatial Chart Program to show how experimental visualization has been steamrolled by GIS logics, trying to revive older visual methods in an automated fashion. In this talk, we build on that conceit by demoing more complex workflows, using case studies from social scientists to highlight how distance-deemphasized approaches to mapping open new opportunities for both data discovery and visual storytelling. Ultimately we will make the case for building and using tools that treat relational space as foundational, revealing overlooked non-linear distance effects.

shaping: a geographical imagination system
Nick Lally, University of Kentucky
In this talk, I present a prototype of a cartographic tool I call 'shaping.' Inspired by spatial theory in human geography and speculative cartographies, shaping is a web-based tool that allows users to stretch, expand, contract, and cut a map. This prototype is an attempt to expand the grammars of GIS as we know them and offer cartographers a wider set of expressive tools that deal with space as such. In this talk, I present the tool, some background that informs what Luke Bergmann and I call geographical imagination systems (gis), and examples of maps produced using shaping.

New Geographies for Non-Euclidian Relational Spaces: Using MultiDimensional Scaling (MDS) to Map Ohio Electoral Districts
David Retchless, Texas A&M University at Galveston
Jim Thatcher, University of Washington Tacoma
MDS is a technique for visualizing similarities between sets of objects. Often used to reduce complex data sets’ dimensionality, its cartographic applications have included comparing maps based on, inter alia, their designs and users’ cognitive interpretations. However, MDS can also create maps in alternative, non-euclidean spaces. These visualizations may reveal aspects of relational phenomena hidden when mapped using linear distances. Our example presents alternative electoral mappings of Ohio created using MDS and Mapper based around travel-times between > 81 million points. Such alternative mappings make hidden narratives of relation apparent and accessible, informing policy-relevant questions of community and connection.

An hour to meet new people, see people you know, and gather for informal exchanges. We usually call this Lunch Bunch but this year's a little different! Join the event here: https://live.remo.co/e/meet-a-carto-aka-lunch-bunch

Note: using a camera and microphone is highly recommended for better personal connections. Event capacity: 500 people

Who am I making this map for?
Nat Case, InCase, LLC
Most classes and papers on practical cartography start with some version of “How can one make a better (more effective) map?” Conversely, many papers from a carto-critical point of view end up asking, “How can we be (morally) better mapmakers?” These questions and approaches are frustratingly hard to reconcile. This paper is an attempt to lay out (or map perhaps) how these approaches to map-making might fit into a wider question-set: “Who am I making maps for, and what do they want?”

Mapping Migrations: Creating a cohesive set of maps for diverse media
Joanna Merson, James Meacham, Alethea Steingisser, University of Oregon InfoGraphics Lab
Cartography occupies a critical role in the communication of the science and conservation of wildlife migration corridors in the American West. Through a close partnership with the Wyoming Migration Initiative, the University of Oregon InfoGraphics Lab designs and produces maps for a wide range of media and audiences. These include atlases, static and animated maps for government reports, academic articles, news publications, social media, and short documentary films. Creating a cohesive set of maps for such diverse media presents many technical and design challenges. In this talk, we will discuss our strategies and processes for this ongoing endeavor.

Classroom Chronicle: Teaching “Stories and Maps”
Marcel Brousseau, University of Oregon
This is a reflection on teaching an undergraduate/graduate English class called "Stories and Maps" at the University of Oregon. The course explored two perspectives: 1) the spatial logics of storytelling, or how stories are maps, 2) the narrative potential of the map, or how maps are stories. After outlining categories of study—e.g. critical cartography; cartographic cinema and "cinemapping"; GIS and web maps; literature, including drama, crónica, and poetry—I consider our learning outcomes, and contemplate our final projects, for which students designed ArcGIS Story Maps. I hope to inspire discussion and suggestions toward future versions of this interdisciplinary class.

A Few Thoughts on Critique
Daniel P. Huffman, somethingaboutmaps
Like any tool, critique can be wielded both helpfully and harmfully; it can help improve our designs, or it can be used to shun others who deviate from our preferred practices. Staying on the good side of the ledger is a constant challenge, and to that end, I will share some of the ways I approach and think about critique. I will give no rules for determining whether a critique is good or ill; that is not my place to adjudicate. I will simply offer bits of my own practice for you make use of, or ignore, as you wish.

How to talk about maps
Madison Draper, Vanessa Knoppke-Wetzel, Mapbox
Let's talk about how we talk about maps. We'll briefly look at what to review in a map and then focus on how to give that review. From academic critique to public forums to our own judgment, every map undergoes some sort of review. Borrowing largely from the design review process, we'll discuss practical techniques for giving construction. This includes various frameworks, ways to eliminate bias and micro-aggressions, the power of semantics, and how to encourage others when reviewing their map.

Creating Localized Experiences in a Worldwide Map
Jessie Braden, Apple
Worldwide interactive maps are complicated in many ways and our design choices must consider obvious variables like device size, mode options, and accessibility. But, to make our maps inclusive, designers must also align culturally specific user expectations within worldwide design frameworks. This can be especially challenging on top of technical issues like data alignment and complex zoom transitions. This presentation discusses how Apple’s Cartographic Design group worked closely with a culturally representative team to integrate 37 new datasets that create a rich, tailored user experience for Japan.

How Should National Geographic Map the World? Cartographic Database 2.0
Alex Tait, National Geographic Society
This presentation will look at the ongoing work at National Geographic to create an accurate vector map of the world for all our mapping products and non-profit programs. This new Cartographic Database version 2.0 replaces the original database we created from the printed plates of our Atlas of the World, 7th and 8th editions, published in 1999 and 2004. This first version of the database contained all the displacement, generalization, and other accumulated errors from decades of compilation from a myriad of paper maps sources—the best of their time, but not in alignment with modern satellite sensor derived geographic datasets. I will look at the decisions we faced in compiling a new database in an era of ubiquitous private global maps (Google, Apple, etc.) and the amazing but limited OpenStreetMap.

We Made A Facebook Map
Stephanie May, Vladimir Gluzman Peregrine, Facebook
Facebook took a novel approach to building a vector tile map for use across their products -- one that empowered cartographers in unique and important ways. In this talk we will share what we did with that empowerment, plus insights about working as cartographers in tech, and details about how we built our favorite elements of the reference map now gracing your Facebook News Feed.

Facilitating Discovery with Symbol Groups
Lee France, John Czaplewsk, Gaia GPS
One aspect of paper outdoor topographic maps that helps facilitate planning and discovery is the grouping of symbols that represent concentrations of activity and amenities. What if we could bring this same clear and informative visualization to a dynamic digital map? We set out to do just that for the Gaia GPS Topo Map in a collaboration of clever data engineering and cartographic styling all the while discovering a completely different way to render symbols. We will show how we arrived at our goal from the data perspective and the outside-the-box cartographic approach to displaying symbol groups on an outdoor recreation topographic map.

Explorations in 3D web cartography
Raluca Nicola, Esri
Interactive 3D cartography has greatly evolved in the last years. New tools allow cartographers and mapping enthusiasts to easily create 3D web maps. Technology advances allow users to interact with 3D maps on a variety of devices, including their mobile phones. As a result, there are already many interactive 3D maps out there and there is a lot to learn from all these maps. In this talk, I will provide an overview of what is currently possible in 3D web cartography and what are the current challenges and possible solutions when creating such maps. More precisely, we’ll look into specifics of 3D symbology and rendering styles ranging from realistic to abstract.

Where the map comes from.
Mark Denil, sui generis
Where does the map comes from? John Constable observed that "we see nothing truly till we understand it." John Dewey pointed out that this coming to know is “the beginning of a complex interaction, upon the nature of [which] depends the character of the thing as finally experienced.” We know that the reception and acceptance of a map can vary considerably according to who is seeing it. How can we examine that pivotal interaction? How can we find a way to discover where it is the map comes from?

Mapping the Planetary Mine
Eric Robsky Huntley, MIT, Christopher Alton, University of Toronto, Zulaikha Ayub, Princeton
The annual meeting of the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) is the largest mining conference in the world. At the 2020 meeting, a large team of scholars and activists convened a concurrent counter-conference intended to both disrupt and investigate the colonial workings of extractive capital by taking the conference hall seriously as a site of planetary significance. Here, we will share "Mapping the Planetary Mine," a project developed by Graphe - a critical geography and design collective - that consists of teaching resources and interactive mappings that reveal the depth of what Martín Arboleda calls the 'planetary mine.'

Worldviews: Art, Cartography, and the Power of Places Beyond    
Darren Sears
Ever since artwork became a serious hobby I have had a single-minded focus on creating what I call “worldviews”—paintings, each “fractured” into multiple aerial and perspective views, depicting environmental edges, contrasts, and sequences rather than one disjointed landscape. Developing these maps (now full-time) satisfies an urge to add structure and definition to natural environments, simultaneously zooming in and out to illustrate where they end and what lies beyond. Ultimately this pursuit, which feels closer to landscape architecture (my previous field) than to painting, gives me a feeling of control—the empowering sense of having complete knowledge of a place.

Space and power in the cartography of tabletop games
Jim Thatcher, University of Washington Tacoma, David O'Sullivan, Victoria University of Wellington
Tabletop games have seen rapid growth in popularity and financial backing recently; yet, have remained under-examined by cartographers. Given their reliance on a playing field, which if not always explicitly ‘a map’ is invariably a space, cartographic examination has merit. We present a typology of cartographic representations in board game design choices, ranging from space as surface to space as emergent field. While it may be obvious that the kinds of spaces in a game affects the choices available to players, we argue they also influence the ideologies and politics that can be communicated through games as cultural, material products.

Data By Touch
Crystal Lee, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Digital mapping and data visualizations have traditionally focused on encoding information visually, and discussions about making these visualizations more accessible have tended to focus on colorblindness or on translating a 2D map into a 3D printed object. What would data visualizations and maps look like if they were designed with different (and sometimes competing) modes of accessibility in mind? How do we approach multisensory methods of mapping and design through the lens of data feminism and disability justice? In this talk, I will introduce the promises and perils of multisensory data mapping, a burgeoning field which purports to make maps accessible through tactile maps (“data physicalizations”), olfactory signposting, data sonification, and beyond. By investigating the genealogy of multisensory information systems like braille, I show how current “multimodal interaction methods” can draw on the histories of assistive technologies and sensory perception in order to build a more inclusive and just future. Mapping data is an embodied practice that encodes arguments about gender, ability, and modernity in the user interface, and I use historical and ethnographic methods to show how these ideas become reified in practice.

Making Flood Maps Accessible: Designing Tactile FIRMs
Harrison Cole, Penn State University
I present the initial results of my research on designing tactile flood maps for the purposes of natural hazard mitigation planning. As it stands, natural hazard mitigation planning on a local level involves the extensive use of conventional visual maps. If people who are blind or visually impaired want to contribute to the planning process, anything involving a map will be difficult or impossible for them to engage with. In response, I discuss my research on developing a workflow for transcribing conventional FEMA flood maps (FIRMs) into tactile media, and its implications for spatial analysis via tactile media.

Using Augmented Reality to Communicate Climate Change Pressure on Vancouver Island Marmot Habitat
Dave McLaughlin, Penn State University
The endangered Vancouver Island Marmot may lose as much as 97% of its suitable habitat by 2080 as a result of the ecological effects of projected climate change. Communicating science results like these to the public remains a major challenge of climate response. Fortunately, newly accessible augmented reality tools, in combination with cartographic best practices, present a medium for overcoming some of these science-communication challenges. This presentation demonstrates the use of an augmented reality web cartography experience that was developed to visualize marmot habitat change over the next 60 years.

Adaptive Cartography in Natural Disaster Management: A Domain Gap Analysis
Chenxiao (Atlas) Guo, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Cartography plays a critical role in the practice of natural disaster management. Focusing on cartographic representation and interaction, this research conducts a gap analysis on recent adaptive mapping practices under the context of natural disaster management. Specifically, a coded two-dimensional framework is built to review individual applications: Cartographic dimension involves representation (basemap, mapping method, temporal representation, uncertainty) and interaction (goal, operator, spatial analysis, web mapping service); contextual dimension considers hazard type, geographic extent, phase, stakeholder and relevant capability. Expected results include a large table with summary of state-of-art pattern and potential gaps in practice.

Fun facts and quirky things about the 40 places where NACIS conferences have been held!

Join the event here: https://live.remo.co/e/trivia-happy-hour 
Open this page in a browser or on your phone: joinmyquiz.com/pro

In the event, Quizmaster Dennis McClendon will give you a code to allow you to submit answers online.

It's the NACIS after-party! Unwind and hang out with friends one last time after NACIS Geo-Trivia. Join the event here: https://live.remo.co/e/trivia-happy-hour 

Note: using a camera and microphone is highly recommended for better personal connections. Event capacity: 500 people