CENTER FOR GEOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS NEWSLETTER
October 2014
HIGHLIGHTS
- Jason Ur Appointed as New Director of CGA
- New Staff at CGA
- FME Training Workshop
- Ebola First Responder Mapping Workshop - Nov 13th
- ESRI Development Center and Fisher Prize Awards
- Geocoding Best Practices
- Google Batch Distance Calculator
- NACIS Conference Report
- Call for Registration: GIS for Humanists Workshop
- CGA’s Monthly GIS Presentations
- Call for Posters for Lost and Found: A Science Symposium about Navigation
- GIS Day World Record Attempt
- Geography 2050: Mounting an Expedition to the Future
- Call for Papers: ESRI and AAG
- Shark Tracker
- More…
Jason Ur Appointed as New Director of CGA
On October 1st 2014, Jason Ur, Professor of Archaeology in the Department of Anthropology, was appointed as the Director of the Center for Geographic Analysis (CGA). He will also chair the CGA Faculty Steering Committee. Professor Ur studies the origins and development of cities and empires in the Middle East and their landscape impacts, using satellite remote sensing, mobile GIS-based field survey, and geospatial analysis. He has directed research projects in Syria, Turkey, and Iran. He currently leads the Erbil Plain Archaeological Survey in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, which is investigating six millennia of settlement and land use history in northern Mesopotamia. See this website for more about Professor Ur.
New Staff at CGA
The CGA has recently added two GIS Fellows to our team: Stephen McDonald and David Strohschein. Stephen was a co-developer of OpenGeoPortal, read more of his bio here. David has a multidisciplinary background that includes software design and geo information science. Read more about David here. They will be working on WorldMap, and other GIS programming tasks. Welcome to CGA!
FME Training Workshop
This workshop will introduce Feature Manipulation Engine (FME) Desktop as a powerful tool to streamline and automate integration of spatial and non-spatial data. November 5 and 6, 1:00pm - 5:00pm, in the Science Center B-09 at 1 Oxford St. For more information, and to register.
Ebola First Responder Mapping Workshop - Nov 13th
Come and Learn how to map rooftops in cities and the paths and roadways to remote villages in Western Africa using Open Street Map and satellite images. Join contributors world-wide and help create the maps which are being used in the fight against Ebola. Easy to make, these maps are for first responders including the World Health Organization, Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders and others. Thursday, November 13th, 6:00 PM - 8:00 p.m., CGIS South building at 1730 Cambridge St., Belfer Case Study Room (S020). Seats are limited, so please register for this event.
ESRI Development Center and Fisher Prize Awards
Registration for these awards, both $500 cash prizes, is now open to any Harvard student. Application deadlines are in April of 2015. Details for both awards, and to register: http://gis.harvard.edu/resources/awards
Geocoding Best Practices
A recent blog post by CGA explains what geocoding is, best practices to performing geocoding, and detailed instructions on how to geocode. Read the blog post.
Google Batch Distance Calculator
Driving, cycling, and walking distances can be calculated between batches of destination and origin pairs by using Google’s Python batch distance calculator. Read more, and use the tool.
NACIS Conference Report
The CGA’s Jeff Blossom recently attended the North American Cartographic Information Society annual conference. Read his report on the conference here.
Call for Registrations: GIS For Humanists Workshop
This full-day workshop on December 5th, 2014 offers hands on instruction on learning and applying several GIS and mapping techniques commonly used by those practicing in the Humanities. The workshop will include discussion and interactive exercises aimed to contextualize the usage of geography and maps for each participant’s individual research or teaching interests. Read more, and register.
CGA’s Monthly GIS Presentations – come join the discussion
“Pathways of Gentrification: Using Google Street View to Observe Neighborhood Renewal for Understanding the Persistence of Residential Inequality”, presented by Jackelyn Hwang, Ph.D. candidate in Sociology and Social Policy at Harvard University. November 12, 2014, 12:00 -1:00pm
“Bringing 3D Geospatial to the Web with Cesium”, presented by Patrick Cozzi, Analytical Graphics, Inc. November 19th, 2014, 12:00 -1:30pm
Upcoming GIS Technical Training Workshops
CGA offers several non-credit technical training workshops related to GIS (Free to Harvard affiliates but registration is required). The workshops are:
- · Introduction to Remote Sensing – Cambridge, by Sumeeta Srinivasan, 1:00 – 3:00pm, October 31st, 2014
- · Advanced Remote Sensing for Land Use Analysis, by Stacy Bogan, 1:00 – 3:00pm, November 7, 2014.
- · Open Source QGIS 2.0, by Lex Berman 1:00 – 3:00pm, November 14, 2014.
- Three Dimensional GIS, by Paul Cote 1:00 – 3:00pm, November 21, 2014.
More information about technical training workshops and registrations can be found here: http://gis.harvard.edu/training/non-credit-training/technical-training-workshops
HARVARD GIS COMMUNITY NEWS
Call for Posters for Lost and Found: A Science Symposium about Navigation
This 2014 Radcliffe symposium will focus on the important and challenging topic of navigation and way-finding. The symposium invites graduate students, post-docs, and undergraduates to submit posters illustrating innovative research underway on any topic related to navigation. The Poster Session for the symposium will be held on the first floor of Fay House (10 Garden Street), in the exhibition space at the Radcliffe Institute, from November 11 through November 23, 2014. Those interested in presenting posters should contact Maura Madden at ventures@radcliffe.harvard.edu For more information on this symposium, and to register, click here.
Harvard Geospatial Library Additions
New additions to the Harvard Geospatial Library (hgl.harvard.edu) include detailed ca. 1900 Fire Insurance Atlas images of Izmir, Turkey and Alexandria and Cairo, Egypt, as well as 45 charts from a 1625 navigational atlas by Willem Blaeu and 16 charts from a 1654 navigational atlas by Frederik de Wit. There are also many new large-scale atlas pages representing streets and buildings in Boston between 1889-1891 from volumes 4-8 of the “Atlas of the City of Boston” by George Bromley.
CONFERENCES, CALLS, EVENTS & EMPLOYMENT
GIS Research Assistant Position
The Zambian Water Project Team is seeking a research assistant experienced with GIS and data management to help create a comprehensive set of harmonized data for a project related to water access and health outcomes in Lusaka, Zambia. View the full job description and apply.
Cartography Specialty Group Masters Thesis Grants
Applications for the next round of AAG Cartography Specialty Group Master’s Thesis Research Grants are due by November 15th, 2014. For more information, and to apply.
Join the GIS Day World Record Attempt
You are invited to join the Global effort of the UK Centres of Excellence to attempt a world record during GIS Day/National Geography Week November 16th – 22nd, 2014. All the details of the event and how to sign up can be found in the Map Journal here: http://rhsb.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapJournal/?appid=d44ea4164dfb41238c427ec0ade64768
Geography 2050: Mounting an Expedition to the Future This conference will be on November 19th, in New York City. Visit the conference website: http://geography2050.org/ for more information. Being held in conjunction with this conference is a MapStory contest with a $1,000 prize. For more information, click here.
Call for Papers: ESRI and AAG
The deadline to submit a paper to the 2015 ESRI International Users conference is October 31. The deadline to submit a paper to the 2015 American Association of Geographers (AAG) is November 5th.
NEWS ON GIS RESEARCH AND SERVICES
USGS Historical Topographic Map Explorer
When the Snows Fail – article and maps
You are Here – A Study of Place
The Age of Megacities – A Story Map
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Editors of this issue are Fei Carnes and Jeff Blossom.
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