Graduates earn GIS Certificate We congratulate four graduates who have earned a GIS/GAM Certificate in addition to their major and who also worked as proctors in the Geospatial Analysis and Mapping (GAM) Lab.
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Mark LaFreniere (B.S. in geological sciences / minor in anthropology) was able to gain research experience in geology and in anthropology. Mark constructed a database with Dr. Salvatore (geology) for recording the results of Mars rock analyses. With Dr. Chenoweth (anthropology), he utilized GIS to overlay old town plats with modern maps in order to further analyze the lives of those who went to a lost church in the mid 1800s. Taylor Passucci (B.S. in earth science) gained valuable skills in implementing new GIS procedures while working as a GIS intern at the Matthaei Botanical Gardens and Nichols Arboretum in Ann Arbor. The last academic year she also interned with the Washtenaw County Water Resource Commissioners Office. Her duties included digitizing municipal features, maintaining the organization’s geodatabase and creating map products for internal and external clients.
Karina Vasquez (B.S. in biological science), completed an independent study project under Dr. Napieralski (geology) determining site suitability for a proposed military installation on the Poland-Russia border. Following graduation, she will be interning with the Information Technology department at the Ann Arbor field office of the Environmental Protection Agency.
Jacob Yesh-Brochstein (B.A. in environmental studies) has worked as a research assistant for the Urban Praxis Workshop at UM-Dearborn analyzing and mapping property speculation data in Detroit. He also assisted with various research projects in the Social Sciences Research Lab and engaged with community groups to provide needed data. Jacob is currently working as a data analyst with DataDrivenDetroit specializing in Postgres, Python, and spatial analysis.
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GIS in Supply Chain Analytics
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Two groups of College of Business (COB) students in Associate Professor Yi-Su Chen’s OM660 Supply Chain Analytics used the GIS software ArcGIS to solve two supply chain related problems: transportation and network design respectively. Focusing on the accessibility of UM-Dearborn, the first group used ArcGIS to visualize where current bus routes are located and where students live in relation to the current bus routes. The group was able to make a recommendation on which current bus routes should run more frequently and identify a new connecting route so that most students would only need to walk half a mile or less to access (more frequently) run buses. The other group used ArcGIS to conduct geospatial analysis and identified two communal drop-off points for multi-family apartment complexes that currently do not have recycling service. The identified drop-off points not only have the features of easy access by GFL trucks, but also make use of existing facilities (e.g., grocery stores and library) that are typically frequented by residents so that the implementation cost can be minimized.
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Community Health Mapping Workshops
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The University of Michigan hosted four Community Health Maps workshops in four days on four different campuses: Ann Arbor, Flint, Detroit Center and Dearborn. The workshops provided hands-on instruction in low/no-cost data collection and mapping for community advocates to meet health mapping needs. The 16 participants at the Dearborn workshop on April 5 included faculty, students, staff, and members of the community. The instructor Kurt Menke introduced the attendees to Fulcrum for data collection, Carto for creating web maps, and QGIS for mapping and data analysis. The workshop slides and other resources are available on a website Marisa Conte compiled for the workshops. Community Health Maps is an initiative by the National Library of Medicine to provide information on low cost mapping tools for community-based organizations.
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Poland and Ukraine Study Abroad
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Deanna Burrows, a student participating in Assistant Professor of History Anna Muller’s Poland and Ukraine Study Abroad, created a StoryMap about her experience. In each city, Muller and her student conducted observational research on how students’ senses interacted with the new environment around them. They mapped senses of smell, taste, feeling, sight, and sound.
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GIS Presentations and Community Engagement
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Josh Akers and coauthors gave a presentation at the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers on Liquid tenancy: Community Organizing Post-Crisis and New Forms of Resistance. The paper focuses on the geography of speculative property ownership, the increasingly common use of exploitative instruments such as land contracts and lease-to-own agreements, and the resulting increase in evictions. Their research is based on collaboration with ACORN Homesavers Campaign and Detroit Eviction Defense.
Akers also continues to work with Brightmore Homes, a group of tenants that are organizing to purchase houses they were promised on land contracts 20 years ago. UM-Dearborn’s Urban Praxis, led by Akers, supported efforts to document land ownership by identifying houses that were part of the development and by creating a system to track needs and repairs. He also developed maps for identifying community needs and resources for Charlevoix Village, a neighborhood association on the east side of Detroit.
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Ulrich Kamp, professor of earth and environment, and undergraduate student Kate Truitt use GIS and remote sensing analysis methodologies to map glaciers in the Peruvian Andes. The team, that also involves colleagues from Vanderbilt University and Stony Brook University, will then compare the current glacier extents with those from 1931. For mapping the historical extents, the American Museum of Natural History in New York provided hundreds of oblique photographs from the Shippee-Johnson Aerial Photography Expedition to Peru. Photogrammetry and structure from motion (SfM) software as well as digital elevation models are used to identify locations, match the 1931 photographs with current satellite images, and detect changes in the glacial landscape.
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| | Mapping Resources at UM-Dearborn
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| Joel Seewald, the librarian for Natural Sciences, compiled a list of resources on GIS software, learning GIS, and finding datasets. Joel is also a good resource as he is currently working on a Master’s degree in GIS.
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| Using Apps for Data Collection
Tuesday, June 18, 9-10 a.m., GAM Lab (1170 SSB)
This workshop provides an introduction to Survey123 for ArcGIS and to Collector for ArcGIS. Survey123 is a form-driven survey tool that lets you easily create, share and analyze surveys. It accommodates smart forms with skip logic, defaults, and support for multiple languages. Collector can be used to gather and edit data in the field.
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How to get my data into a GIS
Tuesday, June 18, 10 a.m.-noon, GAM Lab (1170 SSB)
This workshop will provide an overview and hands-on training in some key techniques of how to get data into a GIS: 1) Georeferencing a historic map, 2) Geocoding a list of street addresses, 3) Creating shapefiles from scratch, 4) Create your own maps using data off the web.
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Intro to ArcGIS Pro
Wednesday, June 19, 9-11 a.m., GAM Lab (1170 SSB)
This workshop is for people who have wanted to check out GIS, but never found the time. It is also for people who got started with GIS a while back and would like to learn how to navigate the new ArcGIS Pro interface. While ArcGIS Desktop is still widely used, it will eventually be replaced by ArcGIS Pro, which has been redesigned from the ground up. It interfaces more directly with web maps in ArcGIS Online and StoryMaps.
In this workshop, you will learn how to navigate ArcGIS Pro’s interface, create and symbolize data layers, run some spatial analysis, and create map layouts.
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Intro on StoryMaps
Wednesday, June 19, 11 a.m.-noon, GAM Lab (1170 SSB)
ESRI StoryMaps let you combine narrative text with images and multimedia content in an interactive web environment. You don’t even have to include maps and there is no coding (e.g,. html) required. A series of templates make it easy to present content in a professional layout.
This workshop will provide an overview over the different templates and give participants the opportunity to familiarize themselves with some of the templates.
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Geospatial Technologies Courses: Fall 2019
Geol 303: Geodesy and Cartographic Principles Geol 440: Advanced GIS Applications
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| Do you have any GIS questions related to your teaching or research?
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