Category Archives: Spatial IT/GIS

Low-Code/No-Code Mapping

Location-aware apps can now be created with almost no coding expertise. Is this the next frontier in mobile GIS? When authorities at the Ara Hīkoi Aotearoa, New Zealand’s Walking Access Commission, needed to revamp the country’s web-based maps, they knew that they had to build a handy and more user-friendly alternative for their hiking patrons.  ...

How Cool

Los Angeles uses GIS technologies to help residents find respite during heat waves In late August 2022, a vicious heat dome sat over Los Angeles just when summer would typically fade into fall. For a week, temperatures climbed as high as 115 degrees in parts of Southern California—and didn’t cool off much at night. The extreme...

How Green Is Your City?

As tree-planting efforts take root in cities around the world, urban managers turn to geospatial tools to map and monitor their community’s canopy cover.  New Yorkers are fast walkers. But there are those who prefer to take it slow, like the group of well-trained volunteers who purposely roamed around the streets of the Big Apple,...

Surveying for Safety at Waipio Valley

Lush vegetation, beautiful ocean vistas, and a historic Hawaiian valley provide the setting for a complex engineering project that addresses technical and cultural concerns.  The Waipio Valley on the island of Hawaii has great historical significance within Hawaiian culture. Known as the Valley of Kings, it was home to many generations of the royal family...

Teaching the Ethics of Geo

Maps have always been powerful means of communication, whether etched in cave walls, stone, wood, silver of centuries past, or, in the 20th Century, copper plates and, later, film. In our own century, maps are everywhere—on our phones, computers, fitness apps, and news media, communicating in a myriad of ways about changes over space and...