Geography grad student
Andy Woodruff wins national NACIS Interactive Map prize
Second-year geography grad student Andy Woodruff has won
the Interactive Map section
of the student
web mapping contest of the North American Cartographic
Information Society (NACIS).
The
interactive map integrates actual video footage with a searchable
map that simulates
driving through Cincinnati, Ohio urban streets. The map, "Cincinnati
Roads," can
be viewed online at: http://www.cincinnatiroads.com/ .
The award
was announced during the 25th annual NACIS meeting held here
in Madison, WI on October 18-21. The award brings a $500
prize and significant recognition in the cartographic community.
A really useful idea
In a personal email, NACIS award director
and ESRI senior cartographer Charlie Frye said, "What
struck me first was that his idea is useful. Imagine
if Hertz or Google picked this idea up—travelers could
test drive their routes before arriving in a new city. I
would love to have that service. I
travel six to ten times a year, usually to two new cities
every year, and typically I arrive after the sun has set,
making navigation really difficult."
According to Frye,
the 3 judges base their decision as 15% on concept, 30% on cartography,
25% on technology, 15% on web design, and 15% on reliability—all
aspects of delivering solid web-based content. The
weighting focuses on the two areas that would require
the most of student's mapmaking and technical abilities.
Robust and fun
Frye also indicated he was impressed
with "how robust the application is. [Woodruff]
has several things a user can do at any time.
His map could
handle the abuse even the flakiest of users might dish
out... Some of that's due to the technology (Flash),"
he wrote, "but Andy also deserves some
credit for figuring it out and exploiting it. Not everybody
does that or to the level he did."
Not content with
following the video's pace? "You could
'speed' by hitting the fast-forward button," said
Frye.
Urban Ohio.com
Woodruff said he got the idea for this map from a friend,
Ethan Hahn, who he met in March through the UrbanOhio.com website,
an online community that mainly uses photography to showcase what
he calls the "urban
morphology" of Ohio.
"Hahn was interested in doing a website for his Cincinnati
videos," said Woodruff, "and—because I
was in Harrower's Geography 575 class at the time—it
made sense to do it as an interactive map instead." Hahn
shot the videos and Woodruff incorporated them into Flash.
The Cincinnati Roads map honed his cartographic and advanced
Flash programming skills, said Woodruff, but preparing
and coordinating the videos was fairly time-consuming.
Woodruff also said that he's been able to leverage many
of the techniques he learned and components he built for
the Cincinnati map for use in other interactive map work.
Recently, Woodruff was on the team that began the groundwork
for the interactive
campus map. His master's thesis, supervised by Prof.
Mark Harrower, will examine the utility of aerial photos
versus traditional line maps in online mapping environments.
Interactive maps are maturing, diffusing
"The NACIS Student
Web Mapping Contest has been something of a bellwether for
web maps in general," wrote NACIS'
award director Frye, "and this year it was very clear
that the state of that art has matured with highly-integrated
elements that are appropriately balanced against one another." Frye
wrote that all of this year's entries—not just the winners—had
these qualities, indicating that interactive maps are
maturing along with the diffusion of design skills to make
them.
Wrote Frye, "This permits better targeting and presentation
of information and knowledge—and I think that helps make
our world a better place."
Graduate funding for students with a global
environmental vision: NSF-IGERT Opportunities at the UW-Madison
Exceptional students interested in interdisciplinary and
international
environmental study are invited to apply for an NSF IGERT
PhD
Traineeship at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. These
traineeships
have a generous stipend, tuition waver, and health benefits.
Opportunities are available in two different programs:
1) Biodiversity Conservation and Sustainable
Development in Southwest China and 2)
Humans and the Global Environment.
Meeting the major challenges of biodiversity conservation
and
sustainable development requires understanding the interactions
of
biological, physical, social, and economic forces. IGERT
trainees will
address these issues by pursuing a PhD in one of over a dozen
departments and participating in IGERT seminars, workshops,
language
training, and field research in the Himalayas of Yunnan,
China - a "biodiversity hotspot."
For more information, please
visit http://www.swchina.wisc.edu.
The application deadline for this program is
January 15, 2007. Axing Zhu in the Department of Geography is a participating
faculty
member in this program, at azhu@wisc.edu.
Certificate in Humans and the Global Environment - the
CHANGE IGERT fellowship
To research problems of global environmental vulnerability,
and solve
them by promoting sustainable practices, researchers must
learn how to
analyze both qualitative and quantitative data. CHANGE IGERT
fellows
will acquire a new interdisciplinary graduate certificate
that blends
natural and social sciences at multiple scales from the global
to the
local. Fellows will also receive core skills training to
foster
successful interdisciplinary scholarship via a 'professional
skills' track interwoven into the curriculum. For more information,
please visit http://www.sage.wisc.edu/igert/. The
application deadline for this
program is January 2, 2007.
Students are welcome to contact Leila Harris
(lharris@geography.wisc.edu) and Lisa Naughton
(lnaughto@facstaff.wisc.edu) in the Department of Geography
if you are
interested in applying for CHANGE awards.
Horizons in Human Geography, Disciplinary
Edges and
Futures
The WUN Horizons in Human Geography Seminar Series is an international
series of virtual seminars looking at recent debates and developments
in
human geography. It brings together geographers from universities in the
United Kingdom (Bristol, Leeds, Manchester, Sheffield, Southampton), the
United States (Madison-Wisconsin, Illinois-Urbana Champaign, Penn State)
and Europe (Oslo).
This year the theme of the seminar series is 'Disciplinary
Edges and
Futures'. This will involve 'state of the field' presentations
on the
relationships between human geography and cognate domains
in the
sciences, social sciences and humanities.
All presentations are viedotaped and archived.
If you would like to view more details of the current program or access the
archived material please send
an email to the WUN coordinator requesting
access.
Exceptional students interested in interdisciplinary and
international
environmental study are invited to apply for an NSF IGERT
PhD
Traineeship at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. These
traineeships
have a generous stipend, tuition waver, and health benefits. 