NACIS 2016

Just arrived in Colorado Springs? Instead of hanging out by yourself at the hotel, wondering what all the other attendees are doing, connect at our Tuesday Night Meetup! It's a chance to say hello to old friends and make some new ones before the conference begins in earnest.

Join host Dylan Moriarty in the lobby of the Antlers hotel at 6pm, and then head across the street to the Phantom Canyon Brewing Co. (phantomcanyon.com) for dinner and conversation to start off your NACIS experience!

GDCD Field Trip to Denver to visit USGS and Denver Public Library

Join us for a field trip tour of the USGS Library and Denver Public Library.  USGS Librarian Emily Wild will be giving a tour to show us geospatial collections and provide some insight in how the USGS operates.  

Librarian Craig Haggit will be providing the tour of the Denver Public Library and map collections which includes Colorado mining claim maps, railroad valuation maps, an Ortellius Atlas, and 10th Mountain Division war maps among others.

Individuals will be reponsible for public transportation and dining costs.  As the USGSLibrary is in a very secure federal facility, these security protocol should be kept in mind:

Guns or any weapons are not allowed.  Although marijuana is legal in the state of Colorado, you will be arrested if you are found with it on the federal site.  There will be military armed guards processing each person before we are allowed on the federal site.  If you are not a US citizen, you will be allowed on the USGS tour, but will have to be escorted by an employee at all times, so please identify your citizenship status when signing up for this event so the USGS can plan for an escort if needed.  To meet security protocols in the most efficient manner in our tight schedule for the day, it is imperative we arrive and depart together as a group, so arriving on your own at a different time is discouraged.  GPS also will not work in and around the federal facility, which is very large and contains many federal agencies.


Public transportation costs per person:  Bustang round trip: $24, Denver RTD bus and light rail day pass: $5.20. Total transportation cost per person: $29.20

http://www.ridebustang.com/          http://www.rtd-denver.com/Fares.shtml

Itinerary: 

5:20 AM            Leave from Antler’s Hotel and walk East on Colorado Ave. then South on S. Tejon to Bustang Bus stop Tejon/Nevada Park and Ride @ Highway 25 (25 minutes).

6:00 AM            Catch Bustang Bus from Colorado Springs to Denver Union Station (2 hours 15 minutes).

8:25 AM            Depart Denver Union Station on W Line Light Rail to Government RTD Federal Center Station (35 minutes).

9:00 AM            Walk to USGS Library building (about 16 minutes).

9:16 AM            Go through security and take tour of USGS Library (about 2.5 hours).

11:45 PM          Walk to restaurants near Government RTD Federal Center Station on S. Union St. (25 minutes).

12:10 PM          Eat Lunch on your own at restaurants near Government RTD Federal Center Station on S. Union St. (40 minutes)

12:50 PM          Walk to Government RTD Federal Center Station (10 minutes).

01:09 PM          Take W Line Light Rail to Decatur Federal Station (20 min).

01:35 PM          Take 16 Broadway Bus from Decatur Federal Station Gate F to Colfax Ave. and Broadway (14 minutes).

01:49 PM          Walk two blocks south from Colfax Ave. and Broadway to Denver Public Library (3 minutes).

02:00 PM          Tour of Denver Public Library (2 hours).

04:00 PM          Walk about 1 mile from Denver Public Library to Denver Bus Center @ 1055 19th St. (20 min).

04:30 PM          Take southbound Bustang Bus from Denver Bus Center to Colorado Springs Downtown Terminal @ 127 East Kiowa St.(2 hours and 15 minutes). Optional: If participants want to hang out in Denver longer, there are two more southbound Bustang busses leaving the Denver Bus Center for Colorado Springs at 05:10 PM and 06:15 PM.

06:45 PM          Walk about 0.4 mi from Downtown Terminal to Antlers (conference) Hotel via west on Kiowa St., south on Cascade Ave & west on Pikes Peak Ave. (8 minutes).

06:53 PM          Arrive at Antlers Hotel.

 

Maki 3.0: open sourced icons for maps
Nathaniel Slaughter, Mapbox
20 Minutes 

It can be a challenge to design a consistent and readable set of symbols for any map, but the limited resolution and variability of digital screens provide additional hurdles. The Maki project has been an attempt to work within these constraints and provide an open-source set of vector symbols for common map points of interest. The vector icon set embraces the pixel grid and is easily customized with different colors and backgrounds to fit a wide variety of maps styles. Earlier this year, Maki 3.0 was released with a focus on improving three core aspects of the project: the overall design of the icon set, tools to create customized versions, and clear style guidelines to help anyone design new symbols for the project. This talk will focus on the processes and design considerations for each of these aspects, and how they are already helping people use Maki and contribute to its

 

Creating, Collaborating On, and Maintaining Maps with Make
Seth Fitzsimmons, Stamen
10 Minutes 

Reproducible, automated workflows are fundamental to the creative process. They provide a safety net for experimentation and document complicated step-by-step actions. Makefiles have been used to compile source code for decades, so let's start there. Data preparation (format conversion, re-projection, filtering, project initialization) and post-processing steps (PDF generation, compression, publishing to the web) can be viewed as a series of transformations. This prevents us from needing to remember error-prone, rote steps and allows us to focus more on creativity and collaboration.. We will also discuss the concept of idempotency, the result of which is that only resources that have changed need to be re-transformed, speeding up the processing. We will work through some examples of how to combine `make`, basic shell scripting, and other tools to achieve these goals. (`make` is a command line tool, so some familiarity there is helpful.)
View Slides » 

 

Tools for getting OSM into Desktop GIS
Daniel McGlone, Azavea
15 Minutes 

Since its inception, OpenStreetMap has crowdsourced the addition of millions of features of spatial data across the world. It’s become a fantastic resource for geographic reference data and it’s constantly being improved and updated. While it’s open source and the data is free, getting it into a usable format for analysis in desktop GIS, for example, can take a bit of effort. This session will give an overview of a handful of tools and apps for getting data from OSM and into desktop GIS software such as ArcGIS and QGIS.

 

Breaking up with Raster and Going Steady with Vector Tiles
Katie Kowalsky, Mapzen
15 Minutes

Cartographer meets map tiles. That infamous meet-cute has caused scores of love, commitment, and eventual heartbreak for all of us in web mapping. The technology behind tiles is constantly changing, growing, and expanding—but where does that leave a cartographer? Are the limits of raster tiles worth abandoning for the mysterious, bad boy vector tiles? This talk will impart the wisdom of how a cartographer’s quest for true love in her tiling scheme and possible workflows can adapt smoothly to a new relationship with vector tiles.
View Slides » 

Transportation flow mapping: a practical productivity presentation
Matthew Hampton, Oregon Metro
15 Minutes 

Learn how to quickly and efficiently make transportation flow maps using easily gathered data.

Branding + Identity with Maps
Kate Chanba
15 Minutes 

Maps are integral to an organization's branding mix, but often stand alone both visually and conceptually. GIS and marketing departments often function separately, and seldom bring in a cartographic designer to bridge the gap. To demonstrate how useful it is to include them in the design process, I will use the recently developed Arlington County Commuter Services Bicycle Comfort Level Maps as an example. I will also use these maps to discuss strategies that optimize maps for branding and help organizations unify their internal messaging—such as creating descriptive icons and symbology, storytelling, user testing, and using maps for promotion and tourism.

Pretty maps without the price tag: Cartography with just QGIS
Emily Eros, Red Cross
15 Minutes 

To produce quality maps for disaster situations, the American Red Cross constantly struggles to balance rapid deadlines with good cartographic design. We also believe in using free and open software whenever possible. Historically, we struggled to make print-ready maps using just QGIS; its print composer isn't intuitive and certain functionalities just aren’t there. So until recently, we used QGIS to process our data and then performed styling in Illustrator. This method works, but adds extra time and complexity that just isn’t realistic in the aftermath of a major earthquake. Over the past year, we’ve channeled our energy into figuring out tricks and processes for doing cartography entirely within Q. In this session, we’ll show how to do some of our favorite styling effects without needing Adobe. We’ll demonstrate how to make the print composer work. And we’ll share some of the limitations we’re still experiencing.
View Slides »

 

Re-thinking Maps for the Web
Jon Bowen, National Geographic Maps
20 Minutes 

Creating maps for the Web has become unavoidable to modern cartography as the use of mobile devices has risen exponentially. Not only has the size of the canvas changed to that of a playing card, but users expect the map you create to work equally as well on a phone or tablet and everything in-between while on a fast turn around. The challenge now is how to take everything, scale it down or modify it to what the audience expects, and still get the point across. Although interactive is flashy - it's not always the best solution. So let's rethink optimization and design what we can in a realistic timeframe. I will demonstrate and show examples of where we at Nat Geo have weaved together toolsets to intuitively and quickly serve our audience.
View Slides »

Data Driven Styling for GL Mapping
Molly Lloyd, Mapbox
15 Minutes 

In May of this year, Mapbox introduced Data Driven Styling for the open source Mapbox GL JS  library. This release opens up new possibilities for map styling at runtime and the ability to build dynamic thematic maps and data visualizations on the fly. This talk will discuss how data driven styling can be used for both dynamic data visualizations and base map design and why data driven styling coupled with other Mapbox GL JS features like efficient vector tiles, symbol clustering, and runtime styling is a milestone for web and mobile mapping technology. I will provide live examples and plenty of resources to allow participants to take advantage of these new features in their work.

Gunpodwer Maps (you know, for kids!)
Nick Martinelli, Foundry
10 Minutes

Alternate titles include, "How we got a university to let us ignite gunpowder on campus, with kids, unsupervised, to make maps." OR, "How we convinced a city to buy our one day $2.5mil insurance policy so we could ignite gunpowder at the local library with kids and make maps." Spoiler Alert: I have no idea really, we just did it and people got engaged, and we got to talk about maps with a bunch of kids and their parents, which was super. The practicality here is about how to engage the larger community in discussions about maps and mapping. 

If you registered for Practical Cartography Day - lunch is included!

The joy of hex: Challenges in creating and interpreting spatial bins
Sarah Battersby, Tableau Software
20 Minutes

Complex, large N point datasets present challenges for visualization and synthesis of spatial patterns due to the density of marks and resulting clutter from overlapping mark symbols.  One suggested method for dealing with complex point datasets is to partition the space into polygonal bins, and symbolize each bin based on point count inside the bin.    Because regular polygonal (e.g., square or hexagonal) bins appear as same size and shape, they are suggested as a method for improving ability to analyze smooth, continuous change in point distributions, while avoiding artifacts from irregular political bin geometry.  However, there is a fallacy if regular geographic bins are really considered to represent "same size and shape."   In this presentation, we discuss challenges and tradeoffs the cartographer must consider in creating spatial bins, and, more importantly, challenges the map reader faces in interpreting bins in a way that aligns with the cartographer’s intended message. 

View Slides »

Natural Scene Designer Pro 7
Tom Patterson, US National Park Service
20 Minutes 

Natural Scene Designer Pro 7, due for release this summer for Mac and Windows, has a slew of new features. I will demo my favorites. SVG Export to Adobe Illustrator Combining vector shapefiles and raster 3D terrain is now easy with NSD 7. The exported vectors in SVG format include a bounding box matching the size of the of rendered 3D terrain. Multiple Lights Northwest light is not always the best solution for depicting all features on a shaded relief. To improve the appearance of tricky terrain features, NSD Pro 7 now gives you the option to add multiple lights on a relief. You can adjust the azimuth and elevation angle of each light. Terrain Editing Is that ski area you are mapping not high enough? Use the improved terrain editing tools to brush in more elevation. Texture Shading Enhance shaded relief with this now built-in rendering option.

 

Cartography and the Lost Art of Drawing
Ryan Sullivan, Paste in Place
15 Minutes 

This talk will illustrate the benefits of integrating hand sketching into the map design process. As cartography and related disciplines come to rely on the computer and digital technologies as their primary design and production tool, the unique benefits of hand sketching and its relationship to visual thinking and design development have been overlooked. The presentation will share specific examples and methods from the author’s work and offer suggestions for how others can incorporate hand sketching into their work flow. Additionally, examples from other cartographers and designers will be included.

View Slides »

The complete solution from data to mobile device
Nick Burchell, Avenza Systems Inc
20 Minutes 

Avenza's platform is revolutionizing cartography in the digital era. This presentation will demonstrate how cartographers can bring raw geospatial data into graphic design applications to create high quality maps, then show how they can be distributed to smartphones and tablets for public consumption. Where maps were once only for print, you will see how they can now be easily and quickly distributed to map readers globally for use in their work and for their leisure activities.

View Slides »

Hand-rendered map illustration techniques
Molly O’Halloran, Molly O’Halloran, Inc.
20 Minutes 

Simple, practical design, drafting, and painting tips I've picked up from architecture school, art classes, and years of trial, error, and experimentation in the making of hand-rendered maps. We'll walk through the mapmaking process, starting with finding good, copyright-free base maps and designing the page/area layout. We'll look at papers and transferring techniques; pen nibs for line work and lettering; inks for fountain and dip pens; watercolor techniques for shorelines and mountains. I'll also touch on Photoshop cleanup and file assembly, and will be eager to hear tips and techniques that work best for you.
View Slides » 

Cartography with CARTO Builder
Mamata Akella, CartoDB
20 Minutes 

CARTO Builder is a powerful tool for data, analysis, and cartographic design. With an easy-to-use online interface, you can take your thematic web maps to the next level. During this talk, I will highlight how to make a variety of thematic maps from proportional symbols to dot density to the standard choropleth (and more!) all inside of our new and improved online interface. We will touch on important thematic mapping considerations including options for map types based on the characteristics of your data, projections, and enhanced options for color ramps and labeling. We will also explore other data-to-analysis-to-design methods that are now available for your next thematic web map.
View Slides » 

InDesign + ArcMap (Photoshop & Illustrator too)
Brian Greer, Dynamic Planning + Science
20 Minutes 

Using ArcMap, InDesign, Photoshop, and ArcMap in tandem has allowed high-volume, high-quality production in our 2-man shop. Here's an whirlwind dive into our workflow for a 50-map series of flood depth and inundation maps. This workflow includes data driven pages map production in ArcMap, batch raster processing in photoshop, graphic legend production in illustrator, and composition in InDesign.
View Slides »

Making map movies with ArcGIS Pro
Craig Williams, Esri
Kenneth Field, Esri
20 Minutes 

Video has become a common and compelling way to share cartographic content in today's age. Standard video formats work well across web, mobile, and desktop environments, allowing you to author once and share widely. This makes video an enticing format for cartographic communication allowing the author to guide the viewer through space, time, and theme. Animations open up a rich, flexible way to make maps which extends the cartographer's toolkit. We'll show how to use animations in ArcGIS Pro to create map movies of thematic data and simulated environments in 2D and 3D. We'll also show videos created in ArcGIS Pro to demonstrate additional possibilities.
View Slides » 

Terrain in Photoshop: Layer by Layer
Daniel Huffman, somethingaboutmaps
20 Minutes 

Inspired by the many things I've learned through attending NACIS, I set out a couple of years ago to map the landforms of Michigan. The end result was a 4 GB Photoshop file, which I will deconstruct before your very eyes. I'll use it explain some helpful techniques for working with bathymetry, land cover, relief, and more, interwoven with tales of how the connections I've made through this remarkable organization and conference made it all possible.
View Slides » 

Join us for the Third Annual NACIS Fun Run and Walk! This year will be a little different than the previous two: rather than tour downtown, we will hit the dirt of the beautiful, wild Rocky Mountain foothills and get a view of our host city from above. We'll shuttle up to Red Rock Canyon Open Space, which features old quarry ponds, impressive vertical fins of sandstone rock, and views galore. Bring your off-road shoes. Please meet promptly at 5:15pm in the Antlers Hotel lobby, and plan to be away until at least 6:30pm. If we have enough vehicles in the group, we will carpool; otherwise we will take a city bus. Runners, walkers, and amblers welcome.

Revisit Kirk's talk here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebiDxiag-Cs

The 2016 NACIS Map Gallery features a stunning array of printed maps and posters, tangible pieces, and a very special exhibit on the CIA Cartography Center’s 75th Anniversary. Sprinkled throughout the gallery you will find the occasional poster with a QR code on it – this indicates a digital map, and you should read the code to see the fascinating online components to these posters. Also be sure to keep your eyes open for the bright lettered flags indicating an entry into our annual Student Map and Poster Competition – don’t forget to vote!!

Main Gallery
Welcome to Sussex!
Martha Bostwick, mlbostwick custom map design

Narrowboat on the Llangollen Canal
Douglas Cain, City of Fort Collins

River mile 151: Ohio, Washington County, Leith Run Recreation Area
Laurel Cornell, Indiana University

Environs of Franconia College
Mark Denil

Franconia College -color
Mark Denil

Franconia College -greyscale
Mark Denil

Mississippi River
Matt Dooley, University of Wisconsin - River Falls
David Bergs, Matthew Bergs, Jason Blatz, Cynthia Brewer, Jeff Ferzoco, Donna Genzmer, Kyle Glowa, Sarah Harling, Chris Henrick, Diana Hoover, Brett Kallusky, Alison Link, Nick Martinelli, Ashley Nepp, Chelsea Nestel, Charlie Rader, Tim Stallmann, Diego Valadares, Steve Wolf, and Patrick Wood 

Satellite Imagery Solutiond and Digital Map Data
Geoffery Forbes, LAND INFO Worldwide Mapping LLC

Mapping the National Landscape Conservation System
Paul Fyfield and Mattye Walsworth, Bureau of Land Management

UConn Huskies Women's Basketball: Four Consecutive National Championships, 2013-16
David Glassett, Peaceful Valley Maps

New Zealand Reference Map
Kyle Glowa, UW River Falls

Mt Shasta Wilderness
Tom Harrison, Tom Harrison Maps

Generosity
Steven R Holloway, toMake™ Press

The Way Across Rock and Ice
Steven R Holloway, toMake™ Press

The State of Metropotamia
Daniel P. Huffman, somethingaboutmaps

Conservation Lands Network
Maegan Leslie Torres and the Bay Area Open Space Council, Amanda Recinos, GreenInfo Network

Rutas.MapaNica.Net / Managua Bus Map
Michael Luethi, University of Zurich, Switzerland
Felix Delattre, Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica
Jaakko Helleranta, Tekniska högskolan, Finland
We had over 150 students from different Universities in Managua, Nicaragua. Most students were from UCA (www.uca.edu.ni) and UNAN (Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Nicaragua).

Liquefaction Susceptibility for M9.0 Cascadia Earthquake
Erica McCormick, Cascade GIS & Consulting

Tigers Forever Topographic Map
Kevin McManigal, University of Montana
 Amy Lippus, Garin Wally, Patrick Warner, Bryan Tutt, Aaron Kamoske, Verena Henners, Abby Isaac, Hannah Rosenkrans, Dan Quinn, James Fivecoats, Corbin Brooks, Craig Threlkeld

Major Subbasins of the Lake Champlain Basin
Ryan Mitchell, Lake Champlain Basin Program

What's Being Built in Centennial, CO
Kyoko Oyama, City of Centennial

USFS International Institute of Tropical Forestry
Maya Quinones, US Forest Service

Uisge Beatha: A Deep Map of Islay Whisky
Charles Rader, University of Wisconsin - River Falls
Daniel Bochman, University of Edinburgh 

Humboldt Bay
Amy Rock, Humboldt State University

Los Angeles Typographic Map
Josh Ryan, Axis Maps

Map of China - With Place Names Translated to English
Beverly Schwab

Springwater Parks and Community, Greenspaces and Natural Areas of Eastern Multnomah County, Oregon
Courtney Shannon, Jim Labbe, Springwater Parks & Community

THERE GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD
Tim Sinnott, Audubon Magazine

ArcGIS
 Ana Sordomez 

Armenia
MapsXL Inc.

Worlds Best World Map
MapsXL Inc.

Parallel Views of EcoRegion Distinction
Stella Todd, Metropolitan State University of Denver

Spratly Islands in the South China Sea
Stephanie Vargas and Leo Dillon, U.S. Department of State

GeoInquiries
Maps.com

Ventura Bikeways Map 
Maps.com

River Atlas
Travis White, University of Kansas

Student Map and Poster Competition
Potential Impacts of Stream Rehabilitation on the lower Long Tom River, Oregon
Christina Appleby, University of Oregon 

Brazil: Regions and States
Cristina Bauss, Humboldt State University 

Fences, Trolleys, and Trails: Access to Justice and the Contemporary Community Leadership Role within Local Scale Border Negotiations around Inclusion / Exclusion
Robin Carter, Alvernia University 

The Crossroads: Ethnic Conflict & Soya Production in Kyrgyzstan
Chelsea Cervantes De Blois, University of Minnesota - Twin-Cities 

Volcanic hazard mapping: What do users want to see?
Danielle Charlton, Christopher Kilburn and Steven Edwards, University College London 

Political Vulnerability in California
Laura Daly, University of California - Davis 

Rochester, MN
Tyler Galde, University of Wisconsin - River Falls 

Natural Terrain Map of Denali National Park 
Owen Haugen, University of Wisconsin - River Falls 

Collectively Mapping Syria's Borders
Meghan Kelly, University of Wisconsin - Madison 

Exploring Terrain: A hypothetical bike tour
Meghan Kelly, University of Wisconsin - Madison 

Enfolded
Nick Lally, University of Wisconsin - Madison 

Mt. Kilimanjaro
Josh Leonard, University of Wisconsin - River Falls 

Chasing Borealis
Rudy Omri, University of Oregon 

Puget Sound
Rudy Omri and Dylan Molnar, University of Oregon

Aldo Leopold Wilderness
Joben Penuliar, Humboldt State University  

Pinpointing vulnerabilities in the Arctic Ocean
Gabriel Rousseau and Kyle Lempinen, Portland State University

Open Skies Outdoor Classroom Site Design
Tippy Scott, Centre of Geographic Sciences 

Restoring Fish Habitat in the Sandy River Basin
Christina Shintani, University of Oregon 

Jim Thorpe Trail Map
Patrick Stephens, Penn State 

Tropical Pox
Soren Walljasper, University of Wisconsin - Madison 

Necropagnosia 
Nate Wessel, University of Toronto 

Drainages of the San Francisco Bay, California
Aidan Williams, Humboldt State University 

Gold Country, California
Patrick Wood, Humboldt State University 

Tibet and the Himalaya
Patrick Wood, Humboldt State University

Special Exhibit
NACIS 2016 is the CIA Cartography Center’s 75th AnniversaryCIA’s present-day Cartography Center was initially conceived as a unit within the Office of the Coordinator of Information (COI), and would be temporarily housed in four other organizations before settling permanently at the Central Intelligence Agency in 1947. One of those COI recruited was a geographer by the name of Arthur Robinson, who started on October 16th 1941 and shortly thereafter produced COI’s first map for President Roosevelt. At that time there were no cartographers as we know them today, so Robinson engaged geographers with interest in mapping and the group developed their techniques on the job. They worked to develop a system of cartography which could operate in the field of intelligence and that was unique to previously utilized systems of map production. Robinson’s efforts laid a solid foundation for map production and quality that is still espoused at CIA today and established thematic cartography as a recognized discipline.
Come view samples of our maps from 1941 to present, to gain a better appreciation of their transition in technology, style, and portrayal of intelligence stories.

Exhibit Summary
Exhibit Images

...

Mapping the Monolithic Statue Quarries of Easter Island (Rapa Nui)
Alice Hom, Easter Island Statue Project (EISP)
Jo Anne Van Tilburg, Easter Island Statue Project (EISP)
Cristián Arévalo Pakarati, Easter Island Statue Project (EISP)
Matthew Bates, Easter Island Statue Project (EISP)
Eastern Polynesian figurative carving traditions developed on Rapa Nui into a distinctive body of monolithic stone sculpture (moai). About half of all moai remain embedded in the bedrock of a centralized quarry established within a unique volcanic feature named Rano Raraku. This presentation describes the production of an illustrated archaeological atlas of Rano Raraku moai based upon extensive archaeological field survey, statue excavation, photogrammetry, illustrative cartography, and cross-references to archival documentation. Relationships between the quarry and ceremonial sites across the island are visually presented through spatial analysis. We examine chronologies which reveal the consequences human use in Rano Raraku, and the challenges of organizing data for reinterpreting the past while planning for the future of moai conservation and further research.

Saving Tigers - One Map at a Time!
Kevin McManigal, University of Montana
A unique partnership between the University of Montana Department of Geography and the Panthera large cat conservation organization has been producing high resolution topographic maps of the Parsa Wildlife Reserve in Nepal and the Manas National Park in India. Twelve student cartographers have worked for the last 2 years to create over 24 topographic maps that cover both parks. They are being utilized in the field by anti-poaching patrols as part of the Tigers Forever program. The maps have the potential to literally change the family trees of the park's tigers. This presentation will delve into the entire workflow from data creation and digitizing in GIS, to styling of the maps in Illustrator, and training the park rangers in the jungle with the finished maps. The talk will conclude with a discussion of the challenges and successes while mentoring aspiring cartography students through a project of this scope and size.

Maps for sustainable tourism for Pennsylvania's craft beer and wine industries
Alison Feeney, Shippensburg University
Map can greatly influence a person's perception of an area and they should be a logical tool for planning a trip. While tourism maps can be a blatant form of advertising they assist in generating knowledge and an impression of the destination. Sustainable tourism is experiencing remarkable growth, particularly with the movement of the local traveler, triggered by people's desires to eat and drink. Promoting local breweries and wineries helps to create a direct link to the community. Recently, the number of craft breweries and wineries in Pennsylvania has exploded, contributing greatly to the state's economy. This paper will use content analysis to examine maps generated for Pennsylvania's craft beer and wine tourism industries in both paper and digital form. The goal is to identify common themes and marketing techniques that can be applied to generate a sustainable map for the Colchagua wine region of Chile.

CartoCSS vs GL: Considering New Technologies for National Park Service Basemaps
Taylor Long, National Park Service / Colorado State University
NPMap builds tools for the National Park Service that empower park staff to create functional, well-branded, digital maps. One of our primary products is Park Tiles, a suite of online basemaps designed for NPS using the CartoCSS approach. New developments in WebGL are expanding the possibilities of map design, display, and interaction. However, deciding if and when NPMap transitions Park Tiles to this new framework requires consideration of impacts on existing workflows and on the end users of our tools. This talk will highlight NPMap's exploration into the new word of GL basemaps, focusing on our team's considerations for if, when, and how the National Park Service will adopt this new cartographic technology.

The Ten Commandments of Interactive Web Map Design
Robin Tolochko, Uber
What are the dos and don'ts of making an interactive map? What are different things to consider for different mapping scenarios? What do you need to think about when designing mobile maps? I talked with a bunch of professional mapmakers about how they make interactive maps and, from those interviews, created a comprehensive list of best practices and conventions for designing maps for the web.
View Slides »

An Open-Source Approach to Creating a National Critical Habitat Web Map
Deanna Sarro, The Pennsylvania State University
U.S. federal agencies are required to consult with the Fish & Wildlife Service to ensure that their actions will not put at risk the survival of endangered and threatened species. Understanding the geographic locations of critical habitats provides these federal agencies with knowledge to make informed decisions as to whether and to what extent actions may impact these listed species. This presentation showcases a web application intended to aid federal agencies in this regard by providing a map showing the critical habitat spatial data, a listing of all endangered and threatened species attributes, and additional information about each species. Development of the map required consideration of different options for data format, application program interface, and plug-in libraries using open-source data standards and software. Additional functionality was included to provide graphical and spatial analysis of the critical habitat data itself and through queries against other related thematic layers.

Maps are Fast and So Can You - 10 Minute Talk
Sam Matthews, Mapbox
Maps on the web are in constant flux; technologies change, renderers improve, and data storage formats become more standardized. In order for a full mapping infrastucture to perform at its best, a huge number of updates are required at all depths of the stack, not just on the browser. Tools such as Mapbox GL JS are getting faster and faster, but that doesn't come without major changes to the underlying technologies at Mapbox. This talk will outline the major core improvements around GL-based maps at Mapbox, including work around the Vector Tile Specification, vector tile encoding performance, and the latest decoding & rendering improvements in Mapbox GL JS. It will conclude with notes on how to incorporate these tools into your workflow.
View Slides »

Who's on First: Adminstrative Boundaries and Localities
Martin Gamache, Art of the Mappable
Nathaniel Vaughn Kelso, Mapzen
Who's on First is an open source gazeteer. Administrative level 2 and localities boundaries for countries outside North America and Europe where largely missing from this gazeteer. We have been collaborating on a project to populate or create these from open sources when available or secondary sources when necessary for most of the world. We have built polygons from point sources, scoured the internet for national mapping agency data, and compiled  boundaries for dozens of countries around the world, helping create a true open source dataset that can be used for any purpose.
View Slides »
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Who ARE the People in your Neighborhood? Developing Mapzen's Neighborhood Database
Nat Case, INCase, LLC
Nathaniel Vaughn Kelso, Mapzen
Mapzen's free and open Who's on First is, like most gazetteers, a big list of places with stable identifiers in a place hierarchy, but we're modeling a new way to think about gazetteers: a space where debate about a place is managed but not decided. Neighborhoods are one of the included place types. In compiling data for this layer, we have encountered challenges in the range of city political structures, the relationship of city to sub-city entities, and in the lack of documentation and data for neighborhoods in many places. Our starting point was shapes derived from Flickr's neighborhood tags, but we discovered additional serious issues with the original compilation of those tags. We'll approach (and not necessarily resolve) these questions in a tour through cities big and small in the United States and around the world showing challenges faced and the final result on the map and in search.
View Slides »

Mapping Regions with Partial Boundaries
Brandon Plewe, Brigham Young University
Many regions, even official jurisdictions such as governments, have incomplete boundaries. That is, their boundary definitions reference features that do not close. While today such partial boundaries are usually limited to informal regions, prior to the era of scientific mapping and GIS they were the norm. Arbitrarily connecting them in a GIS polygon destroys the integrity of the original definition. When the boundaries are changing over time, the problem becomes even more complex. I will present possible solutions for representing changing partial boundaries honestly in GIS using an assertion-based data model, reasoning about them, and visualizing incomplete regions on maps.
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Join together with other attendees to set up an ad hoc informal gathering on a topic that interests you. Maybe you want to discuss your favorite map projections with fellow enthusiasts, or maybe you're a student who wants to create a space to network with other students and share advice. Reserve the NACIS Commons and add whatever you think our conference is missing!

The Commons area will be provided with some chairs, a flipchart, and some markers. When the room is not in use, the Commons also serves as a quieter space to sit and chat away from the more crowded areas.

From April Fool's to Hollywood - The Making of the LA Typographical Map
Josh Ryan, Axis Maps
I knew Axis Maps originally for their typographical maps of various cities. So as the most recent member of Axis Maps, I knew I just had to create the worst possible version as an April Fool's day joke. After the presentation, the decision was made to transform the map into an actual product. So goes the origin story of the LA Typographic Map. This talk will detail the process of making a proper typographic map; from getting and processing the data from OSM to producing the map in Illustrator. Due to being made completely out of type, typographic hierarchies, color, and style are extremely important and will be covered, using the original April Fool's version for contrast.
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Microaesthetics, Part Deux: typeface design and semantic effects
Elaine Guidero, Pennsylvania State University
Cynthia Brewer, Pennsylvania State University
Maps are a multilayered semiotic system, and map text comprises an important part of this system. Among its many utilitarian functions, such as labeling places and features, type contributes to the semiotic code of a map through its aesthetic appearance, often conceived as personality, or semantic effect.  Effective typographic design for maps requires careful attention to the personality-linked characteristics of type, called microaesthetics, that influence reader perception. I propose a redefined subset of cartographic visual variables that involve type, and demonstrate how I derived a list of microaesthetics and linked them to semantic effects using ecological statistics. These links form the basis of a framework that could be used by cartographers and other designers to determine an appropriate typeface for their map.
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Multivariate Thematic Maps using Font Attributes
Richard Brath, London South Bank University
Ebad Banissi, London South Bank University
We introduce label-based cartograms as a form of thematic map that overcomes some limitations of choropleth maps and area-based cartograms. Labels explicitly encode geographic entities facilitating identification for a less geographically literate audience. Labels can encode multivariate data using a variety of visual attributes, including typographic attributes, not otherwise used in other types of encoding such as the area encoding used in choropleth maps. It is feasible to encode ten variables within labels including quantitative attributes. Labels can be equally sized, so that larger items are not more salient than other entities. To ensure readability, the underlying label  locations can be adjusted to ensure readability. Label-based representations can be readily transformed in to other types of visualizations. The approach can be extended to more abstract maps such as knowledge maps. A number of examples will be shown.
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Landscapes of Text - the Art and Science of Geographic Text Visualization
Alexander Savelyev, Texas State University
Geographic textual information is abundant - for example, data such as place mentions can be extracted from news articles and books, and social media data is frequently associated with explicit geographic coordinates. Such data was demonstrated to contribute to our understanding of a particular place from perspectives such as those of health, crime and political sciences. A promising approach to analysis of such data is geovisual text analytics: the science of analytical reasoning about large collections of geo-textual information facilitated by interactive visual interfaces.This talk will present a comprehensive overview of existing text visualization techniques and discuss the theoretical and practical challenges of geographic visualization of textual information - that is, making maps of text.
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Reflections on Five Years of Teaching Cartography
Robert Roth, UW-Madison
Cartography has changed, is changing, and always will be changing. Arguably, cartography's innate state of flux is what makes our profession both unique and valuable: as we engage in the design process, we tinker, adlib, and innovate across a wide array of tools and techniques. Yet, this creative and rapid adaptation does not always translate well to instruction. In this presentation, I discuss my anecdotal experiences over the past five years to restructure the cartography curriculum at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in order to adapt to sweeping shifts in conceptual framings, web mapping technologies, and professional expectations. I discuss the pedagogical philosophy guiding the revised curriculum, the reorganization of design concepts and technical skills approached in each course to account for the changing profession, and lessons learned for keeping curriculum malleable as cartography continues to evolve conceptually and technologically. The presentation is pitched to educators, students, and industry leaders.
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Teaching New Cartography
Rich Donohue, New Maps Plus, University of Kentucky, Department of Geography
Andy Eschbacher, CARTO
New mapping tools and needs continue to converge, producing stunning ways of visualizing data and gaining insights. Both industry and the academy are eager to embrace these emerging trends. Yet the challenge remains how to provide sufficient education and training to a growing population of mappers, as well as how to keep these materials current and useful. This talk explores mapping education from two complementary perspectives. CartoDB stands at the forefront of integrating frontend tools like D3 and Leaflet with backend services supported by PostGIS, enabling a web-based solution to traditional desktop GIS processes. New Maps Plus (U of Kentucky Department of Geography) blends the skills required to harness the web platform with traditional cartographic education.
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From button pushing to problem solving: modern geospatial technology in the classroom
Lyzi Diamond, Mapbox
The world of mapping technology moves fast. Even cartographers in industry have trouble keeping up with the newest trends in geospatial software, libraries, and programming languages. This presents a nontrivial problem for instructors in higher education: students want to be prepared for jobs after college, which means they want to learn the latest and greatest tools. How are teachers supposed to keep up? In this talk, I will present some ideas on how instructors can help students stay on the bleeding edge of geospatial technology without putting in hundreds of extra hours. The talk will factor in perspectives from industry while focusing on the real challenges of working in an academic environment, using real world examples from a university that is overhauling its geospatial technology program this year.
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Cartographic Curiosity: Promoting Interdisciplinary Thinking in General Education through Maps
Joy Santee, McKendree University
This presentation reports how introduction of cartography in general education courses can help university students combat limits of subject-specific thinking and embrace complex interdisciplinary critical thought. In an age where students often resist complex thinking in favor of finding answers through a quick search on their phones, introducing them to maps and cartographic practices can prompt social awareness, problem-solving skills, and citizen-engagement. The presentation begins with a brief overview of how the presenter has introduced cartography in general education courses after developing materials during a National Endowment for the Humanities Seminar. It continues with vignettes of student engagement with maps and ends with a call for cartographers to make their work visible, particularly their decisions about design and content and the social and institutional contexts that impact map-making, so students can use cartography as a way to identify how they can contribute to making the world a better place.
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Enabling Users to Easily Filter TNM Datasets to Smaller Scales
Andy Stauffer, US Geological Survey, National Geospatial Technical Operations Center
Brittany L. Roche, US Geological Survey National Geospatial Technical Operations Center
Seth D. Webinger, US Geological Survey National Geospatial Technical Operations Center
The US Geological Survey's National Geospatial Technical Operations Center (NGTOC) currently hosts vector data themes (including elevation, hydrography, transportation, boundaries, structures, geographic names, and woodland tint) appropriate for cartographic display at approximately a 1:24,000-scale. NGTOC is evaluating methods to enable users to automatically filter the 1:24,000-scale data so that it may be appropriately used at smaller scales through database enrichment. A new attribute, named VisibilityFilter, is currently being evaluated which will tag each feature with an appropriate (smallest) scale-of-use. While the VisibilityFilter attribute will enable users to define the content appropriate at a target scale, the resulting content may still require geometric simplification for specific user needs. This presentation will define the VisibilityFilter attribute and demonstrate how it can be used.
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Mobile App Cartography for the US National Park Service
Jake Coolidge, NPMap, Colorado State University
The number of mobile apps available to guide visitors through America's special places has exploded in recent years. NPMap aims to provide National Park Service-produced alternative apps that put a ranger's expertise and up-to-date information directly on your device. Not surprisingly, maps are a key component to these mobile experiences. This talk will first provide context for our mobile mapping efforts with an overview of our app framework and project workflow. Next we'll look at how the cartographic design process fits within this broader framework. Design decisions are driven by accessibility and usability concerns, and by the desire to speak to the narratives and intangible qualities that make these places unique. The talk will examine, in detail, recent cartographic products developed for several national parks and close with observations of lessons learned and improvements we hope to make in the year ahead.
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Mapping Neighborhood Data from the American Community Survey
Richard Lycan, Portland State University
In Portland, Oregon neighborhoods are an important part of the language of place and are a recognized part of the planning process. Partly for these reasons there is considerable interest in neighborhood level mapping of the socioeconomic data from the American Community Survey. It is feasible to build neighborhood level aggregations from Census block group data, with some allocation around the borders, however when aggregated to the neighborhood level standard errors are large and map viewers are confused when advised of the uncertainties of the mapping. This paper proposes a workaround, a cure with some serious side effects. The workaround is to include "some surrounding area" around each neighborhood in the allocation process. “Some surrounding area” is implemented through use of an adaptive bandwidth grid. The resulting map is generalized but has less sampling error. The cure is reduction in uncertainty and the side effect is geographical ambiguity.

Join together with other attendees to set up an ad hoc informal gathering on a topic that interests you. Maybe you want to discuss your favorite map projections with fellow enthusiasts, or maybe you're a student who wants to create a space to network with other students and share advice. Reserve the NACIS Commons and add whatever you think our conference is missing!

The Commons area will be provided with some chairs, a flipchart, and some markers. When the room is not in use, the Commons also serves as a quieter space to sit and chat away from the more crowded areas.

The Rise and Fall of a Worldian Language: Amenity Icons from ISOTYPE to OpenStreetMap
Will Payne, UC Berkeley
Episodes of standardization and divergence in the icons used by cartographers and designers over time help illuminate the broader political economy of mapping, tourism, navigation, and the contemporary geoweb. In this talk, I trace the development of the familiar "fork and knife," "cocktail glass," and "coffee cup" symbols to socialist designers in interwar Vienna who created the ISOTYPE system of pictorial statistics, through the 1960s standardization of pictograms for global travel, sports, and conventions (Buckminster Fuller hailed these symbols as a "worldian language"), up to the present day. Open-source and proprietary geoweb applications extend these conventions in different ways, reflecting the interests of developers and users: for example, sponsored corporate logos in Waze and alternate bar icons in OpenStreetMap (adding British pint glasses and German steins). Ironically, a form of visual communication intended to unite a global working class has ended up facilitating economic integration and consumption by global elites.
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Implementing Clean, Consistent Cartography at a University-Wide Scale
Micaella Penning, University of Minnesota Duluth
Stacey Stark, University of Minnesota Duluth
The Geospatial Analysis Center (GAC) has recently taken over from Facilities Management the task of designing and managing campus maps at the University of Minnesota Duluth. The new, navigational wall maps are a long-overdue update to the previous black & white CAD drawings, and through their new design seek to ease navigation for students and increase the sense of campus incorporation into the surrounding community. Challenges have included creating new workflows for units who have previously managed their data outside of a GIS to using integrated data in a central GIS repository. GAC has also been updating campus parking maps, as well as creating specific-use maps such as outdoor assembly spaces and gender inclusive restrooms. It has become GAC's mission to be the central core for spatial data, mapping, and cartography at UMD, with the goal of clean, consistent output that will create greater cartographic congruency across campus.
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Designing an atlas with a minimalist aesthetic
Travis White, University of Kansas
This project was born of a conversation about how stripped down a map design can become before the mapped features are unrecognizable and the design no longer retains any aesthetic or functional elegance. Heady stuff, but relevant to a series of river maps I wanted to design. I started with two beautiful works of inspiration (Darton and Gardner's 1823 Comparative Heights of the Principal Mountains and Lengths of the Principal Rivers and Joost Grooten's 2005 Metropolitan World Atlas) and the minimalist design aesthetic found in the De Stijl movement, the Bauhaus school, and the International Style (over-simply put, less is more and form follows function). This presentation shares my process of conceiving and developing this river atlas, the final design solutions I arrived at, and early attempts at both print and digital production.
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Firefly Cartography
John Nelson, Esri
We cartographers swim in points, lines, and polygons. But their absolute and abrupt geometry seldom matches the uncertainty of our data, and the dissipating nature of the phenomenon it represents. What's more, our basemaps often compete for visual prominence with that thematic data, and we might miss out on a great opportunity to inject a sense of scale and urgency. This is why I love firefly cartography! Join me as I attempt to rationalize this aesthetic style, provide a step-by-step demonstration of the creative process, and link to resources for map makers to geek out on it themselves.

UConn Women's Basketball: A Sports Cartography Infographic - 10 Minute Talk
David Glassett, Peaceful Valley Maps
As the UConn women's basketball team cruised to their fourth consecutive national championship, I embarked on a personal quest to map their recent dominance. In the last four years and a 151-5 record, they defeated 64 teams from 27 states and the District of Columbia. But how should I map that? Follow my journey of sports mapping with its ups and downs of data collection, projection selection, data display, and infographic design. See the final map at http://goo.gl/zAHC5E.
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Women Shaping the World: Women and Globes
Judith Tyner Geography Dept., CSU Long Beach
Globes today are looked at as toys or teaching aids for the elementary schools or as decorative objects for the home. But in the 18th and 19th centuries, globes were scientific instruments and while they were used in schools they were used to teach mathematical or astronomical geography; they were not mere toys. While the history of women in cartography has only recently begun to be studied, women's contributions to the creation of globes have been almost totally ignored. Yet women have been involved in globe making since at least the 18th century, there have been at least nine U.S. patents for globes and tellurians granted to women and globes were edited and sold by women. This paper looks at the history of women in globe making and at some specific women and their globes.
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The First Geologic Maps of the U.S.
John Lindemann, Consulting Geologist
In 1809 William Maclure - one of the first American geologists - published what is arguably the first geologic map of the United States. Over the next three decades this map, little changed with the exception of its topographic base, was republished in four iterations. To the modern earth science community these maps are largely unknown. What caused these seemingly pioneer maps to slip into near obscurity?
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Geohistory-Géohistoire Canada: Developing a partnership for historical GIS and mapping in Canada
Byron Moldofsky, GIS and Cartography Office, Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto
Marcel Fortin, Map and Data Library, University of Toronto
The Canadian Historical Geographic Information Systems (HGIS) Partnership Development Project is a diverse group of geographers, historians, librarians, research NGOs, GIS companies, and members of the public. We are working to improve our collective ability to research historical subjects using GIS, and map them, primarily on the web. We are reaching out to the larger HGIS community to consolidate knowledge about what kinds of resources are currently available, and what will be needed in the future - not only to build historical GIS data and tools, but also to facilitate collaboration and data-sharing. In the first year of this two-year project we are laying the groundwork by reviewing current capabilities and needs, including doing a user needs survey for HGIS web-mapping. This presentation will present preliminary results from this study, and will discuss plans for pilot projects in the coming year.
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Historical Geocoding and the City - 10 Minute Talk
Michael Page, Emory University
Matthew Pierce, Emory University
Alan Pike, Emory University
Jason Yang, Emory University
The Digital Lab of Emory's Center for Digital Scholarship produced a 3D geodatabase and geocoder of circa 1930's Atlanta, Georgia as part of its Atlanta Explorer Project which seeks to transform city directories and historical spatial data into geospatial tools and immersive visualizations for exploring the history of the city. This presentation discusses the methods used and lessons learned from the first phase of the project and how it has informed our strategy to produce geocoders for the years 1867-1930.
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Mapping the Yellowstone Caldera
Charles Preppernau, National Geographic Partners
Manuel Canales, National Geographic Partners
The print and web products for the Yellowstone Volcano required integration of GIS data and 2D illustrations into a 3D scene in Cinema 4D, while preserving correct spatial relationships and staying within the limits of the hardware and software. We present our process for displaying high-resolution, spatially-accurate terrains and cross sections in this talk. While we used Cinema 4D as our 3D modeling and rendering software, these methods can also be used in Blender.
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Designing Wildlife Migration Maps
James E. Meacham, Department of Geography, University of Oregon
Alethea Y. Steingisser, Department of Geography, University of Oregon
 Hall Sawyer, Western Ecosystems Technology, Inc. Laramie, Wyoming
 Emilene Ostlind, Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources, University of Wyoming
 William Rudd, Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, Cheyenne, Wyoming
 Matthew J Kauffman, U.S. Geological Survey, Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, Department of Zoology and Physiology, University of Wyoming
This presentation focuses on the role of cartography in wildlife migration study in Wyoming and the Greater Yellowstone Area. Representing complex scientific data in clear and meaningful ways presents major design challenges. Specifically, working with the visual interrelationship of GPS-derived migration data and the landscape setting is covered. The same points, lines, and polygons derived from the GPS data can tell different ecological stories such as migration timing, seasonality, speed, or fidelity to a particular route. This cartographic challenge is compounded by the multitude of interrelationships between the ecological behavior and the landscape. Elevation, land cover, land ownership, and special management areas can all be equally important contributors to the migration story and therefore a necessary component of the map. Maps and graphics from the in-production Atlas of Wildlife Migration: Wyoming's Ungulates will be used to illustrate these cartographic challenges and solutions.
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100 Years of National Park Service Tourist Maps for Yellowstone
Scott White Fort Lewis College, Department of Geosciences
For 100 years, the National Park Service (NPS) has been a major publisher of tourist maps for Yellowstone National Park. These maps illustrate a wide range of cartographic styles that have resulted from technological changes, agency management and budgetary decisions, and tourist perceptions and needs. Early NPS tourist maps for Yellowstone focused on train and stagecoach travel. By the 1920s, the emphasis had changed to park exploration on roads by private automobile. These early maps employed very simple cartographic techniques and printing methods. Multiple colors and shaded relief were introduced in the 1950s, whereas maps published during the 1970s and 1980s appeared to take several steps backward in terms of cartographic quality and information content. Since the 1990s, computer mapping software, digital elevation data, and interactive maps have been employed by the NPS to provide more detailed information, along with better cartography, for Yellowstone's visitors and map users.
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National Geographic Magazine, Yellowstone Special Issue Cartography
Martin Gamache, Art of the Mappable
Lauren Tierney, National Geographic
Brian T. Jacobs, National Geographic
We will discuss the cartographic work that illustrated the May 2016 National Geographic Magazine Greater Yellowstone special issue. We will specifically discuss the Elk migration supplement as well as the land ownership and reference maps found throughout the issue. Specific topics will include GIS analysis of elk GPS collar migration data, base map data compilation, relief, property ownership and finally the interactive edition of the supplement.
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Interactive Animated Projected Elk Map and Terrain Model - 10 Minute Talk
Alex Tait, International Mapping
This presentation will look at the design and production process for creating an interactive map exhibit showing the Elk migration in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. The center of the exhibit is a solid terrain model. A high-lumen projector casts an interactive animated map image onto the model from an iPad controller mounted to the reader rail. The primary design challenge was to show a complex geographical story in a manner that would be easy to understand and manipulate for a general user. An additional challenge was to create an effective animation of the annual elk migration and the seasonal changes in the environment.
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Join together with other attendees to set up an ad hoc informal gathering on a topic that interests you. Maybe you want to discuss your favorite map projections with fellow enthusiasts, or maybe you're a student who wants to create a space to network with other students and share advice. Reserve the NACIS Commons and add whatever you think our conference is missing!

The Commons area will be provided with some chairs, a flipchart, and some markers. When the room is not in use, the Commons also serves as a quieter space to sit and chat away from the more crowded areas.

Indoor Navigation and the Role of Maps
Georg Gartner, Technische Universität Wien, Department of Geodesy and Geoinformation
As long as people need to decide where to go and how to get there, navigation will remain one of the fundamental problems in human cognition, wayfinding and geospatial research. Over the past several decades, navigation applications have increasingly conquered the world with online mapping services, car navigation systems and ubiquitous smartphone distribution. Lately, more and more Location-Based Services and mobile applications play a crucial role in our daily life as these help positioning, wayfinding and sharing of information. Currently, outdoor car navigation implementations are quite well-advanced and mature. Indoor navigation applications on the other hand have so far proven more challenging, even though the last decade showed significant progress in for example improved indoor localization techniques, standardization of indoor models and public indoor data gathering efforts. In this contribution several concepts for indoor navigation services are discussed and some developments towards deriving indoor landmarks and appropriate cartographic models highlighted.

Deemphasising Dead-ends: Navigation in Today's Dendritic Cities
Nate Wessel, University of Toronto
Algorithmic detection of dead-ends and highly indirect streets could help cartographers reduce visual noise in transport maps, without resort to generalization techniques that simplify data or remove it entirely. In this presentation, I'll discuss algorithms for detecting dead-ends and apply them to a sample of regions, using OpenStreetMap data. I'll attempt to show how the resulting classification can be used to reduce visual noise and make maps easier for the eye to navigate. Preliminary results show that dead-ends make up between 12% and 45% of all streets and/or paths in my broad sample of regions, and can depend in varying degrees on the chosen transport mode for which the network is constructed. The proposed technique then has special relevance for mode-specific transport maps or maps for users with unique access constraints.
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Virtual Reality and Mapping: An Introduction to Matterport
Derek Tonn, mapformation, LLC
The long-rumored arrival of virtual reality, in a commercially-viable sense, seems to finally be here. And its impacts upon map creation and wayfinding could be profound. No longer forcing end users of the wayfinding resources we develop (of which map illustration is but one) to understand the world in the one way we've visually presented it to them, virtual reality solutions are marrying planimetric and oblique/pictorial illustration with panoramic photography and the ability to freely move within a place. This session will introduce attendees to one VR-compatible solution I've become intimately familiar with over the past eighteen months: Matterport (https://matterport.com/try/). I will also share examples of how our mapping firm has been utilizing the technology.

Challenges and opportunities in mapping the North American hazardous waste trade
Eric Nost, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Heather Rosenfeld, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Kristen Vincent, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Sarah Moore, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Tanya Buckingham, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Robert E. Roth, University of Wisconsin-Madison
HazMatMapper is an interactive map designed to facilitate exploration of transnational flows of hazardous waste in North America (http://geography.wisc.edu/hazardouswaste/map). Conventional narratives emphasize that wealthier countries export waste to poorer ones, overlooking how marginalized communities within wealthier countries may be exposed to hazards. To move beyond this limitation, we assembled a novel geographic dataset from documents held by the US EPA describing over 18,000 shipments of waste made between 2007 and 2012 to US processing facilities. Within shipping documents, waste was labeled and tracked inconsistently, creating multiple layers of uncertainty. We confronted this uncertainty first by organizing a design challenge, in which student teams were given a day to produce first-draft maps of the waste trade. From this, we developed HazMatMapper. Finally, we have started development on an ecosystem of visual stories that flexibly combine views from HazMatMapper with other web visualizations to cultivate localized and personalized stories about waste's impacts.
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Effects of map and augmented reality views of flood risk on concern about climate change
David Retchless, Texas A&M University at Galveston
Research has shown that people with direct experience of flooding also tend to express more concern about climate change. One explanation for this increase in concern is that such direct experience decreases the psychological distance of climate change, making it more tangible and concrete by relating it to one's immediate physical environment. However, research in this area has not considered whether mediated experience delivered through geospatial visualizations of local flooding can similarly affect concern about climate change, or how these effects may vary with the scale or distance of the geovisualization. Accordingly, I consider how varying scale and distance in map and augmented reality views of flood risk data affects both perceptions of this flood risk and associated concern about climate change.
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Towards Cartographic Standards for Web-Based Flood Hazard Maps
Eben Dennis, Icon Engineering, Inc.
Robert Soden, University of Colorado
Online, interactive web-maps are rapidly becoming important tools in the communication of flood hazards and the visualization of risk information more generally. Although there is a wealth of study and information available guiding the design of traditional cartographic products, there is comparatively little research available that is solely focused on web-mapping formats. This presentation will discuss initial findings of ongoing research being conducted in partnership between Icon Engineering and the University of Colorado, Boulder. Outcomes of the work will lead towards the development of design heuristics and best practices for visualizing flood data through interactive web-mapping products.
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Mapping Uncertain Census Data for Urban Planners
Amy Griffin, UNSW Canberra
Jason Jurjevich, Portland State University
Meg Merrick, Portland State University
Seth Spielman, Colorado University Boulder
David Folch, Florida State University
Nicholas Nagle, University of Tennessee-Knoxville
The introduction of the American Community Survey has led to more timely but less certain demographic estimates in the United States, particularly for small areas like census tracts or block groups or for population subgroups. This makes it more important than ever for the end users of the data to understand and account for uncertainty when using the data to make decisions. Here, we report the results of a user experiment with urban planners that compared two different designs for communicating uncertainty in maps of demographic estimates. We show that different designs may be warranted when map readers are either familiar or unfamiliar with the mapped area.

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A GIS for Social Justice: Measuring the Impact of Development on Urban Green Spaces in D.C.
Angela Chang, The Pennsylvania State University, Master of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Candidate
Washington, D.C. has experienced a steady surge of growth over the past 10 years, with increases in jobs, development and a changing demographic leading the way. The loss of public green space often accompanies urban growth and development, and most often disproportionately affects the poor and disenfranchised. Using Census, National Land Cover, and other open source data, this project will identify if and where public green spaces in D.C. have been impacted by demographic change and development, and observe whether there exists any relationships or patterns of behavior between these demographic changes and the availability and access to public green spaces. The analysis will be viewed through a social justice lens and demonstrate how GIS can be used to measure equality of access to public goods and resources, particularly in a rapidly changing city landscape.

Mapping North East Denver Change
Rachel Stevenson, UC Denver
Emily Anderson, UC Denver
Bryan West, UC Denver
Cody Peterson, UC Denver
Isaac Rivera, UC Denver
Dr. Jordan Hill, UC Denver
In the Spring of 2016, various students from multiple disciplines at the University of Colorado Denver, came together to research and map the current and future redevelopment happening in North/East Denver. The city's mayor has imagined a corridor of opportunity that consists of six main development projects aimed at improving the image of Denver. These projects however, have given rise to serious questions regrading social and environmental justice for the communities residing at the intersection of these projects. These students have developed  an informational resource aimed at shedding light on the adverse impacts these projects are having and will have on the primarily Hispanic and low income populations of greater North/East Denver. This informational resource took the form of a website that showcased a series of maps visualizing development project areas and the demographics of the local population and various impacts of those development projects.
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Nonprofit Mapping for Change
Tim Sinnott, GreenInfo Network
Maegan Leslie-Torres, GreenInfo Network
For 20 years, GreenInfo Network has provided map-based communications solutions to a long list of nonprofit organizations working on a wide range of environmental and social issues. From printed maps to custom web applications, we work to help organizations transform geographic data into clear, compelling messages using various mediums, on various timelines, sticking to various budgets. Join GreenInfo staff to discuss how a well-designed map can boost the effectiveness of an organization's mission, message, or campaign. We'll share how we work in partnership with our clients to develop cartographic communication tools that deliver the right message to the right audience at the right time with efficiency and elegance, and we'll give you a behind-the-scenes tour of our mapping/development process. We'll also talk about some of our most successful client partnerships and discuss the positive changes our work has helped bring about.
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Poverty Analysis in Sri Lanka: Mapping Economic Indicators Using Commercial Satellite Imagery
Nick Hubing LAND INFO Worldwide Mapping, LLC
Chris Lowe, LAND INFO Worldwide Mapping, LLC
This session will use an extensive Sri Lanka poverty mapping project recently completed for the World Bank to demonstrate how to successfully perform feature extraction and classification of high-res optical satellite imagery. This was the first such use of remote sensing for the World Bank. The presentation will explore manual feature extraction methods vs. automated OBIA (Object Based Image Analysis). Output of custom mapping (including statistics) will be compared to open-source mapping, and applications of map data layers extracted from imagery will be discussed.

Join together with other attendees to set up an ad hoc informal gathering on a topic that interests you. Maybe you want to discuss your favorite map projections with fellow enthusiasts, or maybe you're a student who wants to create a space to network with other students and share advice. Reserve the NACIS Commons and add whatever you think our conference is missing!

The Commons area will be provided with some chairs, a flipchart, and some markers. When the room is not in use, the Commons also serves as a quieter space to sit and chat away from the more crowded areas.

3D Printed Terrain Models and Maps -- Current State of Technology and Challenges
Michael Higgins, Summit Terragraphics Inc.
3D-printing technology offers exciting possibilities for cartographers to create accurate full-color terrain models of their work. For areas with mountainous or complicated terrain features, producing a physical map with the precise 3D terrain shape makes for a valuable interpretation tool.  3D-printing allows a quick and accurate process for creating these terrain/map models, but it also has challenges and limitations. Since 2008 Summit Terragraphics has been using 3d-printed terrain models as molds for the thermoformed raised-relief map production process. And recently, Summit has offered full color, 3d-printed models for display in museums, visitor centers, and other applications. This presentation will look closely at the design, data requirements, data processing, and construction of a 3d-printed terrain model of the island of Kauai. Print resolution and vertical scaling issues will be addressed. Summit will bring a sample of this finished model to the presentation for show-and-tell.
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Generalizing Terrain Representations with Vector Sums
Patrick Kennelly, Long Island University
Generalizing terrain representations using shaded relief are challenging, with previous efforts focusing on two methods. The first approach involves filtering or modifying the original terrain data to make a more generalized elevation model. The second approach involves filtering or generalizing the values of gray on the shaded relief map itself. An alternative approach presented here is to use surface normal vectors that are first resolved into x, y, and z components and then summed within the kernel of a low-pass filter. In this manner, the orientations of these vectors used in relief shading and associated surfaces are adjusted independently of the elevation value. Results appear sharper than generalized terrain models that are shaded or generalized shaded relief maps when a kernel of the same dimension is used to calculate mean values.
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Practical and Impractical Uses of Terrain Data
Chris Henrick, Stamen Design
Seth Fitzsimmons, Director of Technology, Stamen Design
Alan McConchie, Lead Cartographer, Stamen Design
Stamen has been collecting, processing, and experimenting with worldwide digital elevation models (DEMs) for the past year, supported by a grant from the Knight Foundation. The primary output of this is the Open Terrain project, which aims to collect resources on how to process and work with DEMs and their derivatives using open source tools, and cloud-based and scale data pipelines. In this talk we'll demonstrate a few techniques to incorporate these components into your maps as well as discuss how we're using the Open Terrain data to add hillshades to HOT's humanitarian map style and to reboot our OSM-based classic Stamen Terrain style and deploy it worldwide. We'll also explore some impractical uses of DEMs that we've experimented with purely for their aesthetic value.
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Integrating 3D Data into Cartographic Design - 10 Minute Talk
David McKittrick, Blue Marble Geographics
With the increased availability of 3D data, our traditional two-dimensional, top-down view of the world is becoming somewhat obsolete. We now have access to data that provides an immersive perspective of the natural or man-made environment and inexpensive tools are being developed that allow us to fully utilize this data. In this presentation we will explore the procedure for transforming a simple XYZ file or a dense LiDAR point cloud into an accurate representation of the terrain. This gridded raster surface model is the basis for the creation of contour lines or a hillside pattern, both of which add an element of texture to any cartographic rendering. We will also demonstrate the process for creating a cutaway or cross-sectional view of the terrain as well as draping imagery or other map layers over the terrain model to create a uniquely realistic topographic perspective.

Using network segments in the spatial representation of travel time isochrones
Jeff Allen, University of Toronto
Steven Farber, University of Toronto Scarborough
Isochrones are often used for visual analysis of mobility and accessibility in urban areas. We will discuss an alternative method to conventional isochrones; using computed travel times to classify network segments rather than generating isolines or polygons. We will outline the data, tools, and geoprocessing steps required to make these kind of maps as well as discuss visualization considerations for different scales, subject matter, and for static and interactive maps. Further discussion will include their advantages and disadvantages when compared to conventional isochrones, particularly in terms of classification options and mapping in conjunction with other data. Finally, we will comment on how this method results in potential benefits for subsequent spatial analysis and how it can be scaled for multiple origin points, travel modes, departure times, and transit scenarios.
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Husky Lines Mobile App: Adapting transportation studies to our changing technologies
Elisabeth Leaf, University of Washington, Urban Studies
Britta Ricker, Ph.D. University of Washington
Alexa Brockamp, University of Washington
The Husky Lines research project takes a mixed methods approach to identifying barriers to public transit usage for the student population of the Tacoma campus of the University of Washington. The first step was to illuminate existing public transit deserts and simultaneously implement a student survey to measure student perceptions of transit use. Based on these findings, the team is recommending new bus stops and bus lines to better serve the student population in an effort to increase usage of public transportation by the students. Taking this approach a step further, this specific study aims to collect perceptions of daily commute and actual daily commute patterns. A mobile application, tapping into built-in sensors, measures actual commute patterns and is augmented with a traditional travel diary to measure perception of commutes. Finally, this study provides an example of how mobile technology can be used to support transportation surveys.
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Mapping Air Population
Michael Peterson, University of Nebraska at Omaha
Paul Hunt, University of Nebraska at Omaha
Air population refers to the total number of people flying above the earth at any point in time. These people form a distinct and separate population from those still physically connected to earth. Real-time air population can be estimated by using an extensive network of ground aircraft sensors based on ADS-B (Automated Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast). An aircraft determines its position via GPS and broadcasts its position along with its identification, aircraft type, altitude and speed. Most commercial passenger aircraft are equipped with ADS-B transponders. The total number of passengers is calculated by multiplying the number of seats for each aircraft by the current seat occupancy rate. Using this method, the estimated air population is determined for the contiguous airspace over the United States. The air population is further divided by each state. In the interactive, real-time mapping system, maps are provided to show total state air population and the density of air population.
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Mapping Real-Time Flight Data - 10 Minute Talk
Paul Hunt, University of Nebraska at Omaha
Michael Peterson, University of Nebraska at Omaha
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) tracks flights through a combination of flight plans and radar. This data is publicly available through subscription to the FAA's National Aerospace System (NAS). Live flight data can be acquired by requesting access and connecting through a Virtual Private Network (VPN) into the FAA System Wide Information Management (SWIM).  This daunting process requires security and hardware infrastructure and heavy coordination with FAA liaisons. Alternatively, many private companies, such as FlightAware, are already connected to SWIM and augment this information with a network of ground stations that acquire ADS-B signals from airplanes. A cloud-based system is demonstrated for mapping this data in real-time using a series of JavaScript AJAX requests. The requests return geographically referenced JavaScript Object Notation (GeoJSON) data that is mapped on-the-fly using web-based mapping APIs. The data is further analyzed to determine the number and type of planes flying above each US state.

Adventures in Self-Publishing: A Personal, Do-It-Yourself History of Cartography
Mark Monmonier, Syracuse University
While finishing up Volume Six of the History of Cartography, I wrote and self-published a personal history titled Adventures in Academic Cartography: A Memoir. This presentation describes the project with the aim of encouraging others to share their own experiences in book form. Topics covered include organizing the book's content into ten largely thematic chapters; using the family financial diary instead of budgeting, we slavishly record every expense to verify activities and dates; hiring an experienced copy editor to provide the much-needed second set of eyes; adding a picture gallery; coping with Microsoft Word's limitations for page layout, including its propensity to down-sample images; designing and creating my own cover; publishing with Amazon using my own imprint, Bar Scale Press; preparing files for uploading to CreateSpace, Amazon's print-on-demand subsidiary; pricing affordable print and Kindle editions; orchestrating a low-energy promotion that actually got some decent book reviews; and making minor revisions.
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Yet Another Typographic Map
Hans van der Maarel, Red Geographics
Inspired by the amazing work produced by other NACIS members I decided to produce and self-publish and market a typographic map. This was a big step away from my comfort zone and a great learning experience, this talks highlights that process. Starting off with selecting the area of interest, deciding on the typefaces to use and producing the map to the process of selecting a printer, determining pricing and setting up a website with webshop.
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Global Geodata Sources: Topographic Mapping and Satellite Imagery
Geoffrey Forbes, LAND INFO Worldwide Mapping
Nick Hubing, LAND INFO Worldwide Mapping
Geoff Forbes will provide an update on recent changes in availability of large-scale mapping of countries around the world, including newly available datasets and recently updated coverages. Instances of the halting of distribution of certain map series, and the introduction and expansion of others. Changes in methods of circulation and data format, such as digital-only and print-on-demand (POD), born-digital and vector-only will be discussed. How these issues affect pricing and licensing will also be covered. Also the proliferation of online collections in recent years will be explored. Finally, the exploitation of commercial value-added services of data sourcing and GIS processing by map collections will be covered. Nick Hubing will provide a historical overview of satellite imagery and review new developments including launches, decommissioned satellites, SmallSats, sensors based on ISS (International Space Station), off-the-shelf image datasets and cloud-access to imagery. Extraction of map data layers from imagery will also be addressed.

Hashtag to Map: Transforming Zombie Data to Living Maps
Rex Cammack, University of Nebraska at Omaha
Paul Hunt - University of Nebraska at Omaha
In this research we are investigating how to turn data flowing through social media hoses into live maps. This research focuses on the graphic representation of location enabled social media data. The first aspect of this project is gathering and storing this zombie data. Decisions about infrastructure and implementation will be outlined regarding issues such as endless verses revolving data storage, spatial or non-spatial data storage, distributive verses aggregated data, raw verses contextual data, and server versus client processing. The results of these infrastructure decisions coupled with map and interactive design choices provide map users with the ability work with data that is more lifelike than raw zombie data. The underlining data flow and processing research will be demonstrated through a case study that looks at temporal and cumulative patterns of tweets about NCAA College football teams.
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An approach to automate block cartogram creation
Jeff Blossom, Harvard University
Cartograms that show a statistic in the form of equal sized blocks allow the map reader to quickly compare quantities across an area. However, at the time of this project, there existed no tool or algorithm that automatically converts a GIS shapefile into a block cartogram.  This talk will detail an approach that produced a block cartogram for a Texas County shapefile using data manipulation in Excel and the Cartography Toolbox in ArcMap.
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Dynamic Terrain Visualization
Konstantin Käfer, Mapbox
Visualizing terrain in maps is vital in the outdoors, and also helps at understanding the greater context of the location. Rendering it dynamically in the web browser, or on the mobile device allows for great design flexibility to create a stunning looking map. In this talk, we're looking at the whole chain of DEM data sourcing, processing and distribution, as well as creating a terrain visualization with Mapbox GL that goes beyond classical hill shading by incorporating terrain openness for showing macroscopic terrain.

Using Historical Maps to Research Pittsburgh's Bridges
Todd Wilson, GAI Consultants
Lauren Winkler, Michael Baker International
Pittsburgh, the City of Bridges, is also known for its convoluted roads. Some streets intersect each other three times. Others change names a few times. Giving directions, one often says, "Not that right, the other right," or "Go straight," which means angle left. The development of the city's roads is linked to the development of the city's bridges. In writing the book, Images of America Pittsburgh's Bridges, published in 2015, the study of historical maps became a key research tool. Maps revealed bridges that were eliminated when valleys were filled in and streets that were rearranged when new bridges were built. This research showed that by going back far enough in time, there was an explanation for each irregularity. This presentation will show these findings through maps and images past and present, explaining the city's inconsistencies and abnormalities that make it unique.

A GIS Map Application for Location Selection and People's Preferences for Establishing Schools in Al Ain City, UAE
Naeema Al Hosani, United Arab Emirates University
Geographical Information Systems (GIS) constructing thematic maps describing a variety of information relating to development activities. Current research examined the potential of suitable location as well as to study peoples' preferences to locate best sites for establishing schools in the city of Al Ain. The city of Al Ain has seen rapid developments, specially, in terms of expansion and population growth that, numerically, unprecedented. Therefore, this study aims to determine suitable models to establish the distribution of schools. The study came with some results about the problems that the education services suffer in the area of study. The study concluded that the distribution of the schools were not evenly distributed, therefore, this study recommends to cooperate with the relevant authorities and the ministries that are concerned with the development of education services.

Minnesota Smart City/Infrastructure Transparency Stress Tool
Katie Stinebaugh, University of Minnesota
In his March 2015 Last Week Tonight episode dedicated to infrastructure, John Oliver confronted us with this reality: We only seem to talk about infrastructure when something tragic happens. Conversations about infrastructure are easy to avoid when we bury public information in long reports across multiple agencies. As cartographers and GIS professionals, we are often called to bring together disparate data sources, break them out of their tabular cells, and create simple, attractive tools for communication. The Minnesota Smart City/Infrastructure Transparency Stress Tool is such a project. This is a living collection of web maps and associated visualizations of infrastructure quantity, age, need, and spending for Minnesota's 800+ cities using existing data from several state agencies.  These maps provide an approachable tool for the public, legislators, city officials, and other stakeholders to change conversations about Minnesota's present and future infrastructure.

James Emery: Cartographer, Artist, Historian
Adele Haft, Hunter College, The City University of New York
In the early 1930s, James Emery created two maps to illustrate Kenneth Slessor’s poetry collections: Trio (1931) and Cuckooz Contrey (1932). During WWII, he made maps of the new military railways in Lebanon, where he was stationed as a draftsman; produced the relief map of Tobruk to accompany Chester Wilmot’s 1944 book on the siege of that desert port; and created watercolors of the Middle-East. Back in Sydney, he drew maps celebrating European “discoveries” of Australia. Yet almost nothing is known him today. My talk will tell the story of James Emery through his art and maps, and through the words of others.

It's a Map Map Map Map World: Cartography, Cinema, and Adventure
Victoria Johnson, USAID
From the dotted line journeys of Indiana Jones and the traveling by map shortcut of The Muppet Movie to Lex Luthor's model of New California in Superman and the treasure map at the heart of Romancing the Stone, on-screen cartography has played a memorable role in these and many other classic adventure movies. This talk will examine the way maps are represented in these films, both as plot drivers and as decorative elements, as well as the carto-centric tropes, in-jokes, and mistakes contained therein. Additional attention will be paid to the construction and design of movie maps.

Uisge Beatha: A Deep Map of Islay
Charles Rader, University of Wisconsin - River Falls
Daniel Bochman - University of Edinburgh
Uisge beatha: water of life. Deep maps draw on a long tradition of chorology in geography in order to understand place. The development of a deep map focused on the island of Islay, Scotland reinserts cartography as a central part of multilayered topographical writing and multiple-media through the creation of a deep map that explores the whisky industry of Islay.  In this presentation, we document the process by which the map was developed and includes a discussion of archival research, field work, interviews, sketches, photographs, and mapping used in its creation. The compilation of multiple layers of geo-spatial data included base map, hydrography, geomorphology, land cover, social space, and distillery locations.  The design of the final map is also discussed in the context of choices between static and dynamic cartography.

Map Poetry
Lisa Charlotte Rost, Knight-Mozilla OpenNews Fellow at the NPR Visuals Team
Maps. When I talk about maps at my job as a data journalist, I talk about visual elements representing the physical world. When I talk about maps with my philosophy friends, we talk about mental models that help us navigate the word of ideas. I love maps in both forms. Let's bring them together! Which beliefs, thoughts, narratives can we map with visual elements? And how can we tweak geographical maps to give the audience new mental models about the world?
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Spatial data, of one form or another, inform, shape, and define our everyday lives and choices. Generated through a host of quotidian acts, such as credit card purchases, smartphone application use, and surveillance systems, spatial data is increasingly and continuously fed into massive data systems that collect, aggregate, and analyze it in powerful, new ways. Access to and use of such data demarcates the limits and possibilities of cartographic visualization, shaping world views and popular imaginations. How we see the world through the mediation of cartographic images of spatial data has tremendous impacts on how we perceive ourselves and how we act in the world. In this panel, we ask what it means to confront, to contextualize, and to question spatial data and cartographic representation in the myriad of forms they take. How can we differentiate between the multiple subject positions that constitute a given map? What are the historical precedents for today’s conceptions and practices of data? What is the value and what are the implications of doing so for critical cartography as praxis? Drawing together academics and practitioners, the panel addresses not only what it means to think new forms of data and their representation, but also what it means to act with said data.

Organizers:

Jim Thatcher, University of Washington-Tacoma
Craig Dalton, Hofstra University

Panelists:

Susan Schulten, University of Denver
Ladona Knigge, California State University Chico
Jessica Breen, University of Kentucky
Luke Bergmann, University of Washington
Nick Lally, University of Wisconsin-Madison

OpenStreetMap Analytics: Rewarding Contributors by Tracking OSM in Real-Time
Dylan Moriarty, Develpoment Seed
Marc Farra, Develpoment Seed
Nate Smith, Development Seed
Mapathons are an increasingly effective way to get data into OpenStreetMap. The Missing Maps project hosts mapathons to increase the amount of data in areas that don't have large local OSM communities. Using the OSM tasking manager and data from Missing Maps, the American Red Cross built an analytics platform that tracks user trends in real-time and rewards contributors for their efforts. This talk will explore the design challenges inherit in the scale of an OSM project, and how we handled developing an architecture that needs to reliably handle bursts of data during high periods of activity, yet reducing costs by auto scaling to input as required.

Taxis and APIs: Mapping and Analyzing Transportation in New York City
Juan Francisco Saldarriaga, Columbia University
David A. King, Arizona State University
Taxicabs are a critical aspect of the public transit system in New York City. The yellow cabs that are ubiquitous in Manhattan are as iconic as the city's subway system, and in recent years green taxicabs have been introduced by the city to improve taxi service. In this talk we will present two projects that map and analyze taxi data. The first one looks at cash versus credit card payments and analyzes their spatial distribution in relation to the unbanked population of the city. The second project attempts to quantify how much do green cabs have to travel empty before they can pickup another passenger, and maps their travels using multiple routing APIs. This project analyzes transportation policies while also reflecting upon the tools we use to perform our analysis; it is as much about the tools as about the content.
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Taking it Public: Visualizing Geospatial Data on the Web Using Shiny
Jerry Shannon, University of Georgia
Kyle Walker, Texas Christian University
Julia Connell, University of Georgia
Governmental and non-profit institutions have increasingly created data dashboards based on open datasets to increase transparency and encourage citizen participation. Two limitations have hampered these efforts. First, raw datasets are often complex and difficult to decipher for non-specialists. Second, software to visualize trends within the data is expensive. For several of these systems, tools specifically for geovisualization are underdeveloped. In this presentation, we describe how Shiny, a data visualization system developed by RStudio, provides solutions to both issues. Shiny harnesses a variety of existing tools such as Leaflet, Plotly, and Highcharts, and encourages users to interact and explore datasets.  As it runs on the free and open source R software, Shiny's cost is also minimal.  We use two case studies to describe how Shiny provides an accessible way to facilitate data exploration for public audiences.
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Where Do We Put It All? Lessons Learned Housing Large Geospatial Data Collections In OCUL's Scholars GeoPortal
Jo Ashley, OCUL Scholars Portal, University of Toronto Libraries
Amber Leahey, OCUL Scholars Portal, University of Toronto Libraries
The Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL) is a consortium of twenty-one university libraries in the province of Ontario, Canada that collaborates through collective purchasing and shared digital library infrastructure. OCUL's Scholars GeoPortal service (geo.scholarsportal.info) uses Esri software to provide a set of online tools for identifying, exploring, and downloading licensed geospatial datasets for academic research in Ontario. Since 2012, the usage and size of geospatial data collections housed and showcased in Scholars GeoPortal has grown significantly, with more than 220,000 site visits and over 140TB of data, resulting in a number of challenges. This session will introduce the GeoPortal's interface and discuss various data related issues and demands facing the current version of the geoportal, lessons learned, as well as future ideas and plans for continued success.
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Mapping Virtual Traffic in Real Space and Time - 10 Minute Talk
Ryan Mullins Aptima, Inc.
Caroline Ziemkiewicz, Aptima, Inc.
Adam Fouse, Aptima, Inc.
Computer networks are essential to modern communication. Understanding the logical and spatiotemporal connections of these networks is an essential requirement for those ensuring information availability, integrity, and confidentiality. Past network visualizations have, generally, focused on representing either their logical structure or physical location. Approaches to the former typically involve node-link diagrams, which offer utility for small networks but fail when scaled to the complexities of large modern networks. Approaches to the latter effectively communicate where networked assets are, but place significant cognitive load on the human figure out how and how quickly information will get there. In this presentation, we present a novel network visualization concept which combines approaches from traffic mapping and node-link diagrams to show the minimum time to communicate between network nodes. Additionally, we present some initial findings from a usability analysis that sheds some light on the important geographic attributes for network visualizations.
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Introducing MapStudy
Carl Sack, UW-Madison
Robert E. Roth, UW-Madison
Kristen Vincent, UW-Madison
What is MapStudy? Simply put, it's a platform that aims to empower the next generation of scientific cartography experiments. Have you ever wanted to test whether a certain type of map, certain visual variables, certain interactions, or certain data are better for particular purposes? MapStudy makes it easy! This talk will cover what MapStudy can do for you, how to set it up, and what lies ahead for the project. You don't have to wait to use it though--go fork MapStudy on GitHub at github.com/uwcart/mapstudy now!
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Software Testing: How "Tests" Can Improve Map Design
Amy Lee Walton, Mapbox
Human fallibility can emerge in even the most impeccable of design projects. Testing is a standard in software development but visual design typically requires the human eye. However, in the world of code-driven web maps; tests can help you and your team quickly identify and resolve even visual discrepancies. Over the past year, our cartographic team has been developing our own design testing suite. The initial goal was to automate style checks before releases and has grown into a tool that ensures design consistency across our core map styles. This talk will outline our results (both pass and fail), the iteration and evolution of our tests, and share open-source tools we used to build our testing suite. Come hear about our continuing process of error-proofing, time-saving, and codifying best practices for visual quality assurance.
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The Making of Map Use, the Eighth Edition
Aileen Buckley Esri, Inc.
A. Jon Kimerling, Oregon State University
The eighth edition of Map Use: Reading, Analysis, Interpretation is being released even as the NACIS 2016 meeting is being held! For decades, Map Use has served as a comprehensive, foundational companion for college-level students and instructors, for professionals in a variety of fields where maps are important, and also for casual map users. This new edition fully integrates advancements in GIS, GPS, remote sensing, and web mapping into the text throughout all the chapters. It includes a new chapter highlighting map design. New to this edition, too, are almost 50 new figures, as well as an expanded glossary that defines key terms and topics. It is also available in e-book format allowing us to also include links to online maps, animations, and web sites, thus expanding the examples and resources the book offers. This presentation describes the rationale for and challenges of making the eighth edition of Map Use.
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Always have a plan: Developing a data acquisition policy at the University of Colorado Boulder
Philip White, University of Colorado at Boulder
Elise Gowen, University of Colorado Boulder Libraries
Acquisition of data from external sources is often overlooked in academic libraries' collection development policies. Library policies' inclusion of data acquisition guidelines range from well-defined to nonexistent. Recognizing a need for a coordinated approach, librarians at the University of Colorado Boulder sought to formalize data acquisition guidelines to avoid acquiring data of limited usefulness and to improve cohesion of interdepartmental data policies. We systematically reviewed literature and collection policy documents from more than 20 peer institutions to identify common approaches and explore data collection assessment strategies. We will discuss best practices for implementing a data acquisition process. Due to the dynamic nature of GIS data, we will also examine the unique policy needs of geospatial data users. This presentation discusses our findings and explores broader applications for library-wide collection development.
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Introducing Geographical Imagination Systems
Luke Bergmann, University of Washington
Nick Lally, University of Wisconsin - Madison
Spatial theory in human geography often describes space as situated, dynamic, processual, relational, and contingent, suggesting non-Euclidean topological theories for grappling with the complexities of space. How, then, can cartography contribute to bringing these spatial imaginaries to fruition without reinscribing an understanding of space as a static, empty container waiting to be filled with points that precisely locate discrete objects within it? In this talk, we present a prototype of a Geographical Imagination System (GIS)--a web-based interface that encourages the interpretative construction, collision, and collaging of relational and absolute spaces. Our software prototyping both draws from and extends work in cartography, moving past the limits of familiar software packages, and opening up new possibilities for cartographic work and understandings of space.

The MAP-Makers Shadow: Transformation, Integrity and Anxiety
Steven R. Holloway, toMake Press
Map-makers are hiding behind the rule-books, and the cartographic-gps-gis-image machine cranks on. To step aside/outside and practice the fourth precept of 'Right MAP Making,' "deep listening through direct-contact" takes not only time & effort, but is central to the integrity of the map-maker and map-making. Integrity and transformation come through listening to our anxiety and awakening to confront the long shadow that casts itself over today's maps; 'Keep the Earth Round.'
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Fashionable Maps are Coming to Town. Beep-beep.
Kenneth Field, Esri Inc / International Cartographic Association

There's a brand new dance but I don't know its name
That people from bad homes do again and again
It's big and it's bland full of tension and fear
They do it over there but we don't do it here - David Bowie, Fashion, 1980

Cartographic style used to be that which defined a particular look and feel, perhaps that of a National Mapping Agency or news agency. Perhaps now it has more to do with individuality and the search for expression. Here, I explore cartographic style, how fashions are established and how they change. What is the equivalent of the pair of flares? What's safe? What's edgy? What should we be looking forward to for next 'season'? I introduce work the ICA Map Design Commission has begun to develop a series of style guides. These are intended to provide a modern cartographic wardrobe for the style conscious map-maker.
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Argument, Principle, and Value Judgement
Mark Denil
Most discourse on cartography draws or assumes a clear distinction between 'legitimate' and 'propaganda' maps. The former is by definition a conscientious attempt to map things fairly while the latter is characterized as a scurrilous attempt to deceive and hood-wink. However, because all maps make at least implicit claims to truth, and thus to a positive ethical stance, it is unclear how one is to judge a maps's, or mapmaker's, ethics.What, then, constitutes cartographic ethics? To wit: In what vile part of this propaganda map doth the evil lodge? Tell me, that I may sack the hateful mansion. This talk will briefly examine the issue of cartographic ethics, ethical legitimacy, and ethical practice.
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Maps by Hands: Opportunity, Techniques, & Cherubs - 10 Minute Talk
Dylan Moriarty, Development Seed
Our workflows are, with few exceptions, entirely digital. This is fantastic for productivity, accuracy, and a million other reasons- but by building in the same tools we risk uniformity in output. There are endless ways to make something look custom, but one of the best is to simply incorporate illustrative elements- whether they be a hand drawn pattern, icon marker, or classic marginalia. While those elements will inevitably bring to mind maps of the past, I'll argue there are plenty of map makers today utilizing these techniques to great, albeit more subtle, effect. In this talk I'll go over when these sorts of embellishments are appropriate, and some techniques I've found useful for bringing handy work to the digital world. If you have hesitations based on self perceived art skills, please don't let that discourage you! There is still a lot you can do, I promise.
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Daniel Huffman, somethingaboutmaps
Elaine Guidero, The Pennsylvania State University

Without regard for the concept of "popular demand," 2014's Typophiles' Retreat is back! Join your two facilitators, along with a roomful of other typography nerds, for a free-flowing discussion of all things type. This is an audience-driven session, so come prepared to share your knowledge, experience, and enthusiasm with your colleagues.

Our first gathering featured passionate debates on the merits of discredited typefaces, word association exercises, and audience members sharing their favorite tricks and web resources. If you want to find out what happens this time around, and come away with some practical (and impractical) knowledge about typography, join us!

The National Atlas of Korea: Rare opportunities for cartographic and geographic education
Gregory Chu, Univ. of Wisconsin-La Crosse
Chulsue Hwang, Kyung Hee University
Jongnam Choi, Western Illinois University
The 2014 National Atlas of Korea is one of the most advanced and well designed national atlases of all of Asia. It serves an innovative role in the design and contents for any national atlas in multiple aspects: data selection and portrayal, integration of media and maps, providing pedagogy, and unrestricted online access. Published by the National Geographic Information Institute, maps highlight multiple decades of a massive Spatial Planning effort. With data contributions from most government agencies at national and local levels, the Atlas integrates aspects of socioeconomic, political, educational, demographic, and environmental data that harmonized with national development. Produced by South Korea government, the Atlas also integrates rare but accurate data about demographic, economic, urban, and migration attributes of North Korea. The Atlas is a tremendously valuable resource for teaching about Korea. Several freely downloadable lesson plans were developed for use by American secondary school teachers.

The Lake Champlain Basin Atlas: An Online Portal to Watershed Exploration and Education
Ryan Mitchell, Lake Champlain Basin Program
Originally developed in 2002 using static PDF maps, the online Lake Champlain Basin Atlas is one of the Lake Champlain Basin Program's (LCBP) most effective education and outreach tools. The atlas includes standard themes as well as content focused on management issues specific to the Lake Champlain watershed. It is used extensively by students and educators as a source for research and for mapping exercises. The LCBP is redeveloping the atlas using contemporary web mapping tools, both open source and proprietary. With links to the source data and to ArcGIS Online feature layers, the new atlas will be a portal to exploration of the watershed and a point of departure for mapping activities that use modern tools and techniques. I will discuss the redevelopment of the atlas and its use in LCBP E&O efforts, and explore additional educational applications and the role of atlases in education in the digital age.
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Implementing a new geospatial data discovery interface across a multi-institution consortium
Nathan Piekielek, The Pennsylvania State University
James Whitacre, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Geographic information systems (GIS) have been commonly used mapping and analytic tools for more than twenty years. Early in this period, a lack of geospatial data often limited GIS users so that individuals were commonly producing geospatial data for their own use. More recently, the availability of geospatial data has increased dramatically so that the focus has shifted away from the data production efforts of individuals and towards large-scale multi-institution data documentation and discovery projects. In 2015, nine university members of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC; aka Big Ten) began a collaborative effort to build and populate a geospatial data portal. The portal leverages the newest data documentation and discovery tools including GeoNetwork to create ISO metadata records and GeoBlacklight as the platform for a web-based discovery interface. A beta version of the portal is operational and will be described and demonstrated.
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GIS-based Discovery Interface to Paper Map Sets - 10 Minute Talk
Christopher Thiry, Colorado School of Mines  
The staff of the Map Collection at the Arthur Lakes Library, Colorado School of Mines has created a new and unique way that provides access to its international paper map sets. The GIS -based Discovery Interface Project has created a visual, interactive, searchable, web-based portal that provides patrons with an easy way to understand what maps are owned by the Library, and how to access them. Embedded within the interface are links to records in the Library’s catalog, and, when available, links to scanned copies of the maps. These interfaces have allowed patrons, from afar, to easily search our map holdings, and quickly understand what is available. Also, two of the websites created for this project are discovery tools for scanned maps. The processes developed by the Map Collection’s staff are the start of a crowd-sharing effort that will allow other libraries to easily create their own discovery portal and thus provide access to their map collection. The staff has written clear instructions on how to recreate this project, and made the plain copies of individual indexes available for all to use. This project has stripped away the layers of library jargon that often interfere with patrons finding the information they need. The interfaces leave behind problems of language and library terms, and even the confusion of using a library’s catalog.  Usually, patrons know exactly what part of the globe they are searching for; these portals take the user right to their area of interest and shows what paper maps are available.

iPad Apps for Teaching Geography - 10 Minute Talk
Abdullah Al-Zubaidi, United Arab Emirates University
Naeema al Hosani, United Arab Emirates University 
With the information technology revolution geography teachers are looking for different innovative ways to teach geography and keep students involved by providing them with an immersive digital experience, and using many of the online tools that are available nowadays. One of the very useful devices for teaching and learning is iPad. The aim of this study is to investigate at different iPad apps, which can be used as some of the most engaging online tools for teaching geography to students of all ages. Results indicated that these apps provide a number of stimulating games, quizzes, and some other materials that can possibly bring life to geography learning. It is concluded that using apps in teaching geography provides interactive content to engage students and keep them motivated, and they perform better.

Participatory Mapping: Evaluating Practice in Climate Change Projects in Caribbean Small Island Developing States
Alison DeGraff, University of the West Indies
Bheshem Ramlal, University of the West Indies
Michael Sutherland, University of the West Indies
Participatory mapping is a form of intimate cartographic collaboration with communities that utilises unique local/traditional knowledge and is currently being recognised as a valuable tool to approach the impacts of climate change. This research gathered information on participatory mapping in Caribbean small island developing states and compiled a collaborative database of projects supplemented by the creation of an adaptable best practice methodology. Caribbean case studies were evaluated to determine their conformance with established best practice and a conceptual framework was designed. By integrating participatory mapping into the climate change framework, it validated the importance of local/traditional knowledge and illustrated how, in combination with scientific data, it can be used to address climate change adaptation and mitigation efforts. The significance of these results is their value to connect and educate practitioners, encourage best practice in Caribbean SIDS, and embolden the use of local/traditional knowledge in the face of climate change impacts.
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The 2015 Gunpowder Mapping Workshop
Matt Dooley, University of Wisconsin - River Falls
In October 2015, twelve NACIS members participated in the Gunpowder Mapping Workshop in River Falls, Wisconsin. This presentation highlights our adventures and showcases the artwork that resulted.
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Participatory Mapping with a Homeless Advocacy Group in Denver, CO
Kate Rigot, University of Colorado - Denver
The content of this presentation may change as work develops around this topic, but will cover participatory mapping and other supportive work done with and for members of activist group Denver Homeless Out Loud. So far, collaborative research has involved mapping the locations of publicly available restrooms in central Denver, and using various visualization strategies to easily depict how accessible they are to a homeless population. Upcoming work may involve the identification of potential sites for tiny home villages using GIS analysis, among other things.
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Expressions of Place: an interdisciplinary and interactive community event series
Diana K.B. Hoover, University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point
In the heart of Wisconsin, where the Menomonie people have lived for many thousands of years, in a small city that houses a medium-sized liberal arts university, some generous and visionary individuals, organizations, and corporations join forces to celebrate culture and reinvigorate community. Fueled by entrepreneurial spirit and passion for the arts, many of the creative collaborations bring together individuals representing diverse perspectives. One of these undertakings is the upcoming event series, Expressions of Place sponsored by the College of Fine Arts and Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. During this talk I will present the genesis for this project, the variety of arts and geography mash-ups in the program, some obstacles encountered as well as discoveries made while organizing this compendium on mapping, sensing, living and expressing Place.
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Colors in a Multivariate Attribute Space Over Time
Luc Guillemot, UC Berkeley
David O'Sullivan, UC Berkeley
How can colors be used to unravel spatiotemporal patterns in a multivariate geographical space? Perceptually consistent color spaces such as L*a*b* or L*c*h* are well defined, but their use in qualitative cartography is still relatively rare. Furthermore, qualitative color palettes are often randomly selected and do not relate the distance between colors to degrees of difference between categories depicted on the map. This study presents a tool allowing to select colors and automatically connect them to a multivariate space. It is applied to a geodemographic map of the San Francisco Bay Area where colors for 15 clusters can be algorithmically selected to reflect similarities between clusters in the attribute space or to maximize contrast between spatially contiguous clusters. This study shows that careful consideration of a color palette and its relation to the mapped data space can assist in the visualization of complex spatiotemporal patterns.
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Mapping Demographic Change with Cartes et Données
Kazimierz Zaniewski, University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh
Demographic change over time can be shown on several types of quantitative thematic maps. Some types (e.g. choropleth and bar graph maps) have been frequently used to portray spatial and temporal trends in population change and its two components, natural increase and migration. Other less popular types (e.g. nightingale and polar graph maps) can also be used for displaying demographic trends from a more complex (i.e. multidimensional) perspective. This paper discusses several cartographic techniques, available in the latest version of a French software packages Cartes et Données, for mapping population change in the United States at the state and county level.
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How to Build a Space/Time Directory?
Bert Spaan New York Public Library - NYPL Labs
The NYC Space/Time Directory will make urban history accessible through the kinds of interactive, location-aware tools used to navigate modern cityscapes. It will provide a way for scholars, students, and enthusiasts to explore New York City across time periods, and to add their own knowledge and expertise. Over the past five years, NYPL Labs - the R&D and digitization lab of the New York Public Library - has worked on many digitization, crowdsourcing, and digital cartography projects, all aiming to make the collection of the New York Public Library more accessible. The NYC Space/Time Directory, a two-year project funded by the Knight Foundation, will build on top of those efforts, and it will create new connections between previously unconnected library collections and data sources, allowing people to tell new stories about the history of New York City.

Determining current uses of cartographic animation in geography through a journal content analysis - 10 Minute Talk
Joanna Merson, Arizona State University
Animation offers a captivating and informative avenue for representing dynamic data in cartography. Likewise, leading cartographic research aims to improve animation use through data and user evaluation to establish best-practice guidelines. But how many of these guidelines actually reach the research community? This question is investigated using a content analysis determine how cartographic animation is used in major geography journals in the past 5 years. I specifically examine what types of animation are used, the purpose behind their use, and the congruence between the animations and the data represented. This analysis is used to examine both how cartographic animation is used outside of the cartographic research community, and if in the era of digital maps, there is a need for better facilitating methods for including animations in academic publications.
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Beyond Choropleth Animation and Small Multiples: A Cubist Approach to Temporal Data - 10 Minute Talk
Aaron Dennis
Common approaches to cartographically presenting geographic time series include small multiples and animation. However, it is uncertain whether map-readers can effectively derive accurate and comprehensive understanding of a time series dataset from these methods. This talk focuses on ideas like using principle component and cluster analysis to derive significant trends from time series datasets and displaying these patterns cartographically. We can apply the thinking of 20th century cubist artists, who analyzed and reassembled objects from more than one viewpoint for greater context, to how we present geographic time series. Instead of dynamic animations of choropleth maps, we might use dynamic processing techniques to create more abstract and insightful maps.
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Join everyone at Antler's Grille for a hosted reception (that's right, drinks are paid for!) prior to the start of the NACIS Banquet.

Join in on a NACIS tradition, as our own Dennis McClendon channels Art Fleming to host a very mappy version of Jeopardy! Sign up at the registration desk if you'd like to join a team - winners take home great carto-prizes. Otherwise, join the audience to cheer on (and heckle) the players.

Cartography is often cited as the perfect fusion of art and science. The quality of a map is only as good as the data that was used to create it and as understandable as the visual characteristics that are applied to this data. In this workshop we will use Global Mapper to introduce some of the basic principles of GIS data management and processing and follow the workflow from data acquisition or creation to cartographic rendering.  Along the way we will demonstrate elements of both vector and raster data processing including data editing and cropping, imagery manipulation, thematic rendering, labeling, and ultimately map layout and publication. We will also explore the integration of readily available 3D data for contour generation as well as topographic or bathymetric visualization. Finally we will incorporate the various elements and datasets into a what-you-see-is-what-you-get layout framework in preparation for web, print, or geospatial PDF publication.

Learn to map data on OpenStreetMap - or help contribute if you already know how!

We will teach, provide tracing guides, and talk about how the data created using OSM helps humanitarian organizations and local communities make informed decisions about aid decisions around the globe. Given the former, we are choosing specific places that need data so we can help people out as much as possible.

So, whether a newbie or an expert, come have fun with us!

Please bring your laptop - and a mouse if you happen to have one (it's okay if you don't).

GeoJSON and TopoJSON have both emerged as major file formats for JavaScript-based mapping. The popular programming language was introduced in 1995 to make web pages more interactive and did not originally facilitate the reading of files. JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) developed over the past decade as a fast method of data input. GeoJSON is a particular variation of JSON for geographic data. TopoJSON, or Topological JSON, encodes polygons as arcs and significantly reduces file sizes. The workshop examines how these files can be manipulated and displayed using popular Application Programmer Interfaces (APIs). Examples expand upon the existing code for the Mapping in the Cloud book. All participants will create their own webhosting account and upload files from the book's web page.

Please bring your own Windows or Macintosh laptop with Firefox or Chrome browser to participate in this workshop.

What on earth could be better than exploring the Garden of the Gods and learning old fashioned manual navigation using maps? This full-day trip includes transportation to and from Garden of the Gods, a box lunch, orienteering training, and a beginner orienteering course. You can expect the hiking and orienteering-course to be no more than 3.5 miles, so please plan and dress accordingly. If you have questions about other details, ask our NACIS volunteer field trip organizer, Jeremy Goldsmith (jeremywgoldsmith@gmail.com).

8:00–9:30am — NACIS Members Arrive at the park via shuttle-bus from hotel. The shuttle bus will run at 8am, 8:45am, and 9:15am from the hotel to the park. Feel free to have breakfast on your own, walk around, explore exhibits, and enjoy the park before 9:40am.

9:30am — Everyone meets outside the Visitor Center Entrance

9:40am — Geo-Trekker Movie (Visitor Center)

10:00–10:30am — "Introduction and History of Orienteering". This includes history of the sport, how to use the compass, and how to read the orienteering map & symbols. Four (4) volunteer members of the Rocky Mountain Orienteering Club will be there. 

10:35–12:15pm — Orienteering Course (2–5km).

12:30–1:00pm — Lunch Served (Variety of boxed lunches. Please e-mail Jeremy if you have dietary restrictions)

1:15–3:30pm — Ramblin' Express Shuttle Bus Available to Antlers Hotel (Bus runs at 1:30pm, 2:15pm, and the last bus is 3:30pm. Please allow 15–20 minutes for the bus to reach the Antlers Hilton if you’re flying out of Denver or Colorado Springs Saturday evening.)

1:00–11:00pm — NACIS Members are highly encouraged to explore more of the park on their own. Garden of the Gods is rated one of the best free parks in the United States. The park offers free nature talks, free guided walks, multiple exhibits, birding, motorized tours, and a “Step Back in History” experience at Rock Ledge Ranch. The park is open until 11:00pm.