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News Roundup – September 2020

Want to get your work featured in Esri Canada’s 2021 Map Calendar? What are some of the key economic effects of modern geospatial technology on people and organizations? How did a town of 12,000 people use GIS apps to boost their public engagement efforts during COVID-19? Learn more in the September News Roundup.

Map Calendar Contest

2021 Map Calendar Contest
Share your most beautiful maps with the GIS community! Esri Canada is holding a contest to find the best maps in Canada. Send us the maps you’ve made with Esri technology for a chance to be featured in our 2021 Map Calendar and on our blog. Plus, selected entrants receive a copy of Cynthia A. Brewer’s Designing Better Maps: A Guide for GIS Users. Contest ends September 30.

Eight cartography tips to make maps that will wow your audience
Thinking of submitting your map to our 2021 Map Calendar Contest? Check out these eight tips for taking your maps to the next level and get some inspiration while you’re at it.

Feature Stories

GIS provides ground for analysis to multi-disciplined group
Learn how a multi-disciplinary taskforce within Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC), comprised of Market Service Industry Services, Science and Technology, and Strategic Policy branches, was created to understand the status, vulnerabilities and economic impacts of COVID-19 on Canada’s food supply.

From rags to data richness: L’Assomption strikes gold with Community Maps
David Richard, a one-person GIS department at the Ville de L’Assomption, Québec, has built L’Assomption’s GIS practice from the ground up in only 16 months. Read more about how David digitized L’Assomption’s building footprint as part of the Community Map of Canada program, and about the great outcomes this work has produced.

Six geospatial strategy archetypes
What kind of geospatial strategy would best fit your organization’s business motivation and geospatial maturity? In this blog post, Matt Lewin discusses six archetypes—including efficiency-, productivity- and growth-oriented strategies—that can provide a starting point for you to build your geospatial strategy.

The simple economics of modern geospatial technology
What valuable activity or ability does geospatial technology make cheaper? And what are the implications for people and organizations? Esri Canada’s director of management consulting, Matt Lewin, asks these and other questions in this blog post.

Town of Truro improves communication and public engagement using GIS
The Town of Truro, home to more than 12,000 residents, wanted to find new ways to communicate with its constituents and stakeholders. The many possibilities provided by the ArcGIS platform were the solution. In this blog post, learn about the many apps that the Town has developed in service of residents, including in response to COVID-19.

An interview with Erica Corbett, Esri Canada Certified Instructor
Learn more about Esri Canada’s instructor for the Atlantic Region, Erica Corbett, and about why she loves teaching one of her favourite courses, Migrating from ArcMap to ArcGIS Pro.

4 great reasons to switch to a vector basemap
With raster basemaps moving to mature support by 2021, it’s time to consider moving to vector basemaps. Read this blog post to learn more about how you can improve your mapping life using vector basemaps.

An exemplary SDI: York Region’s YorkInfo Partnership
In this blog post, Gordon Plunkett breaks down the ways in which the winner of the 2020 Esri President’s Award, York Region’s YorkInfo Partnership, sets the gold standard for a world-class spatial data infrastructure (SDI).

Esri News

Ease Up or Lock Down? New App Shows COVID-19 Spikes and Trends in Your Community
September 1, 2020

Esri Tech to Help Modernize Vermont Department of Taxes
August 17, 2020

Esri Offers Students Free Access to GIS Software and Lessons
August 6, 2020

Resources

Forrester Report: Esri named a leader in location intelligence
In The Forrester Wave: Location Intelligence Platforms, Q2 2020 Evaluation, Forrester acknowledges Esri’s leadership in location intelligence technology and highlights the company’s long-term commitment to the development of a shared global geospatial infrastructure.

ArcNews: In Quick Move to Virtual Classes, Professor Enlisted ArcGIS Insights
When his outdoor environmental geology class moved online in March 2020 due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, Steven Goldsmith, associate professor at Villanova University’s Department of Geography and the Environment, needed to update his curriculum. Online courses are not a new concept, of course, but rapidly transitioning to virtual classes can be challenging for even the most dynamic instructors.

WhereNext: Sustainable Business: A Conversation with Jeffrey Sachs
The business analyst of the future understands the value of location intelligence and anticipates business needs. Join WhereNext’s inaugural webcast to learn about this new analyst.

Esri & The Science of Where Podcast: Data & Discovery: The Power of Visualization
Betsy Mason, science journalist and co-author of the book All Over the Map: A Cartographic Odyssey, talks about the most intriguing maps in the world and how data visualization changed the course of history.

Video: Animated Maps: California Wildfires from 1910-2019
Wildfires are a fact of life in California—and not a new one. Living in the state has always meant forging an uneasy alliance with the natural cycle of fires. What has changed in recent years is their frequency and ferocity, largely driven by climate change. In 2018, California experienced the Mendocino Complex Fire and the Camp Fire—respectively the largest and most destructive wildfires in the state’s history—but there were over 50 others that year. Collectively, they consumed nearly 1.6 million acres, enough space to hold five cities the size of Los Angeles.

This post was translated to French and can be viewed here.

About the Author

Dani Pacey is a Marketing Specialist for Esri Canada. She digitized her first map at the tender age of 10 and has been fascinated by the relationships between people and places ever since. An avid technical communicator with degrees in Science & Technology Studies from York University and History of Science & Technology from the University of King's College, Dani has always blended science, social science and the humanities and loves bringing them all together to tell great stories about human life.

Profile Photo of Dani Pacey