We are pleased to announce the next Synergis meeting “Mapping Historical Addresses-HistoryForge Ithaca and Beyond” by Eve Snyder, HistoryForge Project Coordinator and Claire Lovell, Auburn HistoryForge. The meeting will be on Zoom January 4 at 1 pm. We will send a link when we get closer.
HistoryForge is an open-source web application which combines historical census records, maps, photographs, and other sources to create an interactive web environment to explore local history. Eve Snyder and Claire Lovell will discuss mapping historical addresses using HistoryForge.
They will also discuss their use of MapWarper to georectify the historic maps and plans for a future project of expanding into the Town of Caroline and other areas in Tompkins County that have fewer maps and addressing resources.
A long-overdue Mappy Hour, to catch up on all the spatial things in our lives…
Join us at the Westy on State Street on Thursday, July 26
We’ll start around 5pm. Guests are welcome, so bring a friend!
It seems like December 12 at 3:00 is the most convenient time to meet up
at the History Center to gather and explore their Maps of Tompkins County
Exhibition. This was just brought up at GIS Day as an informal gathering
to explore what the Center has to offer. If you are available, come see
what the History Center has displayed in the form of local maps for the
City.
From their newsletter:
The Maps of Tompkins County
From November 14 through mid-2018
Maps are powerful and engaging forms of visual communication. They show us our world, and the myriad smaller places within it. Maps simplify, scale down, and organize what otherwise would be too large, too distant, or too complex to be seen.
Maps fulfill a multitude of functions, and are used for a variety of purposes. Political maps, railway maps, waterway maps, soil maps; from cross-sections of lake water depth to trolley routes; maps are irresistible and invaluable resources for learning about our environment in all its tremendous diversity.
This exhibit displays a sampling of The History Center’s map collection from the 19th through the 21st centuries.
Wednesday, November 15 is GIS Day, and we’re planning to host an event.
GIS Day is an opportunity for GIS users around the world to demonstrate
how we use GIS to make a difference - learn more at http://www.gisday.com/
Our event will be held at the Greater Ithaca Activities Center (GIAC) on
Court Street in Ithaca, from 12:00 - 4:00 on November 15. We’d like to
invite everyone who uses GIS in Tompkins County to share their work at
this event.
You can share a poster, or a live demo - we’ll supply a table and wi-fi,
you supply a laptop or whatever other device you need. Our audience will
include your GIS-using colleagues, interested members of the public, and
students in the GIAC afterschool program.
Let’s get together and talk about what we are all doing with GIS.
Join us at the Westy on State Street on Friday, July 21.
There is food nearby that we can bring out back (Saigon Kitchen & Franco’s Pizzeria).
We’ll start around 5:00 pm and guests are always welcome.
Hopefully it will be nice enough to sit outside.
Join us for informal networking, followed by several presentations.
Schedule
12:00pm - bring your own lunch, informal networking
12:30pm - presentations begin
Svetla Borovska: Healthy Neighborhoods Program
Bob Kibbee: Feeding the Forge: News from HistoryForge
Susan Nixson: Unearthing City Water Records - Knowing the Unknown
We ran out of time, so we will look forward to hearing from Frank Popowitch at a later date: “What was I thinking? Migrating to ArcGIS 10.5 in the cloud”
For this meeting, Synergis is teaming up with the Southern Tier GIS Users Group! Join us for informal networking, followed by two presentations on web mapping applications, Mapbox and Carto. We’ll also be looking for volunteers to help plan future meetings…
Schedule
12:00pm - bring your own lunch, informal networking
12:30pm - call for volunteers for the Steering Committee
12:40pm - Mapbox / Ben Coakley
1:05pm - Carto / Keith Jenkins
1:30pm - end (or linger for more informal networking)
What has everybody been working on lately? Let’s get together and talk about maps! Join us at the Westy on State Street on Friday, June 24 for the opportunity to talk about GIS, mapping, and other spatial topics in a casual atmosphere.
Our neighbors to the south have invited us to their next meeting!
The Southern Tier GIS Users Group will be meeting 10 a.m., Monday, June 13 in Room 322 of the Chemung County Human Resource Center, 425 Pennsylvania Avenue, Elmira. This will be a combined meeting with the Chemung County GIS Consortium. Josh Williams from Esri’s Boston office will be speaking and answering your questions about the Esri software, so be thinking about things that you would like to ask.
To get to the Chemung County Human Resource Center from I-86, take the Elmira Exit 56.
If you were travelling east on I-86, turn right at the traffic light onto E Church St. After several blocks, turn left onto Madison Avenue (Dunkin Donuts is at this intersection). After crossing the bridge over the Chemung River continue “straight” onto Pennsylvania Ave. After passing under the railroad viaduct, turn left at the second street onto W LaFrance St which will take you to the parking lot by the main entrance to the building.
If you were travelling west on I-86, turn left at the traffic light onto E Water St. After passing the Holiday Inn, take the first left onto the Madison Avenue bridge. After crossing the bridge over the Chemung River continue “straight” onto Pennsylvania Ave. After passing under the railroad viaduct, turn left at the second street onto W LaFrance St which will take you to the parking lot by the main entrance to the building.
You will have to pass through a metal detector when you enter the building. The officers should be able to direct you to Room 322. I hope to see you all there!
Bill Ostrander, Manager, Geographic Information Systems, Tioga County
It’s been a while since we’ve had any kind of SynerGIS event, so let’s get together for a Mappy Hour. Have a drink and an informal chat about GIS and mapping topics with your colleagues. Friends and family welcome.
Stay tuned for news about more SynerGIS events this spring.
Please join us for CUGEO 2015, the second annual Cornell Geospatial Forum, a one-day gathering of faculty, staff, students, and community members to discuss geospatial science and technology research and extension at Cornell and the surrounding Ithaca community.
Spatial analyses and place-based studies are more important than ever in the world today, and the digital technologies that support such work are becoming much more widespread, and skills to use them are in high demand. Cornell and the larger Ithaca community are in the unique position to take advantage of this due to the large amount of geospatial work being done in the area.
At this one-day event, we will highlight some of the many innovative and cross-disciplinary applications at Cornell, share ideas and research, and learn about existing and emerging campus-wide resources.
Elaine Guidero, a Cornell alumna and current Ph.D. student in the Department of
Geography at Penn State, will speak to us about the principles of cartographic
design, with a special focus on the typography of maps (the good, the bad, and
the ugly).
Mann 160 is in the far back left corner of the first floor
Lightning Talks
For our November meeting, we’d like to give SynerGIS members an opportunity to
introduce themselves and talk about how they use GIS. Please join us, and be
ready to give a short talk about your own particular GIS niche. Each speaker
should plan to talk for about five minutes; you’re welcome to put together a
few slides if you like, but we’d like to keep the talks short and informal.
There are SynerGIS members using GIS to do all sorts of cool things. Come out
and share your cool things with the most appreciative audience available:
your fellow GIS users.
Ben Coakley, Southern Cayuga Lake Intermunicipal Water Commission
Susan Nixson, City of Ithaca
Jan Vink, Cornell University, Program on Applied Demographics
Eliza Czolowski, GZA GeoEnvironmental, Inc.
Keith Jenkins, Cornell University, Mann Library
Nick Hollingshead, Cornell University, College of Veterinary Medicine
Frank Popowitch, Cornell University, Campus Planning
Please join us for the official launch of the Ithaca area Google Street View imagery.
Google will launch the imagery and we will host a demonstration of the new areas of imagery
that were captured with the Google Trekker backpack. The City of Ithaca GIS Program staff
partnered with Cornell University, Ithaca College and The Museum of the Earth/Cayuga Nature
Center to gather the Google Street View imagery of our Gorges, parks, golf course, trails,
and more. Partnerships like this should be celebrated, so please come to City Hall and join us!
Please join us for the first annual Cornell Geospatial Forum, a one-day gathering of faculty, staff, students, and community members to discuss the past, present, and future of geospatial science and technology at Cornell.
Spatial analyses and place-based studies are more important than ever in the world today, and the digital technologies that support such work are becoming much more commonplace and in high demand. At Cornell we are at a turning point, as we face increasing demands and opportunities for support of geospatial research, teaching, and extension, while at the same time lacking a clear vision for how such demands will be met, especially as several key players from within our geospatial community transition out through retirement.
Help pave the way forward by joining us at our inaugural Cornell Geospatial Forum. At this one-day event, we will highlight some of the many innovative and cross-disciplinary applications at Cornell, share ideas and research, learn about existing and emerging campus-wide resources, and lay the groundwork for the future of geospatial science and technology at Cornell. We hope you will join us for this important conversation. We request those who plan to attend, and those unable to attend but interested in the future of geospatial science and technology at Cornell, to complete our Working Group Discussion questions which will form the basis for communicating the outcomes of CUGEO 2014 to the Cornell Community.
Those who ventured down to Stewart Park for this impromptu meeting got a sneak peak at the Google Trekker backpack that was used by staff at the City of Ithaca GIS Program to capture the Ithaca-area gorge trails. This imagery was officially added to Google Street View on November 19, 2015.
Stone Classroom is immediately to the left after entering the library proper.
Census Data
Emily Goldman, PhD candidate in City and Regional Planning, Cornell University Boris Michev, Map Librarian at Olin Library, Cornell University
Census data, while imperfect, comprise the country’s best source of population, demographic, economic, and housing data. Census data is fundamentally spatial in format, as all Census data have geographic identifiers – tying the data to a particular location. For this reason, using a GIS to analyze Census data is like putting puzzle pieces together.
This presentation will describe and critically evaluate some of the main resources available (most are free or have free versions) for viewing and analyzing the Census data you’re interested in, in a GIS. These include: American FactFinder, Social Explorer, National Historic GIS, and GeoLytics’ Neighborhood Change Database. Some of these programs enable us to track Census data changes over time in a GIS, as well–which may be of particular interest to historians. The presentation will take place in a computer lab so participants can work with these resources alongside the instruction.
Mann Library room 102 is just off the lobby of Mann Library.
As usual, we’ll begin with a half hour (or so) with an informal meet-and-greet — a great chance to catch up with your GIS colleagues, both those you know and those you don’t (yet).
Python scripting for GIS
Ben Coakley, GIS/IT Specialist for the Southern Cayuga Lake Intermunicipal Water Commission
Python is a popular open-source scripting language with a wide variety of applications, but it’s particularly good for working with spatial data. Python has been distributed with ArcGIS for several versions, and is now ESRI’s preferred environment for ArcGIS scripting. There are also libraries for Python which allow you to work with spatial data directly, without using ArcGIS at all.
Ben will show us how to take a set of ArcGIS tasks, use Model Builder to turn it into a Python script, then customize that script and run it without using ArcMap at all. We’ll also take a look at GDAL/OGR, one of the popular spatial libraries for Python, and see how it can be used to read spatial data and perform geoprocessing operations.
Starting at noon, there will be a Synergis “business meeting” held at 12pm. Anyone who is interested in the future of Synergis or would like to help plan future meeting topics is encouraged to attend. Maybe you would like to present something???
Then, at 12:30pm, we will begin with a half hour (or so) of meet-and-greet — a great chance to catch up with your GIS colleagues! And then…
OpenStreetMap
Keith Jenkins, GIS Librarian at Mann Library, Cornell University
Keith Jenkins will present an overview of the OpenStreetMap project, which is being used by mapping enthusiasts, humanitarian response teams, location-based businesses, municipal governments, and universities around the world. Learn how to edit the map and add your own knowledge of the world to this ever-expanding project.
First, we have 10-15 minutes of networking time. Then, two of our colleagues will engage us, inspires and involve us!
DYI Web Mapping
Chris Marx (Cornell Lab of Ornithology)
A presentation of platforms for web based mapping for you and your agency – ones you know and ones you might not have seen! Chris has been researching and implementing open source solutions – some are full platforms, others good and flexible for quick projects. As you know, there are platforms for creating just about any web mapping application you could think of.
Web Based Integration GIS - Crowd Sourcing of Historical Records: A Community Approach
Bob Kibbee (former Map Librarian at Cornell)
Bob Kibbee will show us the records, the goals, and the challenge of creating crowd-sourced GIS data from historical records and maps. For those who have heard of this project, Bob will update you on his progress. If you have not seen this fascinating project, you will be quickly up to speed. This integration project mixes new technologies and ole’ fashioned GIS in a most unique way. And the “how” is up for discussion. Let’s roll up our sleeves and see what we as a group can add – brainstorming to follow Bob’s update. Bring packed lunch, networking, presentations and group discussion.
This event is hosted by the Tompkins County and City of Ithaca GIS Programs as part of the Tompkins-Ithaca GIS Initiative, a long standing intergovernmental collaboration between City and County to deliver geographic data in a cost effective easily accessible form to staff, officials and the community.
