Clean water protections

Wide coverage is being given to today's rollback of clean water protections. But Politico warns that this is simply a preface to a much bigger rollback to follow:

And it clears the way for the Environmental Protection Agency to finish a follow-up regulation in the coming months that could leave most of the nation’s wetlands without any federal safeguards. (emphasis added)

At a time when cities like Newark and Flint have water crises, it is interesting to see the regulations becoming more lax.

Cholera map in 3d

Almost every conversation about public health and mapping includes a reference to John Snow's famous cholera map. (Not that John Snow) And generally the sites and slides and posters all use a similar reproduction of the original map. But I was pleasantly surprised when I discovered one group that produced a 3-d version of the map, and did it in a way that made the visualization meaningful.


h/t Robin Hawkes' Spatial Awareness Newsletter

Ancient commuter-sheds

CityLab has some interesting thoughts on ancient commuter-sheds.

VGI for protesters

Here is an interesting example of VGI. In support of protesters in Hong Kong, a small group of volunteers are making real-time maps showing locations for riot police and water cannons. By building on crowdsourcing, the map is updated quickly as the situation changes. Like many VGI projects, it sounds like a bit of mixed methods:

Out on the frontlines are “runners” dressed as regular passersby so as not to attract too much unwanted attention. Working with pen and paper on a clipboard, or through an illustrator app on an iPad, the runners mark up a blank map with the latest updates. The so-called “integrator” in the control room then assembles the updates, adding additional information from live-streams and news sources, to collate all available information at that moment into a single map, which is then published online and sent out via Telegram.

One of the technical barriers is that, with so many protesters gathered so densely, mobile phone data capacities can be poor. QUartz reports that the protesters at the edge of the crowds are being encouraged to download the latest map and then airdrop it for easy access by those in the middle.

GIS job in Delaware

New Castle County, Delaware is searching for a GIS technician. The description asks for:

At least five (5) years' experience in drafting, planning, GIS or related work at the level of Geographic Information Systems Specialist and completion of a standard high school course or GED certificate program, supplemented by four years of college with major course work in geography, planning or a related field; experience operating a Geographic Information System or computer Aided Drafting program; experience in Python, XML, javascript or other programming/scripting language a plus; familiarity with ArcGIS Online and Portal for ArcGIS; GISP Certification a plus or an equivalent combination of experience, education or training directly related to the required knowledge, skills and abilities.

GIS job at Rowan

A cool sounding GIS job at Rowan University.

Growing negative views of college

The Pew Research Center reports that between 2015 and 2019 colleges and universities have seen their popularity drop from a 63% positive viewpoint to 50%. This is something about which all of us in the higher education community should be aware and concerned.