You're listening to A Very spatial podcast, episode 761 May 26th, 2025, built City. Hello and welcome to A Very spatial podcast. This is Frank and this is Barb. Jesse and Sue are world travelers this week, and unfortunately can't join us. They're having a wonderful time, as I guess from the pictures I see on Instagram in Japan. They're up doing geography.
Yeah. Hopefully whenever they come back, we can have a nice episode where they get to talk a little bit about what has they experienced and, and you know, what their, what their trip was all about and what they got to experience and all this sort of stuff. So that's pretty cool. But this week Barbara and I are gonna cover a an epic amount of news. This, I think maybe this may be the most news this is we've ever done in a single episode. Ever. So. Strap in.
Hang on, get yourself something to drink. Here we go. Geocaching, the hobby that involves geography and going out into the world looking for things is celebrating its 25th anniversary. And Geo Woodstock 21 took place in Morgantown right here. And we got to experience it. Morgantown, West Virginia. For those of those, those of you not familiar with West Virginia and it is a giga event and there were 20. Five countries represented lots of families out geocaching going to events related to it.
Lots of friends and older people. Just, it was a huge event. It looked like a lot of fun. We didn't get a chance to go, but we got to see everyone out in the wild as it were looking for cases around. So the next event. Was announced. I'm not sure where it's going to take place. But if you haven't got a chance to try this out as a hobby, why not go out and just sort of celebrate this is the 25th year of this type of event.
You, you know, really this is a kind of a, it's not dissimilar to say birdwatching for, you know, geo nerds. I mean, really it's just going out. Hiking, walking around. In, in, in this particular case, it was walking around town interacting enjoying a bit of the scenery, and then you went looking for, you know, this case and it has a little thing and then, you know, you leave it or you take it or whatever the rules are.
I don't, I don't do it, so I don't know all the rules, but it's a great way to get out and enjoy the weather and enjoy the landscape a bit. And unlike birds, it's is a hobby where a lot of people get involved by actually making the, the caches themselves. And a lot of them are designed. There was one that was like a snoopy on top of his doghouse. So it's, you know, looks like a, a fun way to get involved with geography.
I know many of us have done this as I've always seen it as something we do for community building and also for team building. I've done some of those exercises with it. And it's always a good event. Next up in news we have a link in the show notes to the religious landscape study. Now, this is the United States I think only in the United States that they're surveying. But this is a survey that it was conducted in 20 2007 and 2014, and again in 2023 slash 2024.
And they've released the results which you can go check out. And, and the thing that's kind of interesting is they're going out and sort of seeing what it is the. Religiosity, if you will, if that's the proper term for particular areas. For example, I happen to be on Baltimore and 54% identify as Christians, 9% identify other religious religions, and 36 identify as unaffiliated to religion. It gives a little bit of an idea of the religious landscape in the United States.
This is particularly important I think, given a lot of things going on in politics recently in the United States have been hearkening back to religion. So understanding what that geography actually looks like can be very inciting, exciting. Sorry the wrong word. Insightful for understanding. Where some of this stuff is coming from. And for me it's just the design of their interactive map. It just works really well and it's, it's also very pretty, it's just smooth.
And I just wanted to, to highlight that because the, the cartography is. Very nice. I think so. I don't know if you think so, Frank. Well, the, the kind of interesting bit here is if you click on the state, for example, I clicked on South Carolina completely by happenstance considering very spatial North or very spatial south is from South Carolina or at South Carolina. It gives you a, a good breakdown of understanding some of, of that, you know, when you say, in this particular case, 77% of.
People in South Carolina identify as Christian, you get an idea of evangelical versus mainland Protestant versus historically black, Protestant or Catholic or Mormon or whatever it may be. Similarly, when you see that 6% identify as other religions, you get an idea of what we're talking about. Jewish, Muslim, but Buddhist, Hindu or something else. You can break those further down. So evangelical, I always struggle with that word.
Protestant, you can see what's Baptist versus Methodist versus Lutheran, whatever it may be. There are a lot of different sects of, of Christianity that are in the United States and understanding their geography can really give an insight to way some of this stuff is, is gone. And the other thing I really like is that I mentioned that, you know, there's a 2014 and 2007, so you can actually click on and see for each of those states. Past indicators.
So by this, this particular study South Carolina has gotten less religious since 2007. Yeah. Also, geography of religion is always one of the popular sections at the American, the Association of American Geographers. So, I mean, it's kind of neat if you wanna get a little idea about that. And this is outta the Pew Research. So it is a pretty, you know, trustworthy data source here. They do a pretty good job.
At Geo N this year, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, NGA has announced that it is the NGAs, NGA year of ai. So it's NGA ai and it is going, they're going to be focusing on the, the power and potential of artificial intelligence which I think goes along with a lot of the trends that we've been seeing in. Conferences, announcements that AI is becoming a big focus for the, the industry in the next few years. It isn't really a surprise. I don't think that they're focusing on ai.
Everyone and their, as our dissertation advisor would say, everyone and their dog is focusing on AI in some form or fashion. Geo is actually kind of an interesting area for me to think about. What, what I find it interesting is we know a little about geo ai and we tend to, we've talked about in the podcast in the past that GOI tends to be.
The way we conceptualize it tends to be on things like, you know, how we, how we analyze data, how we look at, you know, what a landscape looks like, how we, you know, sort of organize the pixels that we're looking at, that sort of stuff. But geoint is so much more than just the geospatial piece of it. There are so many other pieces of it, and the intelligence community is also. Unsurprisingly, I would hope to anyone getting involved in a lot of ai.
So I think it's gonna be interesting to see how those two pieces, those geospatial analytical AI models that we all know and have been using for years, interact with this intelligence based ai. That's probably looking at some of the more qualitative bits to understand what's going on in a particular region, you know, whenever it situations or issues sort of crop up. So this gonna mean, it would be really fascinating to be able to hear that.
Yeah. And also they, they talk about a lot about the work that NGA does with first responders, with response to wildfires, the hurricane season. And you're gonna, you see a lot of focus on that with ai. So again, another, another big area. I was wondering because they have their own certification that's sort of like the GISP when we're gonna see GIS cer. Certification exams like the GISP and like the GEOINT one that are gonna have more questions focusing on geo ai.
Next up in the news, university of Missouri's Board of Governors has voted unanimously in April. So it's about a month old, but it was unanimously decided to create the first I dunno if it's the first actually, but it is a new master's degree. In geospatial engineering at Missouri s and t, I'm not sure what s and t stands for. I'm sure it's one of the divisions of university of Missouri. It, it's kind of interesting 'cause you don't tend to think about geospatial.
Engineering and, and at least I don't, I think about geospatial technologies, I think about geospatial analysis, data, all that sort of stuff, but not necessarily sort of the engineering side of it. And so they pointed out that other universities tend to focus on GIS and geography and all that sort of stuff. There is, theirs is more focused on things like positioning, g the word we all struggle with. Geodyssey Geodesy, whichever it is.
Remote sensing and talking about some of the actual mechanical bits. I'm, when I use, you can't see it, but air quotes are on the word mechanical bits around this GIS stuff. I think it's really fascinating that they are, you know, move that to a master's level. And I'm kind of curious. I, I don't actually know what the market looks like for engineering like this. I, I, I'm, I'm curious how, how much.
How important that is to the market compared to traditional GIS and geography based GIS My gut tells me it's a bigger market, so this is why they may have done this program. Yeah, it, it makes me think about, I've worked at different places where you had both the, the software side, but then the, the technical side where people were actually working with the things you touch and thinking about that this. A degree like this really makes sense and it's very exciting.
Because I just think about working in a lab where people came in with equipment, you know, not just the, the building it, designing it, but also the upkeep for it. There's a a lot of call for that. If you think of how much is being created and produced out there, you have to think that there's a lifecycle to it. Missouri University of Science and Technology, s and t pretty. You know, should have been able to put that together.
But that's the institution and they're looking to start enrolling people in fall 2025. So it's a little late in the cycle, but if it's something you're interested in, you know, check out the link in the show notes and it has a link to the actual engineering program. You might look into it and see if it's something that that interests you. And going back to the Geo Win conference and the idea of needing people that are skilled in both the, the technical and the, the software and other sides.
St. Louis, the geospatial industry responded after the tornado strikes that happen. So it happens that, you know, St. Louis is growing as a geospatial hub in the United States. You also have an event going on, so there's coverage talking about how they were able to show. How GS is used on the ground when something's happening.
So it's, you know, not often that you have something happen in a place where so many people are able to provide their, their expertise and you can just imagine what it would be like if everywhere had teams like this that were able to respond and help their communities. Yeah. This is unfortunately what's going on in the United States right now is we're having a bit of. I dunno what the word is shakeup, if you will, at the national level.
And it's great that state groups are in getting involved to sort of bridge the gap between what the national level isn't necessarily doing right now. I'm very, I'm very excited. And proud of people in our, in our industry trying to jump in and say, these are real issues and real people that really need to be addressed. That part is great. So we won't think too much about the reason they needed to get involved more aggressively after this particular tragedy compared to others.
But it's great that we're doing this. You know, there is a history here that goes back quite a bit when you think about it. Katrina, we had a big geospatial team that jumped in to help with some of the mapping efforts that were involved there. I'm trying, Haiti I think happened after Katrina. Similar thing. And you know, we, everyone uses that as a exam. Prime example of open source data and crowdsource data being very critical. So there is a long history here and.
Hopefully it continues irrespective of federal or otherwise involvement. So related to some of the, the stories, we basically have a theme going on about industry and the hard physical side of technologies.
There was an, an op-ed in Energy Connects where they were talking about the future of utilities and the utilities industry and emphasizing that the future is gonna be remote sensing that you really need remote sensing to handle the level of work they have, that the technology has advanced so it would be usable and have a real impact. So for us who are immersed in our own industries, we often don't realize that, you know, there are things we.
Think are being done but are still, you know, an, an open for that industry in other fields like utilities. Which is another area where I imagine you would have a big crossover of, you know, hands-on physical technologies and the, the software and remit sensing. Yeah, they really push drone. Base remote sensing more than anything else.
And they talk about how synthetic aperture radar can be very useful for detecting faults and things like power lines, transformers, and pipelines, which is something that I don't think we would think about or realize that utilities do an awful lot of on a day-to-day basis. And it would used to be. Well, 'cause largely still is probably by hand, which means sending people out there and inspecting this stuff on a regular basis.
And I don't think that the SAR is gonna, you know, eliminate that, eliminate that completely. You're still gonna have to have human hands and human eyes looking at the thing. But to have the ability to kind of detect weaknesses, vulnerabilities that sort of stuff on a more ongoing basis using remote. Sensing is pretty powerful and pretty exciting. It'll help reduce, you know, losses help reduce downtime.
It'll, you know, you can imagine all the good stuff that'll happen by being more on top of the maintenance piece of this. I've also been in conference sessions where utilities people and others talked about how it'll increase safety. Because sometimes we don't think about how there are day-to-day jobs in many cases can be a little bit dangerous. And this would not only be more efficient, provide a way to cover greater scope but also would make it safer for the people that do those jobs.
Yep. And they also point out that one way that they're using drones aggressively is, everyone stay with me. Ready? AI using a lot of AI to try to process this data and, you know, pick out these, these telltale signs of there being an issue that needs to be addressed sooner than later. So you know, AI is everywhere and it's going to continue to be everywhere. So in nature Cities, there is a study that's been published that looks at using remote sensing data to show in imagery.
And they found that there's a land substance risk to infrastructure in the US metropolis. Basically, it means that cities are sinking. And you know, while this is something that they. That people have talked about in the past. This is something where they, they show that, you know, this is something that they can actually demonstrate is a hazard. It's, you know, indeed a slow moving hazard. But one that cities should be preparing for, especially on coastal areas.
And they looked at space geodetic measures from 2015 to 2021 for the 28 most populous US states. I think this is. The article in the news that I've been sent the most by people who aren't geographers because it really struck them in the coverage. I think it's something that, you know, they could see related to places where they live. And the study was looking at land substenance as a cost for social and economic impacts in these urban centers. Yeah, I mean, the, the numbers are pretty striking.
They estimate that at least 20% of the urban areas is, is stinking in all cities, 20%. I mean, that's pretty astounding. And you know, they, they talk a lot about how that has to do with groundwater extraction primarily, which certainly makes sense since that's something that, you know, access to water is arguably one of the biggest geography issues in the world today that we just don't talk about enough. But, you know.
The impacts on things like groundwater when you have an built, built up environment is, again, that's a thing that we just don't talk about. It just sort of, most people don't even, aren't even cognitive of that this is happening and the negative effects that surround it, but 20%, yeah. I'm not a geologist.
And, but you know, I work with geologists and I know many geologists and you know, just learning about this, you know, that crossover with geology, geoscience, physical geography, human geography, and just how. You know, we live on the earth. You know, the earth is dynamic. You know, things move and change. But I just think we don't realize how much of a human environment impact we have on things between this and, you know, melting glaciers that make the earth spring up.
Just all sorts of physical changes that go on from things that, you know, we've done and where we've built and settlement and all those patterns. Yeah. Even on a highly local level, our driveway. Suffered from this problem where people up on the hill built and it shifted the groundwater in such a way that we suddenly had a spring prop come up in the middle of our driveway that we had to get abated.
You, you never know how that's gonna impact you know, sort of where when you're building at one place or you know, expanding on one place how it's gonna impact other places. And they're talking about, this is fairly telling, as you know, the. They talked a bit about the, the coastal cities, which I think that most of us can sort of understand. They're like, yeah, okay. That makes a little more sense that coastal cities are having an issue, what with climate change and stuff like that.
But they noticed that even in inland metropolis, like Mexico, Sydney and Beijing, where in Teran they're having the same problems. So this is really a urban development. Issue, not necessarily this country, that country, this climate, that climate, this, this geography, that geography is an urban versus rural, not versus, but urban as opposed to rural area issue more than anything else. And it, it gets back to that, those utilities and infrastructure that they're talking about.
You know, what can be done and it's going to be improving drainage systems, infrastructure, upgrading structural protection and it'll. Depend on where that city is on how they approach that issue. It's a pretty challenging, but also really interesting study. So, speaking of infrastructure, here's an infrastructure piece that we don't think about as well is the undersea cable infrastructure. We're talking about 1.3 million kilometers of cable stretches across that connects.
Things like, what is it? 99% of intercontinental internet traffic goes through there. We're talking about digital communications, financial transactions, navigation, logistics government operations, and even coordination with the, the military. This is critical. Bits of information or critical technology and infrastructure that we just tend to not think about. So the article that we link to has a really good discussion about the risks that this faces.
And we've seen some kind of high profile examples of this being an issue. Oh, in last 14, 18 months or something like that, there was the, the cut that happened around the Persian Gulf area, I think that happened. And there was another one that happened. Around Europe. I can't remember exactly where it was at. There was a couple of of situations where this is black Sea.
The Baltic Sea, I think was one of the areas where this has cut off major amounts of connectivity that people find it necessary. This actually impacts us in the geospatial community because a lot of the things that we are dealing with. Are based upon open geospatial standards. And this is coming out of the Open Geospatial Consortium in a partnership that they have with the International Hydrographic Organization and the International Cable Protection Committee.
I'm most excited when I get to find out that there are committees and groups that work with, you know, areas that you've gotta know. There are people that this is what they focus on. In this case, they focus. On the, you know, international cables and they are looking at how you can use, you know, open geospatial standards for visibility, context, and coordination across jurisdictions and sectors.
And this is another instance where, you know, geospatial very large, we cross many different boundaries and borders both in term terms of the types of jobs we do and the places we were at. We are at. So you can imagine the coordination effort that is needed for the, the physical manifestation of that in terms of these undersea cables.
So in speaking about, you know, coordination, the National Trust in the uk you know, working alongside ESRI has exceeded its conservation goals that it had by implementing the use of GIS. So the UK is considered one of the most nature depleted countries in the world, and it is has a lot of land that's now put into the national trust and they have been using GIS to coordinate their workflows. In order to help to protect these wildlife habitats and the term that they use.
I like this 'cause I, this is really nice to hear, hear in a report. They, their target has been comfortably exceeded and I think that's something we could all add to any reports we have. Because it shows that they were able to use GIS in their over 500 historic properties, gardens, and their reserves. And they call it a digital transformation. And because it really has increased. The, the efficiency and the ability they have for understanding what they're working with in con in conservation.
And they said it's because they've been able to collect a lot of robust data and to use spatial analysis with that data in order to, to implement these projects and changes. I. Next up the news the British Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs, defra released a pretty extensive map of all the peat A areas in the uk and it had some pretty, they said it had 95% rate of accuracy, which is pretty impressive.
It's the first, I think, entire map of the Pete areas ever constructed in the uk. And it. Had pretty sobering information in it based upon its analysis. 80% of England's pet peatlands were in dry and degrading condition. They needed urgent attention, and this was all done through the power of, again, say it with me, everyone, artificial intelligence, ai, and that's pretty amazing. That fine that or they were able to use this technology and this, the power of this.
95% accurate to find that 80% of the pen, the peatlands are in crisis and action needs to happen, except it's. Wrong. And, and this goes to the importance for ground truthing for local knowledge. What they found is that local residents started to report that the AI had confused prime peat with stone and walls, with woods with degraded peatland, and also had, in its analysis with imagery, missed some of the actual peatlands. So this was across the board as an inaccuracy.
So this is definitely something that has to do with the AI's analysis itself. Yeah, the, here's a quote from the farmers endorse it. They in the lake district, they said on the public policy level, this is just useless. So this is a really great cautionary tale about how one, you can use a technology to do some very powerful things to cover area that. Simply had never been covered and is really probably in terms of man hours, way too hard to reasonably do for almost anyone.
However, you've gotta ground truth that, like Barbara said, you have to ground truth this stuff because your technology can make really stupid errors and show inaccuracies on the map. And as we all know, as cartographers, if it's on a map, then it's 100% true. That's just what everybody thinks. So you have to be very careful about what you put on a map because. It may not be 100% true in this case. It is shockingly untrue. I think that there's still some potential for something like this.
I think there's potential for AI to help them start to prioritize or explore things. There are a lot of geos, statistical analysis tools that we have that allow us, like creating, allow us to do predictive estimate estimates of what is in a particular area or how it looks. So there, I think there's something that can be done from this book. AI is just not there yet. And this is a probably one of the most public and high, you know, examples of it getting it all wrong.
But my question was when I was reading it, because on the one hand, AI and very cool, but on the other hand, no ground truthing it seems like. But also, didn't they have experts they were working with that this was their area? You know, within the GIS project management, you know, when they were doing this, you know, normally you're working with. Experts within that field, if the geospatial people aren't an expert themselves, so wouldn't they have noticed some of those patterns?
'cause I'm trying to imagine that. Well, at that scale, not noticing. I think it's the speed. I mean, I think you can use, if you throw enough AI at something, enough server forms in it, you can put out a lot of stuff really, really quickly. And we were talking about creating. 95% a accurate is what they thought of such a large area that, you know, they would've said, okay, maybe what I thought to be true. I, I I, I, I think you're absolutely right.
There should have been more like experts looking at this, but I also think the volume and scale just made it so that people are overpowered. But I mean, honestly, they talked about the, the, an area that Shakespeare identified as wood and. He actually talked about it in his writing, so it said, no, that's Pete Bog, which is, I mean, come on. You should really? You should. That should have been easy to catch on a QC step, but this feels like a combination of scale, speed, and lack of man.
Hours to put towards qc or also maybe that it just like in the case of ai, it makes everything look so good on the surface level that sometimes it's that roughness that helps you to, to look at things and question things. But you know, AI does have a tendency to make everything look right, even if it's not well. And also maybe, you know, it identified that there's real problems in those peak areas, and I'm guessing there probably are.
You know and so I'm guessing that this confirmed some of the things they already knew and they, and it made it look like a much bigger problem, which they suspected it was, but they took those indications as, oh, this is right, and when it's really not, and it kind of shoots yourself in the foot a little bit. When you do that. So just be aware of that when you're doing this stuff.
The Verge had a, it's an interesting article because it's someone that does you know, they're gaming, but they don't, I don't think they think of themselves as someone that's in serious gaming or looking at geography and games, but they're talking about how Open Street Map is being used in order to make better games about farms and transportation. So. If you have a game that involves, again, you know, a theme throughout this infrastructure, then using Open Streete map can make that game better.
And I'm thinking it goes back and forth because, you know, as people are exposed to real life in games, then they have a better understanding of, you know, how these things might work in their own world. Yeah, I mean the games we're talking about here are like farming simulators and logistics simulators and that sort of stuff. And those are a, a style of game that either you love or you hate. I think some people really, really enjoy those things. Some people don't.
And you can certainly see how having real world geography would help make those a more robust experience if you're into that sort of thing. And it's funny because it does even reflect real life, even when you know it's a game. Because they highlight that the developer of Global Farmer whenever anyone would visit their booth, every visitor wanted to look at their own zip code to see their own house.
So even though they know it's a game, and even though it's not even sometimes meant to be hyper realistic, it's still, you know, a something that you wanna see, even if it's in a video game. Next up in the news QGIS has been around for a really long time, but there's a really interesting paper we've linked to it in the show notes. That is the, the QGIS project, spatial Without Compromise. It's one of the first papers that really looks at QGIS and its impact and sort of its history.
The nice thing about it is that it's a really good compact. You know, sort of single paper that walks you through QGIS is a little bit of its history and what it can do, what it can't do, and its impacts. So if QGIS is something that you want to try to do I wouldn't sorry. I, would encourage you to play with it and figure out what, how you like it or how you can use it. But this paper will help kinda walk you through a little bit of that kind of effort and, and what it takes.
It's not a tutorial, it's not a how to, it's an actual published paper, but it is an interesting read and it's worth, I think looking at and understanding a little bit about how the QGIS system works. How it works from a, from a process level, how it works from organization level, how it works from a. You know from a technical level to some extent, how it does things like budgets and all that sort of thing, so. Even though I tongue in cheek, you know, talk a lot of garbage about QGIS.
Reality is, is that a lot of the issues that I have with it are a function of those things about its history, its budget, how it does infrastructure, who's in charge of releasing, who's in charge of getting this, this stuff out there, and what they're really trying to accomplish. It's not necessarily the things that I find as important, but you know, for what they're trying to accomplish, they're doing amazing things. And the best, of course is that.
I can talk trash about it because I, I have effectively the exact same cost to, to deal with Esri's products. If I were in the private sector and I didn't have that, we would be talking in very different conversation. If I was in the nonprofit, it would definitely be a different conversation because QIS has. A lot of the power of Ezra's products in a very affordable and very obtainable package.
What I thought interesting is that they also followed the, the standards of new publications for the, the geospatial community, which is they declared their interest, which is the, all the authors are members of QGIS in some manner, but also that they used, you know, it's again, throughout this whole episode, they used generative AI and ai. Assisted technologies in their writing process in order to improve their writing style.
And I thought, you know, that goes along with the open and transparent nature of QGIS in order to be, again, being open and transparent about everything, about the authors and how they wrote the article itself. I wanted to bring in articles, not just, you know, big news, but also small news that's significant.
In this case, the Talbot Historical Society has in Maryland, in Talbot County, has put up a new archive and they were working with the Chesapeake Bay Association and some others to help them to digitize large scale maps that they had. And then they're making it available to those in the area that. Are doing research or want to know more about Talbot County's history.
And I think that this is something that gets overlooked sometimes because we assume, you know, everything, hasn't everything been digitized? But we, we know it hasn't. And in this case, in Maryland smaller groups, they depend on other people with those resources. To help them to do these projects. And it's becoming more significant. As you know, these materials and papers and things start to degrade or get lost to get them into some digital format so they can be shared with others.
So if you're shopping for Christmas, because it's never too early to shop for Christmas there's kind of a cool subscription service you can, you can join and it's put out by the Independent Map Artists Collective, which is awesome that, that. Even exists. Let's just start with that. The independent map artist. Okay. I don't, I don't really know how you become one, but I would like to join that collective. I just put that out there. But I think it's just really neat that it has it out there.
But for a subscription the, you can get five months worth of curated maps by the independent map artists collective. Each month you'll get a collection of maps that will, you know. Our interesting artistic math card, map map, cardiographic based products. You can see some of the pictures in link of the showing notes. And so they're taking a very general view of the term map. But it, it's just neat and I, and I think it's cool and I can't afford it, but it's really neat.
And if, if it's something that you're into and you've looking for the cryptographer in your life that has. You know everything. They don't have this. You could get 'em this. I thought it was really interesting that there is an independent map artist. Again, something that once you hear it you're like, that makes sense. And I'm glad that it's, it's out there. Also this is, they think the, the first map of the month subscription club. So it, you know, is really interesting.
There are several well-known cartographers who are participating. And I think it's good that you know. Cartographers and map artists are able to find a, a community together for this. So if you click on the independent map artist link, you'll see some really amazing things. I mean, some really cool just in the pictures that are available there. And, and if nothing else, it should serve as a source of. Inspiration for your own cardiographic attempts.
There's, you know, there's a reason we talk about the art and science of cryptography because art, you know, arguably is, is the more important of the two, in my opinion. So, you know, you can see how you can do this in a much more artistic way, in a much more interesting way. It's just really cool. And for anyone who wonders if. You know, there is a job out there for artists that are doing maps. I always say, yes, there's, there's jobs out there.
You know, you can be a graphic designer, you can be a cartographer, and this really highlights the, the creativity that that goes into the process. CDA has announced that is looking for nominations for its annual awards. Things like Lifetime achievement you know, excellence within Geography or helping your community. The honors committee is looking for any announcements. You have to get that into them by Friday, September 19th. So there's a heck of a lot of lead time for this to happen.
But it's pretty, pretty extensive packet. CDA Southeastern Division of American Association, geographers is known for having a fairly robust. Series of systems from submitting papers for presentation on down to this. You need things like a cv, cover letter, letters of recommendations, all these sort of things. So if you know somebody that you know, you think should receive one of the awards, you can look at the link in the on the show notes and see the different types of awards available there.
Some of them are scholarships, some of them for undergraduates, some of them for graduates. Some of them are for, professionals. So everywhere and in between there's some award level for you that you may wanna look at. So if you think of somebody you might wanna start getting the packet together now, 'cause it's due September. I know everyone doesn't wanna hear this, but September's just around the corner, so not that far away.
And the, the conference itself is in November in Lexington, Kentucky. So the UN Mappers has partnered with, and I think this name's so cool, youth Mappers, which is the European Union Mappers to create. A push for open mapping in secondary schools. So going along with this idea of open science, open geography they are working together to bring this type of open mapping on a specific project. In this case, they are working.
On, in this case, they're working on footprints for Afghanistan through the Hot Tasking Manager Project. Yeah, it, it's explicitly recognizing that geospatial and geospatial information have an important role within stem. You would think, given the second word is technology that it would be obvious. And given the fact that we just talked about earlier, there's this geospatial engineering degree that you can get.
You know, there's, engineering is an aspect of it, and a lot of what we do is mathematically based. We talked about statistical models and all that sort of stuff earlier. And then of course, geo geodyssey or geodesy, however it's actually said is, you know.
Science, so I don't understand how people don't understand that we are STEM embodied, but it's things like this are important to get people to understand at an early age that in fact we are strongly tied to a lot of the things that you think of as in stem. I know if Jesse were here, he and I were be riffing for a minute or two about being frustrated.
That the, the TV show that was on CBS 15 years ago that numbers, numbers that was so fascinating with mathematics, like every episode was some form of geospatial something. But that's neither here nor there. So I. This is awesome that they are doing this and getting people engaged early on in an attempt to understand the roots of geospatial technology and how much they connect to stem. It's also very cool that they're using this to try to develop good.
Building footprints for a area that doesn't have great data. So this is in some ways not radically different than a map out type of competition or a situation like that. And it's for the intent of making a 3D replica of the city and using it in virtual reality. So if sewer here, she and I would be riffing on virtual reality. Awesome. 3D building. Awesome. So this is just a great news item all the way around. And I just wanna say, you said youth. Mappers.
Yeah. For those who may not have put that together, is UNTH mappers, which is even more clever. That's, I think that's how you say it, but it is, you know, un use. It is a clever name. So the Library of Virginia. Has an exhibit on the first official state map and how it was made. And they have a story map that goes through this exhibit because they wanted to tell the story of a map and how it was made over 10 years and five governors, all those surveyors.
That were involved, including two principal surveyors and an engraver because you know, back then the resources that they needed to make a map and to replicate it would've been an engraver. So this is a really interesting exhibit that showcases. Everything, all the, the technologies and tools that were cutting edge in their day that were used in order to create the, the Virginia map. And because it, it does have a coastal area. This included charting water features.
Yeah. And also for those who haven't done the math, this was done between 1816 and 1826, which means that also includes. Our state of West Virginia, which was then Virginia in it as well. And it's kind of interesting how much you know. It's very obvious. Even some of the, I'm assuming those are county boundaries that we're seeing on the map that some of the counties in West Virginia, you can see how the counties, the existing counties of West Virginia flow from that. They are a lot coarser size.
Counties in this map than they are in the present day version. But you can see some of the lines like Mon County, where we lived there. There's, there's this, you can sort of see it, you know, from that little blob that's there. It's pretty cool. If you wanna check this out you can go see it for free at Richmond's library of Virginia through June 7th. So if you're in Richmond Virginia, you can go, just check it out. It's at the free public library. And that's it for the news.
And in the web corner, the Paul Revere House which is a small museum dedicated to Paul Revere in Boston has created a spatial humanities tool as a way to promote membership. And that's what I thought was really cool. I actually signed up for it. They have a reading of Henry Ward. Wadsworth Longfellows, Paul Revere's ride. But if you sign up to be a member, they send you maps and pictures and other things to go along with it.
So I thought that was really a cool incentive that, you know, uses spatial humanities as a way to get people to do a online donation for their organization. If you're in interested in any events, you should go check on any events in your area. If you have any events that you would like us to feature on the podcast, you can reach us at context@veryspatial.com. If you'd like to reach us individually, you can reach me atFrank@veryspatial.com. You can reach me at barb@veryspatial.com.
You can reach Sue at sue@veryspatial.com, and you can reach jesse@kindofspatial.com. And as always, you can go over to the context very spatial.com/contact to find the latest content information we have. As always, we're the folks from very spatial. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you in a couple weeks. Built a stone, carve my dets into the wall. People all shouted my name. A world built on pleasure and fame. Life is a dream and a stage.
What true can really say Choices I've made led to pain. I. What Man makes will eventually be as only love can last A and won't let go say Son of Man is a. I found he's my only, when every way that I plan leads me to where I. Only love.