JOIN US FOR GIS DAY AT NOTRE DAME
Learn to harness the power of geospatial data
Join us for our annual salute to geospatial technology and its power to transform and better our lives and the lives of those around us on Wednesday, November 20, 2024.
Learn more about GIS resources at Notre Dame.
2024 Organizing Committee
Matthew Sisk
Matthew Sisk is an Associate Professor of the Practice at the Lucy Family Institute for Data & Society where he focuses on the use of GIS and spatial tools in Data Science. He received his Ph.D. in Paleolithic Archaeology from Stony Brook University in 2011 and has worked extensively in GIS-based archaeology and ecological modeling. Much of Matthew’s current research is focused on assessing the spatial scale of urban lead exposure.
Tricia Bulson
Tricia Bulson is the GIS Specialist for University Facilities Information (UFI). UFI maintains the University master records of maps and building floor plans as well as baseline space data such as room number, room use, and office occupancy. The department processes over 200 floor plan updates a year from renovations, construction projects, and space verifications across more than 11 million gross square feet of campus interior space. A suite of GIS technologies is available to campus partners that leverage space and asset management data both indoors and outdoors to meet unique departmental needs.
Tricia received her Bachelor's degree in Geography from Western Michigan University and has worked in GIS for 16 years. Prior to joining the University, she worked with communities in Southwest Michigan as a consultant specializing in asset management and as a GIS analyst at S&P Global Platts.
Jacob Swisher
Jacob Swisher is a doctoral candidate in the Department of History with research interests in borderlands, environmental history, and the history of the North American West. His dissertation research follows circulating people, species, and objects into New Mexico’s Upper Rio Grande Basin to better understand how local entanglements between people and things shaped the historical development of the Anthropocene, a proposed geological epoch that accounts for how human activities have significantly affected elements of the Earth System since the Industrial Revolution. Jacob’s work draws on digital humanities tools, including geospatial analysis to examine relationships between people, places, and environments in the American West.
Julie Vecchio
Julie is Co-Interim Director, Navari Family Center for Digital Scholarship. Julie teaches “Making StoryMaps” workshops/course instruction sessions at the Hesburgh Libraries.
WORKSHOPS & TALKS
12:00pm – 1:00pm What in the World is GIS?
Presenter: Matthew Sisk, Professor of the Practice, Lucy Family Institute for Data & Society
Location: 246 Hesburgh Library, Navari Family Center for Digital Scholarship
GIS is a system of hardware and software for the storage, retrieval, mapping, and analysis of geographic data. It provides a system for organizing spatial and related information into a single analytical framework and is used in various academic and industry settings for understanding spatial relationships. This workshop will address the question, "What is GIS?", provide examples, and present an overview of campus GIS resources.
1:00pm – 2:00pm Getting Started with ArcGIS Online
Presenter: Jacob Swisher, Graduate Student, Department of History
Location: 246 Hesburgh Library, Navari Family Center for Digital Scholarship
Learn how to make maps using ArcGIS Online and incorporate Geographic Information Systems (GIS) into your research.
This workshop provides an introduction to basic tools and workflows in ESRI’s ArcGIS Online platform. ArcGIS Online is a browser-based GIS platform that allows users to create, visualize, and manipulate spatial data. Whether you are interested in working with larger datasets or creating maps to add to a class project or senior thesis, ArcGIS Online offers an excellent workspace for researchers who are beginning to work with GIS. Experienced GIS users may also find ArcGIS Online to be a useful space for hosting data for collaborative projects and communicating research findings to public audiences.
This workshop is designed with the novice GIS user in mind.
After participating in this workshop, you will be able to:
- Gather, manage, and display spatial data in ArcGIS Online.
- Use the filters tool to answer questions with spatial data.
- Create data visualizations using the styles tool.
PLEASE NOTE:
- If you do not already have access to the campus GIS network, you will receive an invitation before the workshop. Please follow the email instructions to activate your account prior to the workshop.
- Participants are expected to bring a computer to the session.
2:15pm – 3:30pm Lightning Talks
Paper Walls: GIS and the Byzantine Boundary Description (Periorismos)
Presenter: Tyler Wolford, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Medieval Institute
Location: 246 Hesburgh Library
A fruitful application of GIS to Byzantine archaeology is the mapping of boundary
descriptions (known as periorismoi in Greek) contained with the medieval ledgers of large estates. Such documents were designed to be read by judges in view of and, thus, against the landscape to settle land disputes between unruly neighbors. In this way, these texts functioned as “paper walls” defending these estates from theft with the bureaucracy of the imperial capital of Constantinople analogous to what castle walls or towers could do with stone. These texts are hard to completely understand without being mapped. In GIS, the topography described in the text can be modeled with DEM (digital elevation models), and the mountain streams, used as markers within the boundary descriptions, can be reconstructed with hydrological modeling. Finally, and most critically for archaeology, with GIS, the reconstructed boundaries can be compared to the georeferenced results of archaeological surveys.
Geographic mobility of Elites: Identity Construction Before Qin's Unification of China (ca. 390-221 BCE)
Presenter: Liang Cai, Associate Professor, Department of History
Location: 246 Hesburgh Library
Qin unified the Warring States in 221 BCE, ending more than 200 years of warfare among competing regional powers. Before unification, these regional powers, alleged vassals of a weak Zhou court, had developed strong and unique political and cultural identities. Due to its brutal military conquests and political reforms that distinguished its system from Zhou politics, the Qin state became the cultural otherness of other vassal states of Zhou. Anti-Qin pronouncements depicted Qin as a state of tigers and wolves, the enemy of all under Heaven. Furthermore, Qin law itself clearly differentiated Qin natives from barbarians and from the inhabitants of other Zhou states.
However, elites from Qin's rival states, particularly the most innovative and ambitious ones, went to Qin seeking employment. Guest statesmen, in fact, served as a significant force in helping Qin conquer China proper, including their own home states. Among them are the famous politicians and thinkers Shang Yang, Li Si, and Lü Buwei, as well as military commanders Gan Mao, Wei Ran, and Fan Sui. In this paper, I will use ArcGIS to analyze the geographic mobility and career trajectories of these guest statesmen. I will use their stories to test the theory of identity politics and examine the construction of identity on the eve of Qin's unification of China.
Limits to Helping in a Helping Profession: The Spatial-Social Context of Psychiatrist Opt-Out from Public Insurance
Presenter: Daniel Tadmon, Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology
Location: 246 Hesburgh Library
In the U.S., most mental health services are provided by independent helping professionals, individually deciding where to operate, whom to treat, and in which insurance networks to participate. In making such decisions, these market actors often navigate conflicts between financial, professional, and prosocial considerations. This project investigates the phenomenon of psychiatrist opt-out from Medicaid and Medicare, aiming to elucidate how local contexts influence such decisions. Assembling a census of all licensed Georgia psychiatrists and, assisted by a telephone audit, leveraging granular data about the spatial environment in which each clinician operates, findings show that limits to helping in the form of opt-out from public insurance systematically correspond to the local ecologies in which psychiatrists are
embedded—with their prospective clientele, and local peers. In the context of the ongoing mental health crisis, where demand for psychiatric care far exceeds supply, understanding how contextual factors affect tensions between the countervailing incentives that psychiatrists face and shape their opt-out decisions is crucial. In the aggregate, these limits to helping impact the availability of mental health services to some of society’s most disadvantaged populations, meaningfully shaping the contours of the mental health crisis.
Placing History
Presenters: Katie Walden, Assistant Teaching Professor, Department of American Studies and Jake Swisher, Graduate Student, Department of History
Location: 246 Hesburgh Library
This lightning talk highlights a team-taught 1-credit course, "Placing History," featuring a collaboration between the College of Arts & Letters Technology and Digital Studies Program, the Lucy Family Institute's Geospatial Analysis & Learning Lab, the University Archives, and the Navari Family Center for Digital Scholarship. The course aims to equip students with the analytical tools necessary to understand and interpret historical narratives through spatial contexts, utilizing both traditional historical sources and modern geospatial technologies. Students engage in hands-on projects that integrate archival research with digital mapping techniques, allowing them to visualize historical data and uncover new insights into local and global histories. This course emphasizes interdisciplinary learning, drawing on methodologies from history, geography, and digital humanities. It encourages collaboration among students, faculty, and archivists, highlighting the importance of teamwork in academic research. Through this innovative approach, we aim to enhance critical thinking and analytical skills while preparing students for future careers in academia, public history, and beyond.
Reconstructing Boulder Transport on Rocky Coastlines Using GIS Tools and Field Data: A Case Study on Inishmaan, Ireland
Presenters: Hannah R. Spero, Graduate Student, Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences
Aman Tejaswi, Graduate Student, Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences
Andrew B. Kennedy, Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences
Joannes Westerink, Joseph and Nona Ahearn Professor of Computational Engineering and Science
Location: 246 Hesburgh Library
Storms pose significant threats to coastal regions, affecting both human life and infrastructure. On rocky coastlines, boulders displaced by large storm waves often serve as the only geological record of past extreme events. However, reconstructing a historical storm record is challenging, as it requires interpreting boulder deposits and understanding the wave dynamics that mobilized them, such as wave velocity and onshore inundation depth. In this research, we combine field experiments with modern storm data to model boulder transport processes. Our study focuses on the island of Inishmaan, Ireland, an ideal site due to its extensive coastal boulder deposits and its exposure to powerful winter storms. GIS tools, particularly within the open-source QGIS platform, are integral to this work. High-resolution digital elevation models (DEMs) are generated using uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) structure-from-motion (SfM) photogrammetry, enabling us to assess pre- and post-storm boulder positions, analyze topographical changes, and create transects to better understand storm-driven transport dynamics. The integration of GIS facilitates detailed spatial analyses of boulder movement, enhancing our ability to monitor when and how boulders are displaced during storm events and correlating these movements with wave depth and timing. An additional aspect of this study involves numerically modeling storm events to better understand regional wave dynamics. Accurate modeling requires high-resolution topography-bathymetry data, as well as an updated shoreline profile, both of which were constructed within QGIS and using MATLAB plug-in, OceanMesh2D.
By combining GIS-based spatial analysis with field observations, we develop a comprehensive forward model of boulder transport. This model not only advances our understanding of storm-induced boulder dynamics but also lays the groundwork for future inverse modeling efforts. Such models can be applied to other coastal regions where boulder deposits exist, but where wave hydrodynamic data are lacking, contributing to broader efforts in reconstructing ancient storm events.
