NACIS 2024

Visualizing a Contemporary Humanitarian Crisis: Exploratory Mapping of Migrant Deaths from the Unstructured Text of Newspaper Accounts
Rachel Daniell, Pratt School of Information & Molly Miranker, Texas State University
How might we visualize a humanitarian crisis when available geospatial data is limited? We navigate this question in our ongoing research on deaths of migrating persons along the US-Mexico border, where thousands have perished but documentation has been limited in scope and form. Our current work explores mapping unstructured text data from Texas newspapers to further document places where human remains have been found -- seeking to map approximate coordinates and qualitative terms like “near the county road” and “along the river.” We will present cartographic expressions of these data and discuss with the audience potential ways to map qualitative data on humanitarian crises and what such maps might raise, recenter, and uncover.

Visualizing Change Over Time on the Web
Jeremy Bartley, Esri
There are various ways to visualize how to visualize how spatial data changes over time in both print and online cartography. This session provides an overview of 10 different approaches to visualizing change over time on the web. We will cover both cartographic styles that focus on time, the role of animation, and newer techniques such as geo-referenced streaming high-definition videos that show changes on the earth over time in a rich and interactive way. Each method will be described with examples showing scenarios when each type of visualization works well and when it struggles.

Close: an Interactive, Multi-Modal Travel Time Map
Nathaniel Henry, Henry Spatial Analysis
Close (https://close.city/) is an interactive web map showing travel times to nearby amenities via walking, biking, and public transit across every block in the United States. This presentation describes how Close visualizes travel times from 8 million city blocks to 4 million destinations using publicly-available data sources and tools, with an emphasis on newly-released data from the Overture Maps project. Common public reactions, incorporating crowdsourced feedback, and extensions of Close will also be covered.

Navigating Election Night: Behind the Scenes of Visualizing 2024 Election Results
Clare Trainor, Reuters
Not all news coverage is breaking news. Some events happen every year, every two years, or even every 4 years, like the U.S. presidential election. This talk breaks down how the Reuters Graphics team built a component-based system to visualize results for the 2024 election. I will explain the challenges of working with real-time election data, our process for combining results with geographic data, the design hurdles we faced, plus how we tested our components to ensure accurate results are shown on election night to our readers.

High-Resolution Elevation Tiles for Enhanced Terrain Rendering
Lee France & Tony Cannistra, onX Maps
3D mapping is now common across many applications and industries, yet a high-resolution 3D Map tailored to outdoor enthusiasts has been lacking. onX maps, a company focused on mapping our natural spaces, has attempted to fill that void by developing highly detailed elevation tiles built from lidar resolution data. These new elevation tiles are allowing us to render landscapes in incredible 3D detail helping users of these maps better understand and interpret crucial terrain features. In this talk we’ll dive into why we tackled this major challenge, how we did it and take a look at some of the beautiful map products resulting from this incredible elevation data.