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CV-19 - Big Data Visualization

As new information and communication technologies have altered so many aspects of our daily lives over the past decades, they have simultaneously stimulated a shift in the types of data that we collect, produce, and analyze. Together, this changing data landscape is often referred to as "big data." Big data is distinguished from "small data" not only by its high volume but also by the velocity, variety, exhaustivity, resolution, relationality, and flexibility of the datasets. This entry discusses the visualization of big spatial datasets. As many such datasets contain geographic attributes or are situated and produced within geographic space, cartography takes on a pivotal role in big data visualization. Visualization of big data is frequently and effectively used to communicate and present information, but it is in making sense of big data – generating new insights and knowledge – that visualization is becoming an indispensable tool, making cartography vital to understanding geographic big data. Although visualization of big data presents several challenges, human experts can use visualization in general, and cartography in particular, aided by interfaces and software designed for this purpose, to effectively explore and analyze big data.

KE-31 - Professional Certification

Professional Certification has been a part of the GIS enterprise for over two decades. There are several different certification programs and related activities now in operation within GIS, though there has been much debate over its merits, how it should be done and by whom. 

KE-32 - Competence in GIS&T Knowledge Work

“Competence” is a word that rolls off the tongues of instructional designers, education administrators, and HR people. Others find it hard to swallow. For some GIS&T educators, competence connotes an emphasis on vocational instruction that’s unworthy of the academy. This entry challenges skeptical educators to rethink competence not just as readiness for an occupation, but first and foremost as the readiness to live life to the fullest, and to contribute to a sustainable future. The entry considers the OECD’s “Key Competencies for a Successful Life and Well-Functioning Society,” as well as the specialized GIS&T competencies specified in the U.S. Department of Labor’s Geospatial Technology Competency Model. It presents findings of a survey in which 226 self-selected members of Esri’s Young Professionals Network observe that competencies related to the GTCM’s Software and App Development Segment were under-developed in their university studies. Looking ahead, in the context of an uncertain future in which, some say, many workers are at risk of “technological unemployment,” the entry considers which GIS&T competencies are likely to be of lasting value.

CV-26 - Cartography and Power

Over twenty five years ago, Brian Harley (1989, p. 2) implored cartographers to “search for the social forces that have structured cartography and to locate the presence of power – and its effects – in all map knowledge.” In the intervening years, while Harley has become a bit of a touchstone for citational practices acknowledging critical cartography (Edney, 2015), both theoretical understandings of power as well as the tools and technologies that go into cartographic production have changed drastically. This entry charts some of the many ways that power may be understood to manifest within and through maps and mapmaking practices. To do so, after briefly situating work on cartography and power historically, it presents six critiques of cartography and power in the form of dialectics. First, building from Harley’s earlier work, it defines a deconstructivist approach to mapping and places it in contrast to hermeneutic phenomenological approaches. Second, it places state-sanctioned practices of mapping against participatory and counter-mapping ones. Third, epistemological understanding of maps and their affects are explored through the dialectic of the map as a static object versus more processual, ontogenetic understandings of maps. Finally, the chapter concludes by suggesting the incomplete, heuristic nature of both the approaches and ideas explored here as well as the practices of critical cartography itself. Additional resources for cartographers and GIScientists seeking to further explore critical approaches to maps are provided.