David Lawrence
Applied GIS II
04/20/2011
GIS Professional Development:
UGIC Conference (Student)
For the GIS professional development, I decided to spend a day in Logan to attend the annual UGIC conference. Despite the inclement weather, my wagon was able to safely get to Logan in the rain and snow. As soon as I got there, I took a rest at the hotel lobby and watched television. The hotel was right next door to the Riverwoods Conference Center. As I was sitting there, it was lunch break at the conference and I started to recognize some of the people walking by. I saw two people that presented in our class, and then I ran into some of my co workers from my internship. Eventually I ran into a few people from class.
I finally got to the front desk and met the chairman Ahmad Salah, he provided me with a bag with a bunch of cool stuff in it. For the Thursday student session, I was told to meet in the cherry room for the presentations. The first presentation was about GIS in the real world. Some of the GIS professionals such as; Scott Davis and Kate Smith, talked about what employers are looking for in a resume. They answered our questions and provided information about how to find a career in GIS. Employers are looking for people who have great knowledge in GIS and programming. They said it is important to get to know people and network. Also providing specific examples of GIS in interviews helps out a lot too.
The next presentation was given by a student that is working on a doctorate degree. He showed maps of cheat grass in Box Elder County with landsat imagery collected. He compared how spring is higher than in the summer time. He showed methods of modeling “best” subsets and independent variables. He showed support vector machines, projections to high dimensions, calibration, gamma cost, and results/accuracy.
The next presentation was about wild land firefighting. He showed maps of entrapment “situation where personnel can get caught in a wild fire and fatalities can happen. He showed how GIS is used to buffer the location for pre planned safety. Methods of attack on the fire were shown with different scenarios, fuel moisture, direction, % of wind. Evacuation routes and time with buffer extents, shelter zones (if fire crosses).
The last presentation was about wilderness search and rescue. He showed maps of search efficiency in target locations. We watched how a video is placed on an aircraft with mosaics/ satellite imagery from the planes sensors. Measurements, angles, and time were all part of the coverage for the search and rescue. Terrain and vegetation are also important and the IR and visible detection was shown.
Unfortunately I was unable to stay for the social dinner because of the inclement weather. But I really enjoyed spending some time learning about GIS from professionals. I hope to join some user groups this summer and continue to look for more internship as well.
