A recap of the 2020 UC-Wide GIS (Geographic Information Systems/Sciences) Week.

The University of California (UC) held the first ever system wide UC GIS Week from Nov. 17th to 19th, by hosting a virtual conference along with the international community. Over 850 participants from 19 countries registered for the event where 70 speakers presented their work in a variety of sessions, including presentations, lightning talks, posters, a career panel, and workshops.

Researchers, faculty, staff, postdocs, and graduate and undergraduate students shared research projects and sparked new ideas with the audience. GIS industry professionals shared their working experience offering advice to participants who intended to pursue GIS-related careers. It was a big party for the UC GIS community who gathered together, celebrating and exploring GIS applications for a variety of fields. The huge amount of interest and enthusiasm across diverse disciplines showed the importance and versatility of GIS in an array of projects. Most importantly, it exemplified the cohesion of the UC GIS community. Representatives from ten UC campuses organized the UC-wide GIS Week, unifying participants throughout California and across the world (Figure 1.). This conference was designed to inspire everyone to “see GIS and us together”, hence the theme “UC GIS and Us Together”. The 3-day event held various sessions with different topics. To view recordings of each session, check out the UC GIS Week YouTube channel and join the Slack channel to continue the conversation and networking!

Figure 1. The geographic distribution of UC GIS Week 2020 participants, including 19 countries across six continents. Most of the participants were located in the US, while the conference welcomed participants from Canada, Mexico, Ecuador, Chile, India, China, Australia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Italy, Germany, United Kingdom, Ireland, Spain, Greece, South Africa, and Nigeria.

GIS stands for Geographic Information Sciences/Systems, which applies GIS techniques to analyze spatial data with the guidance of geospatial science. GIS is widely used in a variety of fields to organize, visualize, and analyze data to help make smarter decisions. Considering the broad applications, the 3-Day UC GIS Week was filled with sessions with different topics, such as public health, environmental sustainability, remote sensing, transportation, geology, and more. The diverse topics catered to participants with different backgrounds. 

The UC GIS Week started with the Opening Plenary which included opening remarks from organizers and industry professionals. To begin, Albert Kochaphum and Joy Guey, representing the UC GIS Committee, sent out the warmest welcome to attendees and thanked those who organized the conference despite institutional and disciplinary barriers. The UC GIS Week committee also shared their understanding of UC GIS Week and what it meant to them. While each person had a unique understanding of UC GIS Week, all of the committee acknowledged the spirit of collaboration and the effort to achieve the same goal. In addition to the UC organizers, industry professionals expressed their gratitude for the conference. Geri Miller, the lead of the Education Sector at ESRI and her team members (Figure 2.) supported GIS Week by generously offering ArcGIS licenses and wished the participants a wonderful GIS Week. Joe Morrison, from Azavea, appraised the collaborations in numerous GIS projects and spoke highly of the effort as well as the GIS techniques that helped make more informed decisions for managing societies and the planet. With all the congratulations and wishes, the UC GIS Week kicked off.

Figure 2. Esri Education Section Group give congratulatory remarks for UC GIS Week.

The first day had six sessions: Collaborations Across UCs, Mappy Lunch Hour, History Geography, Poster Session-Policy, Workshop-Risk Assessment, and Career Panel # 1. Colleagues from different UC campuses talked about their collaboration in coordinating a wildfire response and designing a UC Hub across the UCs. The Mappy Lunch Hour provided a time for mappers and GIS enthusiasts to socialize and network. In the afternoon, the Historical Geography session presented how GIS techniques unveiled a new understanding of history from a geospatial perspective. The Poster Session-Policy focused on social problems in cities, such as transportation, dwelling units, and homelessness, while the workshop discussed the risk assessment based on the National Flood Insurance in California. In the end, the first day wrapped up with the Career Panel # 1 during which professionals from industry and government shared their working experiences and connected with the participants who were interested in pursuing GIS-related careers. 

The second day presented more sessions elaborating on applications of GIS in topics such as Natural Resources and Environmental Data, Social Justice, Public Health, and Environmental Sciences. Besides these great presentations, the second day featured lightning talks during which speakers shared their ideas within 5-minute talks. Six people shared their creative projects with the challenge of condensing their elaborate ideas in a concise and clear way. The second day ended with a poster session during which speakers talked about how GIS mapped out social inequality and disparities in public health, helped visualize the facilities on college campuses to make them more accessible to people, and enabled the large-scale geologic map to unveil new information about the process of tectonic deformation. 

The last day continued the lightning talks in Environmental Sciences, and meanwhile speakers presented their work in new topics in Social Geography and the Built Environment, and Indigenous Cartographies and Counter-Mapping. The lighting talks displayed the application of GIS software, such as QGIS and ArcGIS StoryMaps in projects, digital mapping, spatial and temporal repository, and the geospatial analysis of grids. The Social Geography and the Built Environment discussed how to take advantage of GIS to contribute to sustainable development both socially and environmentally. Indigenous Cartographics and Counter-Mapping illustrated the history and spatial and temporal distribution of indigenous communities of Los Angeles. The final day was wrapped up by the Celebratory Map Up and Debrief! All participants were invited to join and celebrate the success of UC GIS Week. In the final meeting, participants expressed their enjoyment of attending the conference and were asking how they would be a part of the conference next year. According to Google Analytics, the 2020 UC GIS Week website had more than 700 visits everyday, and around 60-70 attendees for each session! It was a great success for all participants! 

UC GIS Week passed rapidly, but creative ideas and the spirit of collaboration continue to linger. Kudos to everyone and thanks for being a part of UC GIS Week 2020. To get involved with UC GIS Week 2021, please reach out to the committee through ucgisweek@gmail.com. Join us next year!