Some of you may have heard of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s decision to discontinue the GIS Professional Program Online degrees and certificates. I am still heartbroken over this decision. Over the past 7 years, I have enjoyed working with our students and the limited exposure that I had to the Geography Department as a whole. These interactions really changed how I saw the world and what my future would be.
Last fall, I began my PhD journey. My undergraduate and master’s degrees were in environmental science, and that helped me with the different positions I have held with the County government and Consulting, giving me a diverse background in project work that allowed me to work with students from diverse backgrounds to help them succeed. What was lacking in this, however, was found from my time interacting with Ian, Rob, and Jonathan from the University of Wisconsin – Madison: a better understanding of the bigger storytelling picture and what I was doing. Mentally, I was attempting to tell the story of the project, but that project has a lot more interconnectiveness with the human story.
My Current Advisor, Dr. LaLone, has pushed me into directions that I was always on the cusp of but never knew how to go deeper into. Much of this is diving deeper into how users interact with spatial computing, especially around emergency management. From my time at the County, I was both trained and participated in many emergencies. I was called in before Hurricane Sandy and worked almost the whole day of the storm (I was sent home after 16 hours). What I started to learn, in my head, through all of this is that technology and first responders do not always mix.
So my research focus is now along the lines of how can we make spatial computing usable and accessible to all users. The users that I want to better understand are those who are not the power GIS users, but those who use the tools that GIS professionals create. Think of the sewer crew trying to find what information is there for a broken pipe to the fire fighters getting to a fire and then finding what water infrastructure is available to them to put out the fire. These users have a very specific needs, and often as GIS professionals we use what is out of the box. Which may or may not be what is actually useful. So my research focuses on listening to users to bridge this gap.
If you have been following my other blog post My Cancer Journey – Updated February 20, my cancer treatment has been pretty serious. While this is a setback, I am still working on course work and research, just not at 100%. I still hope to finish within the next year or so, but it may be a little delayed.
Justin's GIS Blog 