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Bucknell/Local Interest General GIS GIS Jobs, Internships, Scholarships & Grad Programs Slideshow

GIS Job Opportunities – Azavea

In previous posts, I’ve mentioned some of the cool projects that Azavea (a GIS consulting firm in Philly) is involved in.  Things like…

Well, here’s your chance to spend a summer working for them. Azavea recently announced a paid internship program for Summer 2012 – but you have to move fast to make the April 2nd application deadline.  Here’s the write-up with details and an application form from the Azavea Summer of Maps homepage.

We are pleased to announce the first Azavea Summer of Maps. Inspired by the Google Summer of Code, Summer of Maps is a program that offers stipends to student GIS analysts to perform geospatial data analysis for non-profit organizations. We are going to match up non-profit organizations that have spatial analysis needs with talented students of GIS analysis to implement projects over a three-month period during the summer.

 What’s in it for the students?

  • Work on a spatial analysis project that supports the social mission of a non-profit organization
  • Work with Azavea mentors to improve your GIS skills
  • Receive a monthly stipend
  • Gain work experience implementing a GIS project

Key dates:

Mar 21 – April 2 – Students submit proposals and applications

April 2 – 13 – Top candidates are interviewed in Philadelphia

April 16 – Azavea announces successful Summer of Maps fellows

May 14 – August 31 – Summer of Maps fellows work on spatial analysis projects

 

 

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Bucknell/Local Interest Environment General GIS Map Apps Videos

WikiWatershed – Model My Watershed

WikiWatershed is another exciting project under development by the team at Azavea.  The project – a collaboration between the Stroud Water Research CenterAzavea, University of Pennsylvania’s Cartographic Modeling Lab and Millersville University –  features a suite of web-based mapping and analysis tools designed for use by students and concerned citizens in sharing information about the streams, rivers and natural resources in their watersheds.  The first component of WikiWatershed to be released is the Model My Watershed tool which allows for web-based modeling of stormwater:

This game-like simulaton will enable students to modify underlying environmental conditions and simulate how these changes to the ecosystem affect the hydrologic cycle in their local watersheds …[and will] will use the latest version of Azavea’s DecisionTree geoprocessing framework to provide high performance, scalable modeling capabilities.

From the Stroud Water Research Center website:

When fully developed, [WikiWatershed] will leverage open source software and will function as an open collaborative resource for the community, enabling users to share geographically-tagged data, photos, videos, comments, educational curricula, simulation models and other tools on streams and rivers. As “Wiki” implies, content will be primarily contributed, enhanced and maintained by the user community. The WikiWatershed™ web portal will link a database of watershed information to geo-tagged visual content viewable on Google Maps®/Earth®, Flickr®, Panoramio®, YouTube®, etc.

Click here to explore the WikiWatershed mapping application.

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Bucknell/Local Interest Digital Humanities General GIS GIS in History Map Apps Slideshow

PhillyHistory + augmented reality as a smartphone app

This is the first in a series of posts about several exciting new projects that my old friends and Philly GIS happy hour buddies are up to at Azavea.  The first is funded by an NEH Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant that was awarded to the Philadelphia Department of Records to create a smartphone app that will enable users to view historic photos from PhillyHistory.org draped over the current modern-day landscape.

If the research proved successful, users would be able to point their smartphones, using the camera view, at a building or other location and see historic images of that same location.  The photos would be accompanied by descriptive information from PhillyHistory.org with additional explanatory text provided by local historians.  This combination of technology and history could be a powerful tool for showing the lengthy and interesting history of Philadelphia.

Click here to read more about the project.  Azavea expects to make the app (for iPhones and phones running Android) available as a free download sometime in the next few months.  A white paper about the project will also be released this spring and could hopefully serve as both inspiration and a springboard for faculty and/or student projects at Bucknell (where we have a wealth of historical images and GIS data for Lewisburg). Click here to read a blog post from Azavea Atlas about other examples of the use of augmented reality in cultural institutions.