Earlier this month, we celebrated GIS Day in collaboration with the Geography Department, University Libraries, and Enterprise GIS. GIS Day at Ohio State is an annual event for students, staff, faculty, and visitors to learn more about geographic information systems (GIS) and celebrate the power of geospatial analysis and visualization in answering research questions and solving real-world problems.

This year we kicked-off GIS Day with a Humanitarian Map-a-Thon, followed by lightening round talks, and ending the day with a Map Expo highlighting projects OSU students have been working on.

For the map-a-thon activity we edited building layers from the Nueva Capital neighborhood of Tegucigalpa, Honduras. We had over 20 volunteers participate in the map-a-thon activity.

During the lightening round talks we had guests from ESRI, the National Geodetic Survey, the City of Columbus, Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission (MORPC), University Libraries, Facilities Information and Technology Services, Knowlton School, College of Public Health, John Glenn College of Public Affairs, and Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center. The lightening round talks are always well attended and this year was no different. We had over 60 people from the GIS community attend.

This was the first year for the GIS Day Map Expo and we had 15 students participate in the event. Students who entered the contest could win a first place award scholarship valued at $500 or a people’s choice award scholarship valued at $250. We will announce the winners in the December CURA newsletter.

GIS Day occurs during Geoweek and this year CURA partnered with the Geography Department to host several fun-filled events. The Geography Department hosted a Graduate Research Forum, GIS/Spatial Analysis Major Information Session, A GeoGuessr competition, and Geography Bowl competition where scholarships were available to eligible students who won the competition. CURA also hosted a guest speaker from UNC at Chapel Hill, Dr. Noreen McDonald.

2019 was another great year for GIS Day and we hope more will join us for 2020 GIS Day.