November 16 was GIS Day and for the fifth year running, Data Services brought together mapping enthusiasts from across the NYU campus to talk about the latest developments in spatial research. GIS Day is an international celebration of geospatial technology and data and is part of National Geographic Awareness Week. This year, GIS Day @ NYU featured the return of the interactive Augmented Reality Sandbox exhibit and the highly anticipated Mapping Competition. Nine guest speakers who use GIS in their research and various projects presented on their latest work, among them the construction of a digital time machine using the New York Public Library’s collections, mapping dialect differences in the UK, and smart cities using GIS visualization and bio-sensor data.

As in past years, the Mapping Competition accepted entries for paper-format poster submissions and born-digital maps. The winners in each category were:

Paper-based maps:
1st prize: Ari Kaputkin for Transit-oriented Developments since 2010
2nd prize: Awais Malik for Residential Coverage of NYC Hurricane Evacuation Centers
3rd prize: Nicola Macchitella for Madrid Improvement Bike Station Area

Web-based maps:
1st prize: Fei Li for Traffic Accidents in NYC, 2016
2nd prize: Melissa Vise for Seeing and Hearing Things: Medieval Mysticism
3rd prize: Christopher Prince for On the Air: Microwave Traffic in NYC’s Urban Highrise Environment

All of the maps, in both digital and print format, submitted for competition utilized data found in the NYU Spatial Data Repository, which was introduced at last year’s GIS Day.

Winning Entries:

First-prize print map winner Ari Kaputkin’s submission.