Atlas de la Desaparición: Cartographic Experiments in Visualizing Uncertainty and Absence
Bea Abbott, University of Kentucky, department of geography
Oficina de Investigación Documental (OID)
Atlas de la Desaparición is an investigation by a multidisciplinary collective of artists and researchers whose objective is to unravel histories of enforced disappearance from the Spanish Civil War and subsequent Francoist dictatorship that converge at 'El Valle de los Caídos' — a fascist monument and mass grave located 50 km northwest of Madrid. Since 2022, this site-specific investigation has explored different methodologies for visualizing the complex dataset that corresponds to the more than 33,000 people exhumed from 632 grave sites across Spain and reburied behind the monument’s walls between 1959 and 1983. This paper shares some of the cartographic approaches our collective has experimented with in trying to attend to and visualize uncertain, erroneous, and missing geographic data.
Visualizing Conflict Landscapes: A Cartographic Approach to A Spatio-Temporal Analysis of Population Vulnerability to Armed Conflict in Burkina Faso (2015–2025) Using GIS-Based Modeling.
Harriet Morkor, Quarshie University of Northern Iowa
Samuel Nketia Boateng, University of Cape Coast, Cape Coast, Ghana.
Mohammed Sanda, University of Florida.
The Central Sahel has become one of West Africa's most dynamic conflict regions, with Burkina Faso at the center of a crisis that links political instability, violent events, displacement, and disruption of basic services. This study evaluates the spatio-temporal pattern of armed conflict in Burkina Faso, quantifies population exposure to conflict-risk zones, and assesses network-based accessibility to healthcare facilities between 2015 and 2025. ACLED conflict-event data were integrated with WorldPop gridded population estimates, administrative boundaries, health-facility locations, and road network data in ArcGIS Pro. Standard deviational ellipses were used to trace conflict direction, Global Moran's I and local cluster statistics were used to test spatial dependence, Kernel Density Estimation (KDE) was used to classify conflict intensity, and network service areas were generated for 30-, 60-,and 120-minute travel-time thresholds. Results show that conflict events are spatially clustered rather than randomly distributed, with persistent hotspots across the Sahel, Nord, Centre-Nord, Est, and Centre-Est regions. The directional analysis indicates a transition from early dispersed incidents to a northward concentration and later eastward diffusion. Population overlay results show that the number of people living in high-risk zones increased from 1.44 million in 2015 to 1.87 million in 2025, while medium-risk zones held more than 8.19 million people by 2025. Accessibility results reveal important spatial inequalities: some central and western areas are linked to hospital catchments, but large rural and peripheral areas, especially in the Est and Sahel borderlands, remain weakly served. The study demonstrates the value of integrating spatial statistics, demographic exposure mapping, and network analysis to support humanitarian planning and geographically targeted health-service interventions in conflict-affected settings.
New Media Cartographies: Codes, Grammars and Poetics in Collaborative Indigenous Web Mapping
Clancy Wilmott, University of California, Berkeley
Drawing together scholarship on Indigenous cartographies with theories of spatial new media, this paper discusses the possibilities and pitfalls of web cartography in the depiction of indeterminate, land-based and relational Indigenous spaces. It examines two separate collaborative projects - Mapping Genocide with the American Indian Cultural District, in San Francisco and the Reexamining Our Past Initiative from the California State Parks - to discuss the ways in which web cartography, in its specificity as an interactive non-linear media, might extend or limit what Pearce and Louis (2008) have described as “Indigenous processual cartography” through the use of ergodic poetics, cultural politics and technological ambiguity.
A Geography of Violence: The Rapid Support Forces and A Modern Conception of Territoriality and Control
Ethan Copeland, University of Nebraska at Omaha
The Rapid Support Forces (RSF), formed in the prelude and continuation of genocide in Sudan, has been infamous in the news for its displays of wanton violence, ethnocentrism, and lack of administrative capacity. Most notably, it has given rise to the pretense of alternative governance to the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF). On the ground, it has continued to defy contemporary geography theory. Instead, RSF authority is produced through infrastructural metrics: checkpoints, convoy protection, detention and elimination, property seizure, and selective access to trade allow for violence itself to become a spatial device. Through satellite imagery, social media, diaspora-centric communications, humanitarian work, and survivor testimonials, the RSF case advances a 21st-century theory of armed governance, circulation, and belonging beyond classical sovereignty.
Clash of the Eagle and the Lion: Mapping the War between the U.S., Israel, and Iran
Amy Jensen, Indiana University Bloomington
This StoryMap examines the 2026 conflict between the United States, Israel, and Iran through GIS mapping techniques. Using airstrike density maps and topographical analysis, the project explores how the war spread across the Middle East, which regions experienced the heaviest targeting, and the strategic limitations of a potential ground invasion of Iran. The study demonstrates the harrowing consequences of the conflict, including disruptions to oil trade, and geopolitical stability. By visualizing military activity across time and space, this project highlights the strategic complexity of modern warfare in the Middle East.
