NACIS 2026

Launching and Scaling Digital Map Accessibility for the Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey
Caroline Rose, Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey
Brandon Biggs, XR Navigation
The ground-breaking visual, auditory, and interactive text map of the Quaternary Geology of Wisconsin, which we presented in draft form at NACIS 2025, showed it is possible to make complex maps accessible. Now that the map has been released, users can “hear” shapes, understand topological relationships, and access over 3000 features in 16 layers. Users can navigate the map via keyboard, can access the geographic features using a screen reader, and can tailor the settings to suit their own access needs. This talk will cover the process and roll-out of this highly complex, accessible map and our ideas for how the Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey will scale this work from one accessible map to other publications.

Translating WCAG as Cartographers - A Framework for Visual Map Accessibility
Jakob Ruffner, Esri
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) is the baseline for the US' Title II/III amendment to the ADA. It requires that all State, Federal, and Private organizations provide accessible content. However, it is unclear as to what exactly counts as adequate compliance, especially true for map design, whose cartography involves complicated visualization choices that don't fit into simple binaries. In this session, we attempt to turn the often-vague language of WCAG into a relatable framework for us cartographers. Based on projects across many industries, this interpretation allows us to make user-driven maps without over-simplifying them, hinging on leveraging application UIs, clear symbology, and alternative access formats.

Lights, Camera, Action: Putting Cartographic Accessibility on Film
Jack Swab, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Laura Zierer, American Printing House for the Blind
Cartographic accessibility for individuals with low vision or blindness is an important facet of cartographic design but can remain abstract in the cartography classroom. This talk explores the motivation behind and the production of a short film about cartographic accessibility. Made in collaboration with the American Printing House for the Blind and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, we explore how we created this film and its impacts in a 100-level, general education cartography class.

Cartographic Accessibility at the American Printing House for the Blind
Laura Zierer, American Printing House for the Blind
Jack Swab, The University of Tennessee--Knoxville
In this presentation, we will screen a short film made in conjunction with the American Printing House for the Blind and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. The video highlights the American Printing House for the Blind’s cartographic efforts and the positive impact that their products have on increasing geographic and cartographic literacy for individuals with low vision or blindness.

See What We See: Community Co Produced Spatial Meaning in Lindsay Heights, Milwaukee
Dulmini Nadeesha Jayawardana
This talk explores how residents of Lindsay Heights generated spatial knowledge through photovoice, revealing layers of meaning not typically visible in conventional mapping. Through community led photography and storytelling, participants articulated a spatial logic grounded in memory, environmental care, and collective resilience. These insights formed a layered, conceptual map that visualizes lived experience as spatial data. The talk demonstrates how qualitative, community generated meaning can be structured, interpreted, and integrated into cartographic practice, expanding what mapping can hold. It offers a model for co produced spatial representation that deepens understanding of place in Milwaukee and beyond.

Resurrecting Historical Geodata: A Vision-Language Model Approach to Integrating Property Assessment Records and Census Geographies
Elizaveta (Liz) Lepikhova (She/They)
Historical census records are essential for studying neighborhood change, yet key housing-market indicators are largely unavailable before 1930. This presentation introduces a GeoAI workflow for transforming historical property assessment records into structured geospatial data using vision-language models (VLMs) and automated record linkage in R. Using Milwaukee tax assessment rolls, we demonstrate how prompt engineering, iterative refinement, human validation, and scripted matching improve the reliability of extracting, linking, and mapping historical property data. We then integrate these data with an existing archive of racially restrictive covenants to produce neighborhood-level cartographic visualizations for historical and social justice research.

Using Maps To Expand Your Horizons And Identify Injustices
H. Jiahong Pan (They/them)
Maps influence my work. Growing up in San Francisco, maps — particularly the ones at San Francisco Muni bus shelters — helped me discover that a world existed beyond my community and that there were stories that existed in those maps. Maps also helped me explain stories to people when I freelanced as a journalist, including access to food in the Minneapolis neighborhood I live in.

Participatory Mapping Beyond Representation
Joy Ihuka
Participatory mapping serves to incorporate local knowledge into environmental planning and climate adaptation. It involves translating lived experiences and environmental observations into formal cartographic and GIS systems, impacting institutional decision-making. This talk reviews literature on participatory GIS, critical cartography, and community geography, focusing on how technical standards and planning requirements affect the recognition of local knowledge. It examines how participatory mapping both supports and constrains community engagement, addressing issues of representation and institutional incorporation. Examples from climate adaptation and disaster risk reduction illustrate tensions between local spatial knowledge and standardized mapping systems, highlighting the negotiation of environmental knowledge in planning contexts.

This year’s DEI-sponsored series centers on experiences of people engaging with communities and neighborhoods and working across diverse identities. Through their work, our speakers use cartography in various ways to reveal meanings, uncover memories, illuminate injustices, and envision different futures.

Panelists:
Dulmini Nadeesha Jayawardana
Elizaveta (Liz) Lepikhova
H. Jiahong Pan (They/them)
Joy Ihuka

Creating a personal geospatial data history map
Guthrie Alexander
Most of us are sitting on a surprising amount of personal geospatial data: tracks from GPS watches and handhelds, hiking, biking, and running routes, the location history our phones collect (with and without our knowledge), and every geotagged photo we've ever taken. It all lives in different places, in different services, and in different formats. I'll walk through building a centralized repository for my own spatial data, one that's accessible from anywhere, takes minimal upkeep (hopefully), and serves as both a spatial memory and a motivator to get out and explore more.

Sonoran Desert Journeys
Joanne Coutts, Independent
Travel is a way of life in the Sonoran Desert. For centuries O’odham, Piipaash, and Quechan people have been guided through the desert by the locations of water sources and the shapes of the mountains. Today, people immigrating to the U.S. also use mountains and water sources to guide their journeys through the desert. Sonoran Desert Journeys explores the connections between Indigenous routes of travel with migrant journeys and humanitarian aid stations, and how O’odham song maps and place names support search and rescue and recovery for migrants who are disappeared in the desert.

Cartography of "Our Neighborhood Walk": what can storymaps tell us about human-canine-environment interactions?
Jonathan Nelson, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Alton L. Hipps, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Makinnley Tomberlin, University of Wisconsin-Madison
The “Our Neighborhood Walk” project explores how using personal geo-enabled tracking devices and interactive storymaps can advance understanding of the shared experiences and emotional connections between pet guardians and their companion dogs while walking together. We employ personal visual storytelling design techniques to unlock new insights into how humans and canines collectively and individually perceive elements of the built and natural environment. By cartographically recreating the dynamic, co-constructed sense-of-place that evolves during a routine walk, we aim to facilitate greater awareness of human-canine-environment interactions and prompt critical reflection on how to enhance those interactions in the future.

Personal Mapping: Hand-drawn life stories
David Nuttall
This talk will dive into the details of a large commissioned map and how the customer homework (source data) leads to research and then hand-drawing a detailed map that includes so many aspects of their life yet feels like a cohesive real place. Stepping through the entire process including concept, discussions, planning, layered feature drawing, procrastination, late additional feature adding, and the nervousness of shipping a finished map. David will show progress images and demonstrate how personal details and non-map aspects can indeed be included in the landscape while getting a glimpse into his mind and thought process.

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.

A Guide to Mapping Small Joys
Jessica Breen, American University
A small joy is anything that makes your day better: a good cup of coffee, an unexpected meeting with a friend, hearing a favorite song. "A Guide to Mapping Small Joys" is a zine-based mapping project that invites participants to notice these moments of joy in their daily lives and create a personal map, or even atlas, of where small joys occur for them. Intended as an analog, affective mapping exercise to facilitate classroom conversations about place, identity, and representation, this talk walks through the zine design, the mapping activity, and what some of the collected maps look like in practice.

The K-12 Teacher Fellowship Model: Expanding Geographic Literacy and Outreach in Map Libraries
Ryan Mattke, University of Minnesota Libraries
Learn how a K-12 Summer Teacher Fellowship, launched in 2023, is enhancing the relevance of map libraries and expanding geographic literacy. This presentation details the program's development and analyzes it alongside three comparable national initiatives. These four case studies reveal key elements for success, offering a blueprint for similar outreach programs and strong justification for funding. See how a collaborative approach fosters a robust teacher-fellow community and positions map libraries as vital, intersectional hubs—bridging the gap between extensive university research resources and the practical needs of K-12 educators.

Building a Cartography Lab at an R2 University: Reflections from the JMU Map Lab
Timothy Prestby, James Madison University
Several universities at very high research (R1) institutions (e.g., Penn State, UW-Madison, University of Oregon) have cartography labs. However, such labs are not common at strong (R2) institutions. In this talk, I introduce The James Madison University (JMU) Map Lab: an R2 cartography lab that aims to advance mapmaking as a tool for communication, decision-making, and community engagement. I reflect on the opportunities and challenges of launching and sustaining the JMU Map Lab within an R2 institutional context and conclude by considering what these reflections may mean for similar institutions.

The data context gap in cartography textbooks and handbooks
Ester Scheck, TU Wien
If "numbers don’t speak for themselves," cartographers must understand the context of the data they use. Data is never neutral or objective; it is shaped by social, legal, and technological conditions. I argue for "responsible data practices"- an intentional approach that considers the context in which data is produced and its impact on communities. However, my research based on a qualitative content analysis of major cartography textbooks and handbooks points to a significant gap. These books primarily focus on the technical handling of data (e.g., data formats and classification) while overlooking data source issues and the data production context. My ongoing doctoral research aims to bridge this gap by developing methodologies to critically examine data context and inform critical map design.

Antarctic Cartography: Mapping the End of the Earth at the Polar Geospatial Center
Jesse Bakker, Polar Geospatial Center, University of Minnesota
Captivated by the rugged and truly remote wilderness of Antarctica, people have long attempted to capture this stark landscape in maps. Inaccessible, ice-covered, and largely distorted on most maps, Antarctica presents unique challenges and constraints to cartographers. Here, we showcase the visualization techniques, incredible data, and historical inspiration that map makers at the Polar Geospatial Center use to bring the frozen continent into view to support vital polar science.

Wavelet-Based Texture Shading
Leland Brown, Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon, Portugal
Texture shading is a terrain representation method that works effectively on both mountainous terrain and areas of low relief, but until now it was not as well-suited for mixed terrain types. The original algorithm enhances small features based on horizontal width but does not consider the local ruggedness of the terrain. Ideally we could decompose the terrain into features of different sizes and adjust each based on both width and height. An updated texture shading algorithm approximates this intuition using a continuous wavelet transform. This process is initially available via a free online interface. A preview window allows adjusting the parameters of the algorithm to see their effects in real time before generating the final image.

Multi-scale Shaded Relief and Surface Orientation
Patrick Kennelly, Central Oregon Community College
Gene Trantham, Independent
While terrain representations show noticeable changes when mapped at various scales, no studies to date have attempted to quantify and visualize the variations in relief shading values among scales. In this study, we vary raster extent and grid cell resolution over a fixed extent to look at changes in the orientation of surface normal vectors and the variance of relief shading values. We use multi-resolution digital elevation models (DEMs) designed for cartographic display at varying scales in two ways. In the first part, four different resolutions of DEMs (1, 5, 15, and 30-meter pixels) cover the same extent and are centered on the Gore Range of Colorado. In the second part, the full extent of eight DEMs of varying resolution (1, 5, 15, 30, 90, 250, 500, and 1,000-meter pixels) are centered on the Gore Range and cover increasingly large portions of Colorado and the western United States. Our analysis visualizes and quantifies tonal variations a user experiences when zooming out on an interactive map from large to small scales.

Resampling Relief: Evaluating Elevation and Hillshade Representation on Discrete Global Grids
Emmanuel Stefanakis, Department of Geomatics Engineering, University of Calgary
This study evaluates how Earth relief and terrain illumination can be represented on an ISEA3H discrete global grid system (DGGS), with emphasis on multi-resolution resampling. Using Alberta, Canada, as a testbed, we examine diverse geomorphological settings, including plains, foothills, river valleys, and mountain/alpine terrain. Elevation and hillshade products are generated across successive DGGS resolution levels and compared with equivalent representations on regular rectangular grids. The analysis assesses preservation of landform structure, shading continuity, and visual legibility during scale transitions. Results inform cartographic generalization strategies for hexagonal global grids and support more effective terrain visualization in DGGS-based mapping environments.

Mapping Alaska: New Maps of the Last Frontier
Chaney Swiney, Benchmark Maps/East View Geospatial
Earlier this year, Benchmark Maps released two new Alaskan titles: the 3rd edition of our Alaska Road & Recreation Atlas and a brand new folded Alaska Recreation Map. With enhanced terrain representation and updated land ownership data, both products showcase a new-and-improved aesthetic. We’ll take a tour through the atlas and show how it’s changed over its first decade, poring over the maps and highlighting the cartography that showcases these spectacular landscapes. Plus, we’ll get into the details of building the folded map, a companion product that relies heavily on the foundation laid by the atlas.

How Scientists Map Ice: A Cartographic Content Analysis of Glacier Changes in Peer-Reviewed Literature
Jasper Zhou, University of Oregon
Glacier change maps appear in peer-reviewed journals every year, yet no one has systematically asked whether those maps actually communicate well. This study applies quantitative content analysis to a corpus of glacier retreat maps published between 2000 and 2025, coding for symbology, color, temporal encoding, and science communication quality. The goal is to characterize how glaciologists currently map retreat, trace how design conventions have shifted over time, and identify where scientific glacier cartography falls short of what we know about effective climate visualization.

A GeoAI Framework for Predictive Risk Monitoring of Electrical Substations and Energy Infrastructure
Olalekan Alamoh, Georgia State University
This presentation introduces a geospatial artificial intelligence (GeoAI) framework designed to support predictive monitoring of electrical substations and critical energy infrastructure. The approach integrates satellite imagery, environmental data, and spatial analysis to identify risks such as flooding, extreme heat, and vegetation encroachment before failures occur. By combining multiple data sources into a unified system, the framework enables proactive decision-making and enhances infrastructure resilience. The presentation will highlight system design, data integration, and visualization through an interactive dashboard, demonstrating how GeoAI can transform infrastructure management from reactive response to early risk detection.

Maps going viral: learnings across public health cartography
Eric Brelsford, Stamen Design
Kelsey Taylor, Stamen Design
Stamen has collaborated with several universities and NGOs in recent years on health-related cartography projects, including WastewaterSCAN, the UCSF Health Atlas, the Duke SEED Atlas, and more. By engaging directly with epidemiologists on these projects, we have had the freedom to explore new concepts and ideas with the confidence that experts will ensure we are telling the right stories and portraying ongoing outbreaks accurately.
Through these examples, this talk will focus on patterns in the health mapping space, how it differs from other types of cartography that we work on at Stamen, and what we can apply to future public health-related projects.

MadTrails: A public land management and trail accessibility tool
Susannah C. Cox, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Alton L. Hipps, University of Wisconsin–Madison
Natalie Correa, University of Wisconsin–Madison
Jonathan K. Nelson, University of Wisconsin–Madison
We discuss the tool MadTrails, a multi-application suite built on the ESRI ArcGIS Online environment for the University of Wisconsin–Madison Arboretum. Built alongside community stakeholders, MadTrails allows for online reporting of maintenance and access issues by Arboretum volunteers and the public to aid in better management of the arboretum space and increased access to communities with mobility difficulties. Additionally, we include opportunities for direct mapping of accessibility issues. In this talk, we will discuss the functionalities of MadTrails, the stakeholder engagement process, initial evaluation findings, and future steps for the application.

Communicating Healthcare Affordability Through Maps: A Visual Analytics Framework Using NHIS and MEPS Data
Sandipta Khare, Claremont Graduate University, Ph.D. Student, Information Systems and Technology
Alexis Parker, Claremont Graduate University
Prof. Hengwei Zhang, Claremont Graduate University
Healthcare affordability can be understood through both barriers to obtaining care and financial burden after receiving care. This study uses two national public-use survey datasets, the 2023 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) and the 2023 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS), to examine these related dimensions. NHIS is used to analyze reported cost-related barriers to mental health counseling and therapy, while MEPS is used to examine annual healthcare expenditure burden. Through regional mapping, visual analytics, and uncertainty-aware cartographic design, the project demonstrates how public-use health survey data can be used to communicate healthcare affordability patterns responsibly while acknowledging geographic limitations.

Network Ontologies for Disaster Management Tools: A Review of Cartographic Literature
David Retchless, Texas A&M University at Galveston
Carolyn Fish, University of Oregon
Jim Thatcher, Oregon State University
Chad Giusti, Oregon State University
Conor Progin, Oregon State University
Courtney Thatcher
We review cartographic literature for the network ontologies of disaster management tools, identifying gaps and opportunities. Natural disasters disrupt flows of people, energy, information, and other resources that are essential to modern systems. Cartographic tools for disaster management therefore frequently model and map these flows and associated networks. Understanding the network ontologies (implicit or explicit) that undergird these tools is essential to identifying their capacities and limitations. Differences in what counts as a node or edge – what features, with what dimensionality and level of attribution – can be the difference between delivering life-saving insights into network function and missing key vulnerabilities.