Preface from Proceedings Editors

The 1st Annual University of Washington (UW) GIS Symposium took place in Seattle, WA on May 25, 2017 at the UW Libraries’ Research Commons. The UW GIS Symposium replaced UW’s previous mid-November GIS Day event, which was held annually on the nationally-recognized GIS Day, beginning in 2011.The intent of this symposium was to create an interdisciplinary opportunity for faculty, student, and staff to come together and share their research.

The theme of this year’s symposium was the importance of geospatial literacy and the transformational role Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and remote sensing technologies play at the UW and beyond. Sarah Battersby, a Senior Research Scientist at Tableau Research, kicked off the event with her informative and humorous keynote talk, “Geospatial Literacy & Some Other Stuff,” that stressed the importance of the GIS community’s responsibility to help everyone think critically about the maps that help us understand the world around us.

After the keynote, students and staff presented lightning talks and posters on a variety of topics, which included characterizing spotted owl habitat using LiDAR, evaluating Seattle’s bike share program, and identifying possible river and ocean locations on Mars. A total of eight lightning talks and eight posters were reviewed and accepted by the conference committee out of 19 proposals submitted by faculty, students and staff from the UW’s Seattle, Tacoma, and Bothell, WA campuses. Each lightning talk presenter delivered a five-minute oral presentation supported by visual slides and maps; each poster presenter attended the event and was on hand to answer audience questions. An open Q&A followed the lightning talk portion of the event. Abstracts from the lightning talks and posters are included in these Proceedings below.

This year’s symposium was attended by approximately 50 people, including students, staff and faculty. We would like to thank everyone who contributed to the success of the UW GIS Symposium. Special thanks goes to the members for the symposium planning committee for their numerous contributions, the staff of the Research Commons for being gracious hosts, and to the UW Libraries for sponsoring refreshments.

Proceedings Editors

Kian Flynn, UW Libraries
Miles Logsdon, UW School of Oceanography
Matthew Parsons, UW Libraries