News

Story Map Delivers #ProtectOurCoast Campaign

In January 2018, the White House proposed opening nearly all U.S. waters to offshore drilling. On the East Coast, governors are speaking out with concerns about the risks offshore drilling would pose to the coastal environment, economy, tourism, and quality of life. Out of 22 U.S. coastal states, 15 governors stated opposition to drilling. Additionally, over 140 local communities along the Atlantic Coast have passed resolutions opposing offshore drilling, seismic testing, or both.

The Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) launched a public messaging campaign to elevate the voices of local communities opposed to offshore drilling when the previous administration released its proposed drilling plan in 2015, and has continued these efforts in light of the current administration’s plan to reopen the possibility of drilling in the Atlantic. Working in six states throughout the Southeast, SELC has over 70 attorneys and nine offices dedicated to clean water, healthy air, mountains and forests, and coastal protection. A nonprofit organization, they work at all levels of government and with all three branches to strengthen laws, hold government accountable and stop environmental abusers.

For the #ProtectOurCoast campaign, SELC worked with Blue Raster to develop a Story Map outlining the major concerns of offshore drilling in their region. SELC was interested in creating an interactive story-telling tool to better inform communities about the threats of offshore drilling and to drive public comments to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM). The Story Map highlights state and local opposition, incompatibility with existing military training areas, impacts of drilling infrastructure, and threats to coastal economies. SELC also draws attention to the region’s abundance of natural resources, including habitat for species like the critically endangered North Atlantic Right Whale, dozens of National Wildlife Refuges, National Seashores, state protected areas and ecologically important marine areas, where a single oil spill would devastate the healthy waters and clean beaches that are critical to wildlife and coastal communities.

Learn more about the risks of Offshore Drilling at the campaign page and Story Map!

 

Working with Blue Raster has allowed SELC to provide users with the ability to learn the core concerns of opening the Atlantic coast to offshore drilling, and the power to interact with the data on their own terms. The assemblage of marine and coastal ecological data, compatibility of military operations, industrial footprints, and community opposition created a set of stories, difficult to communicate through print maps alone. Blue Raster helped SELC transform an ArcGIS Desktop workflow into a multi-faceted geospatial tool with Web App Builder, Story Map Templates and ArcGIS Online. The result-an interactive, engaging experience for users to explore the impacts of the proposed drilling plan by showing what’s at stake for communities, environmental resources, economies, and quality of life along our coast, and how these factors overlap and interplay.

Jovian Sackett, Senior Geospatial Analyst, Southern Environmental Law Center 

New Paper Identifying Emerging Hot Spots of Deforestation

Blue Raster is proud to have worked with the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the Esri Big Data Team to co-author the study, Using Spatial Statistics to Identify Emerging Hot Spots of Forest Loss.

Published in Environmental Research Letters, the study lays out the data-analysis workflow Blue Raster developed to identify trends in tree-cover loss in Brazil, Indonesia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) between 2000 and 2014. Using Esri’s emerging hot spot analysis and big data analysis techniques, Blue Raster identified persistent, accelerating, and new hot spots of tree-cover loss, as well as cold spots of diminishing loss. New forest policies such as logging moratoria and incentives were linked with reduced forest clearing, whereas timber harvesting, road-building, and agricultural land clearing were associated with hot spots.

Techniques identified in the study will help decision makers, technical experts and the broader public better understand trends in deforestation and improve forest monitoring going forward. While the article focuses on Brazil, Indonesia, and the DRC, the methodology can be scaled for larger or smaller regions, as well as for different windows in time.

Accompanying the paper, Blue Raster produced maps of intensifying, sporadic, and new hot spots of deforestation for each area of interest. The visuals indicate a broad range of trends including:

  • Shifting spatiotemporal patterns of loss in Brazil, with forest loss significantly diminishing within the Amazonian states of Mato Grosso and Rondônia and intensifying within the cerrado biome;
  • New and statistically significant hot spots of forest loss in 2013 and 2014 in West Kalimanta, Indonesia; and
  • The emergence of vast areas of DRC as significant new hot spots of forest loss, with intensified loss radiating out from city centers such as Beni and Kisangani.

The release of the article coincides with the World Economic Forum, an event where 20 of the world’s largest commodity producers, traders, manufacturers, consultants, and retailers launched a new partnership with research institutions and banks to monitor deforestation and manage sustainability from farm to customer. The partnership, led by WRI’s Global Forest Watch team, will focus on building an online global decision-support tool that builds on the GFW Commodities platform to increase transparency and traceability across supply chains.

Read the full publication by WRI, Blue Raster, and Esri online at IOP Science.

Local Students Celebrate GIS Day at Blue Raster

Arlington School Students at Blue Raster GIS DayOn November 16th, we celebrated GIS Day by inviting GIS students from Washington-Lee High School to visit Blue Raster. Led by teacher, Ryan Miller, Washington-Lee offers several technology classes linked to James Madison University. For the fifth year, Blue Raster has hosted the class, giving students insight into the connection between what they learn in the classroom and the work GIS professionals do in the world today.

The Blue Raster team shared real-world GIS success stories through a round of lightning talk presentations on ongoing projects and then invited the students to use their GIS skills with a fun Collector for ArcGIS challenge. After collecting and mapping data on transportation in their county, students saw the application of GIS in a new meaningful way.

Ryan MillerIt’s such a tremendous asset to be able to link my high school GIS students with the professionals at Blue Raster. Blue Raster’s willingness to dedicate time, effort and resources, into a GIS day collaboration, benefits my students as they get to observe incredible GIS work and potential career opportunities. The students and I are so grateful to Mike, Stephen and to the entire Blue Raster team.

  — Ryan Miller, Teacher @APSVirginia and Meteorologist @ABC7NEWS

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We wrapped up the day with viewing their data collection in the Operations Dashboard and enjoying some pizza and desserts.

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Blue Raster now an Esri Federal Small Business Specialist

Blue Raster is proud to announce our participation in Esri’s Federal Small Business Program. This program creates opportunities for small businesses to deepen Geographic Information System (GIS) skills and prepare for upcoming federal procurements. The program offers a variety of outreach such as business development boot camps, hands-on technical workshops, and access to marketing and community events. Access to these benefits promotes good practices in business development, and prepares our developer staff to be the most knowledgeable in the GIS and Application Development fields as possible.

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Under this program, Blue Raster will work closely with Esri, providing comprehensive service to the federal government. Involvement in the Federal Small Business Program is just one of the ways Blue Raster is constantly striving to be experts in the latest Esri technology, allowing us to deliver the best value to our many federal customers.

For more information about the Federal Small Business Specialty, visit the Esri News announcement.

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Enhancing Public Access to GIS

The National Alliance for Public Safety GIS Foundation (NAPSG), is committed to enhancing public safety one community at a time and building a more resilient nation across all levels of government. With the help of Blue Raster, NAPSG enhanced their website in two ways:

  • Modernize the resource library turning it into an organized, user-friendly data outlet
  • Created a symbol library establishing a common language for incident information

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The Resources Page is a publicly accessible data platform, allowing communities and local entities access to key resources that aid in decision making. The Resources page is built with Wordpress and features newly organized categories and search functionality, Researchers can now pinpoint what is needed and where to find it quickly rather than spending time scrolling through information.

Built with React JS, Flux and Python, the Symbol Library provides a set of standardized incident symbols that can be used on maps and in GIS applications. Framework and guidelines are included to ensure that all of the downloadable data is used properly and consistently. Complete with its own Library Tool, symbols can be downloaded on an individual level or by topic.

 


Blue Raster understood our community’s needs and requirements out of the gate. This made designing the solution for our Symbol Library Tool and reorganization of resources on our website a much more streamlined and efficient process. Again the Blue Raster Team exceeded our expectations.
-Rebecca Harned, Senior Program Manager, National Alliance for Public Safety GIS Foundation


 


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