Between April 3rd and
April 6th, I attended, for the first time, the annual American
Association of Geographers (AAG) meeting, in Washington, D.C. Coinciding with
the peak bloom of the cherry blossoms and the return of warm weather to the
capitol region, this meeting was a productive start to spring. I went with
three objectives, 1) present work on automating and mapping the healthcare
workforce, 2) host an Urban and Regional Information Systems Association
(URISA) chapter meet and greet, and 3) attend the diverse sessions within the
Geography, GIScience, and Health track.
On the morning of the third day, in
the session labeled, “Conditions Impacting Healthcare Access”, I presented a brief
overview of a project that I worked on throughout 2018. The American
Medical Association (AMA) project includes two main deliverables as defined in
the statement of work. The first is the production and delivery of 1,560 PDF
maps showing the geographic distribution of the healthcare workforce, relative
to population density. During my talk, I discussed how there was room for
improvement over the previous methodology of creating these static maps. Next,
I touched on the new methods that were used in the new 2018 project year, to
automate the production of the same 1,560 maps through the use of Python
programming. The other half of the project is for the development, update, and
maintenance of the AMA
Healthcare Mapper mapping application. I discussed the
characteristics of the healthcare workforce and how users use this tool to map
physician and non-physician providers. After my talk was finished, I fielded
several topical questions that led me to believe that I had actually engaged
the audience. Objective 1: SUCCESS!
Later that day, I hosted a
one-hour URISA meet and greet. Since the end of 2018, I have been coordinating
with representatives from URISA to revive the local URISA chapter that serves
the Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Virginia region. I thought it would be a
great opportunity, as AAG was coming to D.C., to request a room at AAG to try
to meet some local URISA members. I reached out to several exhibitors like
Pix4D, University of Maryland at College Park, GIS Certification Institute
(GISCI), and URISA, to see if they could provide some free handouts I could use
at the meeting. As I sat for close to 50 minutes in a room sparsely populated
only with those waiting for the next session, I realized I should have cast a
wider net during my email and Twitter (@URISACC) outreach campaign. Objective 2: UNDER RECONSTRUCTION!
Before AAG 2019, I had been to
numerous conferences, some that were GIS and spatial focused. With the AAG
program having over 1,700 sessions, I was forced to pick my sessions of
interest beforehand. Using the AAG app for Android, I starred my sessions of
interest and hardly strayed, making logistics easier. Most of the sessions I
attended were in the Geography, GIScience, and Health track, with some being in
the general track like Cartography and Developing a Body of Knowledge for
Cartography. The rest of my chosen sessions were focused on the role and use of
GIS in population, community, urban, and international health. These sessions
were filled with various members tied to academia presenting their latest
findings. On April 6th, my last day of the conference, I attended a
workshop on Geomasking
Techniques…Involving Confidential Geospatial Data. The workshop was
hosted by members of University of Michigan’s Inter-university Consortium for
Political and Social Research (ICPSR), as well as the University of Illinois
Urbana-Champaign. The aim of the workshop was two-fold, to introduce the
Geospatial Virtual Data Enclave (GVDE), and discuss the methods used to geomask
sensitive spatial data. The GVDE
is a virtual data environment hosted by ICPSR, where prospective users request
access by submitting an application detailing their IRB protocol, data
management and security plan, and data use agreement. Once approved, they are
given access to the virtual enclave where they have access to a variety of
statistical packages (SAS, SPSS, R, STATA) and GIS software (ArcGIS for
Desktop, GeoDa, QGIS). In the enclave, researchers can work with a variety of
data that pertains to their project, but due to the sensitivity of the data
stored in the GVDE, approvals are required for extracting any data from the
enclave. The rest of the workshop provided an overview of the spatial methods
of geomasking point data. The speakers from University of Illinois detailed the
methods of aggregating point data to polygon layers and relocating point data.
Both of these methods are useful on point data that’s considered sensitive like
locations of sexual abuse victims or patients in medical records. Objective 3: SUCCESS!
Overall, it was a positive and
productive experience at AAG, one allowing me to see a few geo-celebrities like
Esri president Jack Dangermond, International Cartographic Association (ICA)
president Menno-Jan Kraak, former Attorney General Eric Holder, and cartography
guru Kenneth Field. As I look onward to the next GIS conference (URISA GIS-Pro 2019),
where I’ll present on workflow and process improvement with Python programming,
I know that geography and GIS is where I want to be.
Dave Grolling
GIS Strategist, HealthLandscape
