Spring 2021 Speaker Series

images, data, points, lines, polygons event banner with blue-green imagery on left side and a red, green, blue image of urban landscape on the right

processing truths in an information-driven world

The Facility for Advanced Spatial Technology, the FAST Lab, presents a three-part series of webinar panel talks by distinguished University of Colorado, Denver faculty members. Each session provides thought-provoking avenues that help open and ongoing conversation on how one builds a literate, discerning, socially-just 21st Century world community. During this series we embark on a journey that will take us beyond Media Literacy into its foundational realm, Information Literacy. Join us!

Mapping Information Truths - View recording here

Monday, April 5, 2021, 7:30pm - 9pm

  • Peter Anthamatten, Ph.D., Maps as Text
  • Majorie Levine-Clark, Ph.D., Have I Got a Story for You!* [1]
  • Robert Metcalf, Ph.D., Socrates Questions...

*[1] ​Click here for additional resources

The Series’ first session’s intention is to increase attendee awareness concerning the idea of what we presume to be truthful, precise, accurate, and mappable; physically, mentally, or an admixture is typically a currently agreed upon, arrived at approximation. Dr. Peter Anthamatten’s discussion time will cover the map maker’s locational approximations of space in map making. Dr. Marjorie Levine-Clark will present an overview of historiography and how its narrative creation process fashions one person’s albeit well-reasoned argument into a story which is that author’s history. Dr. Robert Metcalf will be discussing community-based derivations of political truth, and Plato’s Socrates whose timeless quest for wisdom created dialogues that end aporetically.

Earth: Life spaces, Places, & Living Truths - View recording here

Tuesday, April 13, 2021, 7:30pm - 9pm

  • Rafael Moreno, Ph.D., GIS & Sustainable Resource Management*[2]
  • Amanda Weaver, Ph.D., Urban Framing: Sowing Seeds Locally
  • Matthew Cross, Ph.D., Ground Truth for Establishing Accurate Remote Sensing Measures of Earth Surface Features

*[2] Click here for additional resources

The Series’ second session’s intention is to address how environmental knowledge’s development is fostered by Geographic Information System Science. Dr. Moreno will be delivering information as to how free and open-source GIS software, when employed by small, less-affluent communities, allows them to develop or return to sustainable environmental management processes. This would be an example of the web’s capacity to deliver software, information, and environmental expertise globally to the smallest of local communities. Dr. Weaver’s presentation area will be on the growing urban and localized farming movements which she is modeling through Five Fridges Farm. Dr. Cross' presentation will focus on his work in Costa Rica in verifying and validating the use of remote sensing imagery for tropical forest research.  This is accomplished by collecting precise ground truth to refine remote sensing data to establish near-real-world measures of earth surface features.  The research allows more accurate assessments of the role of forests in climate change.

Lives, Numbers, & Transformation: GIS Empowering All Peoples - View recording here

Monday, May 3, 2021, 7:30pm - 9pm

  • Manish Shirgaokar, Ph.D., Spatial Information Transforming Lives
  • Alicia Cowart, Ph.D., Mapping the Unmapped: Guerilla Cartography
  • Esther Sullivan, Ph.D., Not ‘Just a trailer park:’ Living Spaces

This third webinar session intends to increase awareness as to how Geographic Information System Science, when employed at local levels, can bring community information together in ways that facilitate positive changes which can expand the political power paradigm. Skillful mapping of carefully collected and compiled data graphically illuminates people’s spatial connections and disparity-driven disconnections within a local community. This graphically expressed clarity makes fully visible the diverse stakeholders in each community.

Dr. Shirgaokar will discuss his work which endeavors to make transportation system resources more equitable. His work with statistical measures employs GIS tools to better everyone’s lot in their community. Dr. Cowart’s presentation will consider movements that bring cartography to a broader audience through increased community participation. Dr. Sullivan’s presentation examines the empowerment GIS can bring to communities that are traditionally marginalized such as those that rely on manufactured housing or mobile homes. The three of them provide attendees with a very brief introduction concerning the breadth of data required to gain a fleeting understanding of each community’s truths.