About Me

Hi! My name is Emily Klaassen.

I am currently going into my third and final term of the BCIT Advanced Diploma Program in GIS before beginning my practicum with Squamish Nation in the spring.

I first became passionate about GIS in the third year of my B.A.& Sc. at McGill University in the Interfaculty Environment Program. Like many others in the industry, I went into my education with no idea of what GIS was. I took a remote sensing course as it was the only one that fit into my schedule, but quickly realized the power geospatial technology has to model and understand environmental phenomena. This led to my declaring a Geography minor and taking several other GIS courses, culminating in my senior research project quantifying Blue Carbon storage in Panama using hyperspectral imagery and open LiDAR data.

After graduation, amidst travelling and skiing in BC, I completed a contract and internship, both of which allowed me to apply my GIS knowledge to environmental monitoring. During the contract, I collaborated with UBC and the Coastal Douglas-fir Conservation Partnership on the Action for Adaptation Biodiversity Atlas project. During this time, I had the opportunity to work with raster models of shifting Western redcedar habitat amidst projected climate scenarios. Working on this project made me excited about how GIS can be used to strengthen predictive models to mitigate the worst impacts of climate change. Recently, this passion has grown into a strong interest in applying GIS to the creation of accurate and fast applications to predict forest fire vulnerability and general emergency management applications.

I am excited to be part of the ECCE Student Associate cohort for 2026, and to stay connected to the growing GIS student community across Canada. It is inspiring to read about the varied and interesting ways students are applying Esri technology to their respective fields of study, and I can’t wait to see all the developments that 2026 will bring.