ActivScore: A Physical Activity Potential Score for Nova Scotia
Posted 4 years ago
Chronic illness is a prevalent concern, especially in Canada where it accounts for a high proportion of annual mortalities (Statistics Canada, 2017). Encouraging physical activity is important to prevent chronic illness, increase the overall mental and physical well being of the population, and increase the use of active transportation to facilitate more sustainable communities (Booth, […]
Story Maps as Part of the Virtual Conference?
Posted 4 years ago
The World Health Organization has officially declared COVID-19 a global pandemic which is causing conferences around the world to be cancelled, leaving organizers scrambling to find ways to hold virtual conferences. Could Story Maps be part of the solution? I think so. Story maps are a useful tool for communicating and engaging an audience through […]
The move to ArcGIS Pro at Dalhousie University
Posted 4 years ago
During my time as a PhD student at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, I have been fortunate to operate in several roles with a connection to GIS and the ArcGIS platform. In addition to teaching GIS-centric courses (both as an instructor and teaching assistant), I have also had the opportunity to work with the Nova […]
Presenting at the User Conference in Halifax
Posted 4 years ago
In early November I attended my first Esri Canada User Conference in Halifax and had the opportunity to present my honours research along with other researchers in the higher education and research stream. It was exciting to be presenting along with students from across the Maritimes and sharing our new research developments using GIS! It […]
Addressing Food Accessibility in the Halifax Regional Municipality
Posted 4 years ago
In Canada, Nova Scotia ranks amongst the highest for household food insecurity, second to the Territories. Households are increasingly having more difficulty obtaining food that contribute to a healthy diet due to cost, quality, and access. Furthermore, municipalities are at the forefront of these concerns, whether it is due to loss of agricultural land, sprawling […]
Using across-method triangulation to supplement location information
Posted 4 years ago
There is growing attraction for social and behavioral scientists to apply geographic information systems (GIS) theory and methods. The term “geocoding” is now commonplace amongst population health researchers and draws attention to connecting attributes of people to the characteristics of place. Partly due to the increasing availability and access to locational information, researchers are now […]
Teaching with Story Maps
Posted 4 years ago
This year I’m trying to be a bit more creative in the classroom and reduce my reliance on PowerPoint. So, when asked to give a guest lecture a couple of weeks ago, I decided to give story maps a try as a teaching tool. Story maps are a useful tool for communicating and engaging an […]
Discovering Data for the ActivScore: The Challenges of using Municipally, Provincially, and Federally Managed Data
Posted 5 years ago
I’m currently in the midst of my undergraduate honours thesis and have been awoken to the joys of finding accurate and complete datasets. I am working to create a physical activity score for the province of Nova Scotia based on built and natural environment features. Nova Scotia is particularly challenging for this sort of analysis […]
GIS as a Tool to Solve “Wicked” Problems
Posted 5 years ago
This year I am three quarters done my undergraduate degree in Environmental Science and had the opportunity to take “Application of GIS in Environmental and Ecological Issues” at Dalhousie University as a part of my certificate in GIS. One of the first things I learned in my first year of environmental science was that environmental […]
Exploring Space: The Chris Hadfield Space Photographs Collection
Posted 5 years ago
This spotlight features Caitlin Cunningham’s overview of the project she worked on to build a storymap of photos by Chris Hadfield. The project was officially launched yesterday (Thursday, April 11 at 3 p.m. AT) at the Killam Library, Dalhousie University. More details are available in a Dalhousie news article, and Caitlin’s work was also featured […]
