University of Washington Libraries Joins the BTAA-GIN! The University of Washington (UW) Libraries is one of the new members of the BTAA-GIN this year. UW Libraries representatives to the GIN are Matthew Parsons, Geospatial Data & Maps Librarian, and Allison Anderson, GIS Infrastructure Support Specialist. We are excited to begin working with our fellow BTAA colleagues and contributing to the mission and vision of the GIN. UW Libraries Map Collection Suzzallo Library, photo credit Pamela Dore, 2021 The UW Libraries map collection is administratively part of the Government Publications, Maps, Microforms & Newspapers (GMMN) Unit located in the iconic Suzzallo Library. The map collection comprises over 280,000 items in total (maps, digital data, aerial photography, monographs, etc.). A strength of the collection is the nearly 100,000 aerial photographs of Washington State, dating between 1942-2003. The map collection also serv...
By Mech Frazier, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Specialist, Northwestern University Libraries The boom of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in recent years has made a significant impact on Geographic Information Systems (GIS), including applications of Deep Learning (DL). Applications of DL have revolutionized GIS tasks, such as detecting sensitive mangrove environments 1 , identifying global building footprints 2 , and even locating beaver complexes in complex forest landscapes 3 . DL, a subset of Machine Learning (ML), uses neural networks to detect objects, classify pixels, and perform segmentation 4 . Recent advancements in DL have led to significant improvements in both model quality and usability, with prebuilt models and tools that simplify workflows. GIS applications like ArcGIS Pro and QGIS have made available tools and plug-ins to streamline the process of DL. This blog post will focus on one aspect of DL: object detection using aerial image...