From time to time, one feels the need to break with tradition, and while this podcast has normally only dealt with planetary GIS and mapping, in this episode we go beyond our atmosphere and look up and out. Prof. Sung Huang, associate professor at the Department of Astronomy at Tsinghua University in Beijing, lets us into his universe and tells us bout his dream map - a four dimensional rendering of the universes almost infinite galactic bodies. Though the subject matter is out fo this world, Prof. Huang's perspective highlights the importance of understand the galaxy on the future of humanity and our development as a species. So come learn the importance of having dark skies, the impact satellite mega constellations have on our mental health, and why what is going on out there is so important to what is going on down here.

Links:

Dark Skies International

Interactive dark sky map

Song's experiment: The Multiplexed Survey Telescope

In this episode I am joined by Maaz Sheikh, young GIS entrepeneur and start up king. Ageospatial, the platform he created, uses AI agents and large language models (LLMs) to assist the less GIS savvy in creating their maps. While a contentious issue, he says his platformed is designed to improve accessibility to geospatial data. He tells us about his passion for calisthenics and sports and why so little geospatial data is available for outdoor activity areas. His map would take down the boundaries of data accessibility held within private servers and location data that is simply not geocoded yet.

Links:

https://ageospatial.com

Rhiannan Price, program lead at Nasa Lifelines, blends art and science to create her dream map. An advocate of community mapping, Rhiannan believes that modern mapping does not go far enough to evoke the community implications of places so often reduced to points in GIS. We delve into the implications of a map for decision making, whose primary design is not for decision making. What might that map look like? Rhiannan also takes us into her world, and how Nasa Lifelines collaborates with local artists around the world to convey the importance and impact of satellite data.

Links:

Nasa Lifelines