Building a Better Web
June 11–12, 2018: Training
June 12–14, 2018: Tutorials & Conference
San Jose, CA

You are (w)here? Geospatial web dev off the beaten map

Aurelia Moser (Mozilla Science)
1:10pm–1:25pm Thursday, June 14, 2018
Location: Grand Ballroom
Average rating: ****.
(4.78, 9 ratings)

The meaning of “map” across disciplines is remarkably varied and includes a spatial representation of geotopography, a linking between tables by foreign key, and a datatype in C++, to name just a few. Today, coders make creative use of custom basemaps and clever scripting methods, building remarkable maps of multivariate information off the beaten geographic projection. Many have designed and published interactive maps of cemetery burial plots, galactic drawings of the Star Wars universe, sequence maps of human genes, heatmaps of court traffic during the NBA finals, and fantasy landscapes from deeply fake stats.

Focusing on a mix of artificial, scientific, and environmental sensing data, Aurelia Moser explores fantasy and farcical mapping, teasing out the tough parts of geocoding on real and mythical spatial matrices while delving into the contrived topographies of null island, paper towns, “dumb” cities, and the infinitely curious world of geospeculative design in JavaScript.

Photo of Aurelia Moser

Aurelia Moser

Mozilla Science

Aurelia Moser is a developer and curious cartographer building communities around code at Mozilla Open Science. Recent projects include mapping sensor data to support agricultural security and sustainable apis ecosystems in the Global South. She’s been working in the open tech and nonprofit science space for a few years, holding positions at Ushahidi, Internews Kenya, and CartoDB.