Maponics took some time out last week for the Maponics Tech Fair, a showcase of current tech projects held for staff and their families.
“Producing high-quality boundaries and analytics requires that we continue to develop new and better ways of using GIS and data models,” said Dan Adams, Maponics COO.
“The Tech Fair was a chance for the whole company to take a close look at what R&D and Operations are working on, to exchange ideas, and to take some time to appreciate the recent progress made by both individuals and teams.”
Maponics team members Brian Smith, Meg Petroski and Shawna Smith during a Tech Fair presentation.
Team members presented on…
Partially Automated Quality Control Functions
The quality control (QC) program, developed in-house, can inspect tens of thousands of polygons very quickly, versus spending several days spot checking the data using only manual QC.
“We can now divide up the quality checks between what machines are good at, such as finding geometry and attribute errors, and what humans are good at, such as noticing omissions or anomalies when looking at a map,” explained Mark Harley, Maponics Director of Research & Development.
Mark Harley, Maponics Director of Research & Development.
School Polygon Creation Using Address Locators
Address locators allow users to enter an address and view its corresponding school. Maponics team members in Engineering, Research & Development, and Production created tools that automatically extract data from the locators and use it to generate school polygons for the Maponics School Boundaries dataset, a process that has increased efficiency and reduced time on task.
Defining Seed Polygons for Neighborhood Boundaries
Spatial Data Specialist Dennis Follensbee explains, “We wrote an algorithm to generate polygons from collections of points for our Neighborhood Boundaries. Think of each polygon as a rubber band, stretched around the points. Using a distance criteria, the algorithm grows the polygon to encompass the points and to exclude outliers.”
Maponics Spatial Data Analyst Mike Murphy explains the Maponics demo, currently in development, to members of the Maponics team.
Dan Adams added that he’d like to make the Tech Fair an annual or semi-annual event. He noted, “It is always energizing to see the advances we’re making and the enthusiasm our staff has for what we do.”