King County GIS Center 2015-2016 Biennial Report

The King County GIS Center is open and transparent with its plans, processes, and performance. Every two years, roughly in line with King County’s biennial budget process, we produce a King County GIS Operations and Maintenance Plan. We also publish a biennial report which has different focus. The most recent publication, the 2015-2016 King County GIS Center Biennial Report, provides a comprehensive overview of King County GIS Center activities.

The marks we leave: John Spellman, 1926-2018

Government leaders inevitably leave long paper trails and numerous digital footprints. One of the newest marks made by our own current King County Executive, Dow Constantine, honors his first predecessor in his office, Gov. John Spellman who died on Tuesday. Remembrances of Gov. Spellman this week prompted me to reach back into my personal archives for a record of when then County Executive Spellman’s paper trail and my much more humble one intersected.

Transform your map design skills on January 31

An effective map portrays a place, delivers a message, or reveals a pattern with representational accuracy and visual clarity. How to make that happen is the subject of this workshop, a mix of lecture and exercises which gives GIS practitioners the practical information and techniques needed to create effective, successful maps in any display medium.

King County transit maps are multiplying

The re-use and re-purposing of map elements, especially digital map data, may seem simple and obvious since we are far past the time when the availability and use of digital data and production practices became the norm in cartography. But it hasn’t been all that long since the time when mapmakers were beholden to the technical strictures imposed by mechanical map construction methods.