UC IT Blog: Putting Youth on the Map - How Did They Make That?

UC IT Blog: Putting Youth on the Map - How Did They Make That?
Written By Annelie Rugg
Behind every project are technical solutions and decisions about architecture we never hear about.  In January, the UC IT Blog showcased the Sautter award-winning Putting Youth on the Map (PYOM) project.  Recently, I had a chance to interview the minds behind PYOM – Nancy Erbstein, the project PI and assistant researcher in Human Ecology at UC Davis, and Sara Watterson, GIS manager for the UC Davis Center for Regional Change.  The focus of my interview was to answer the question, “how did they make that?”

What is Putting Youth on the Map?

PYOM is a two-part website that provides youth equity advocates and adults concerned about youth well-being with access to secondary data and curated analyses of that data, without requiring technical skills.  The core technical part is an interactive mapping site.  The second part provides metadata, curricula, and a growing set of use cases for doing or learning about using data maps as an element of youth advocacy.

The whole package is important, Erbstein said, because “even a great website isn’t enough to ensure genuine access, especially for the audiences we’re trying to reach.”  READ MORE