Watch UC Davis’ Mapmaker at Work
Video Features Naomi Kalman, Who Launched a New, Interactive Campus Map
Who helps keep track of our ever-changing campus, with its thousands of acres, hundreds of buildings, dozens of gardens, eight museums and seven Eggheads?
That would be Naomi Kalman, a specialist in geographic information systems, or GIS, in Campus Planning – and the mapmaker behind the newly rebuilt UC Davis online campus map.
A brand-new FOA video takes viewers behind the scenes for a 1-minute look at Kalman’s work in the Design and Construction Management offices. She works on a routine basis to update UC Davis’ GIS for a variety of technical planning uses – and now also for daily use by students, faculty and staff in the campus map. (The video also takes a peek at the vintage maps preserved in the UC Davis Map Collection in Shields Library, for comparison’s sake.)
"I love looking at the campus, its maps and satellite photos and to see details of how it's changed over time. So I've loved being in charge of creating this new map,” Kalman said.
She’s worked with the university on and off since 2001, always as a GIS specialist, including previous stints with the departments of Environmental Science and Policy and Earth and Planetary Sciences.
Explore the new UC Davis campus map
Kalman recently rebuilt the UC Davis online campus map using Esri’s GIS platform, launched in August. The new map is interactive, mobile-friendly and easier to update as the campus continues to change.
This version includes familiar information from the previous campus map, now with refreshed colors and symbols, more details revealed as users zoom in, expanded campus coverage and quick links to resources such as road closure updates.
Though Kalman is in charge of this new map, a team of other FOA staff members also contributed data, graphics, coding and other details to its creation and ongoing maintenance. Key contributors include Joshua Babcock, Andrew Larsen, Chris Davis, Jeff Price, Jennifer Jones, Emily Griswold and Christina De Martini Reyes.
Before this summer, UC Davis’ online map was built using Google Maps and JavaScript, launched in 2010. This is the first major overhaul in the past 16 years, as the map is now built on Esri’s ArcGIS platform, which provides greater flexibility for future updates.
Explore the new map from its classic URL, https://campusmap.ucdavis.edu.
Questions about the map can be sent to [email protected].