2025 Big Sky GeoCon - Mapping the Future: Innovations in Geospatial Technology: Full Schedule

The Montana Association of Geographic Information Professionals (MAGIP) looks forward to your participation at this year’s 2025 Big Sky GeoCon!

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9:20am MDT

Basecamp Butte: Using GIS to Promote Outdoor Recreation

Thursday April 17, 2025 9:20am - 9:50am MDT

Clark Room

As Butte looks to the future, the community is working to build a new reputation as a hub for outdoor recreation. Through this work, the need was identified for an interactive online map that residents and visitors could use to locate outdoor recreation opportunities. Recreation opportunities are managed by many different entities and there was no centralized location to find maps and information. This presentation will share how the Basecamp Butte map was developed to address this challenge. The map will launch in Spring 2025 and provides a comprehensive view of outdoor recreation opportunities in the Butte area.

Presenters

Liz Lahey

Water & Environmental Technologies

Thursday April 17, 2025 9:20am - 9:50am MDT
Clark Room

Conservation/Natural Resources, Government

9:55am MDT

Base Map Editing: Enhancing Great Falls’ City Parks with ESRI’s Community Maps Editor

Thursday April 17, 2025 9:55am - 10:25am MDT

Clark Room

Paris Gibson envisioned parks as essential to Great Falls’ urban identity. This presentation showcases how ESRI's Community Maps Editor has been leveraged to update city park layers in ESRI's Base maps, creating detailed and accurate information for both residents and visitors. Inspired by efforts to update the City Parks webpage, this project merges historical appreciation with GIS tools, ensuring that green spaces remain central to city planning. Attendees will explore the technical process of basemap editing, navigate the challenges of data integration and decision making, and discover how these updates honor Gibson's vision.

Presenters

Nathaniel Williams

GIS Specialist, City of Great Falls

Thursday April 17, 2025 9:55am - 10:25am MDT
Clark Room

Government

10:55am MDT

Geospatial Governance: Laying the Foundation for a Reliable and Sustainable GIS

Thursday April 17, 2025 10:55am - 11:25am MDT

Clark Room

Effective geospatial governance is key to building a strong and sustainable GIS for your organization. In this session, we’ll explore how policies, tools, and web applications can be implemented to create a reliable GIS framework that promotes efficiency and reusability.

We’ll share the Montana State Library’s experience in developing a geospatial governance policy, including insights from our working policy documents, scripting tools, and dashboards. Attendees will gain practical knowledge on leveraging these resources to establish or enhance their own geospatial governance strategies.

Presenters

Matt Trebesch

GIS Analyst, Montana State Library

Matt Trebesch is a GIS Analyst at the Montana State Library (MSL). At the MSL, he manages a variety of statewide projects including the MSL “Flood Hub” and the now retired Montana Covid-19 dashboard and Hub. He also provides statewide support of MGIA (Formerly MLIA) grantees and... Read More →

Thursday April 17, 2025 10:55am - 11:25am MDT
Clark Room

Government

11:30am MDT

School Districts in Carbon County. Holy Grail or Holy Hell?

Thursday April 17, 2025 11:30am - 12:00pm MDT

Clark Room

The number of school districts in Carbon County has shrunk from 70 to 7 over the last 50 years. Years of abandonments, consolidations, annexations and transfers have significantly re-configured the boundaries of these commonly referenced districts. Is it important to track these changes? Considering that several other special improvement districts including fire, ambulance and cemetery districts referenced school district boundaries during their formation, the answer may be yes. This presentation describes the way in which GIS was used to track school district transactions over time and explores the challenges that were encountered while attempting to modernize school district boundaries.

Presenters

Tom Kohley

GIS Coordinator / Fire Warden, Carbon County

Thursday April 17, 2025 11:30am - 12:00pm MDT
Clark Room

Government

1:30pm MDT

UAV Geotagging and GPS correction utilizing Montana State Reference Network (MTSRN)

Thursday April 17, 2025 1:30pm - 2:00pm MDT

Clark Room

This is a live demonstration utilizing the Montana State Reference Network (MTSRN) for the GPS correction solution in geotagging an imagery set from a large area UAV flight. I will be walking through the workflow from image acquisition through geotagging. A final image product will be presented; however, the image processing post geotagging will be done at a high level with low detail.

Presenters

Julian Calabrese

MT DEQ

Thursday April 17, 2025 1:30pm - 2:00pm MDT
Clark Room

Remote Sensing/UAS

2:05pm MDT

Engineering independent intensity and texture features for sample design, classification, regression, and clustering analyses using principal component analysis and convolution kernels

Thursday April 17, 2025 2:05pm - 2:35pm MDT

Clark Room

Local raster texture is an important attribute that can be used for sample design and raster-based classification, regression, and clustering. However, determining the appropriate kernel weights to quantify texture can be challenging and can vary depending on the remote sensing or computer vision task. We present an automated approach that uses principal component analysis (PCA) and convolution kernels to quantify orthogonal intensity and texture metrics. Our approach linearly projects raster data across covariance axes, learns kernel cell weights, and provides a straightforward mechanism to retain as much information as possible within the raster dataset while removing redundancy.

Presenters

John Hogland

Research Forester, USDA FS RMRS

Dr. Hogland is a Research Forester working for the Rocky Mountain Research Station. His research interests revolve around quantitative methods within geographic information systems (GIS) and understanding the relationships between landscape patterns and forested ecosystems processes... Read More →

Thursday April 17, 2025 2:05pm - 2:35pm MDT
Clark Room

Remote Sensing/UAS, Geospatial and AI

2:40pm MDT

Geospatial Digital Twin: Facility and Vertical Asset Management

Thursday April 17, 2025 2:40pm - 3:10pm MDT

Clark Room

As the term Digital Twin continues to grow in popularity, how do organizations understand what it means? In this presentation I will discuss that topic in more detail to help the group get a better understanding of the Digital Twin concept and how it can be leveraged to assist with organization’s modernization efforts.

From there, I will discuss the digital twin workflow from scan to BIM to GIS and then into an ALMS. Throughout we will present different data acquisition options, the conversion efforts, and wrap it up with some current use cases that are underway.

Presenters

John Garrido

Account Executive, NV5

Thursday April 17, 2025 2:40pm - 3:10pm MDT
Clark Room

Utilities/Asset Management/Engineering Design