Latest Contributions by JosephKerski

What is spatial thinking? GIS can be more than just something you do as a professional; indeed, mapping could involve activities you engage in outside work hours.  With your GIS skills, you can bring energy and knowledge to these activities, and conversely, these activities could even help you be a more valuable employee.  Moreover, these activities can encourage development of spatial thinking—a key skill for the Young Professional.  I define spatial thinking as the recognition, consideration, and appreciation of the interconnected processes and characteristics among the atmosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere, geosphere, anthroposphere (human impact), and biosphere at a scale and time period appropriate to the phenomena under study.  For an expansion of this definition, see my essay in ArcWatch. Do you take time to observe with all 5 senses when you are in a city or in a rural area, thinking about what is in the foreground, middle-ground, and in the far distance, and the interaction between the physical and human-created environment?  Spatial thinking in everyday life One way to foster spatial thinking is to draw a map from memory of a place from your childhood--your neighborhood, your walk to school, where you played in the riparian zone or vacant lot, your grandmother’s house, and so on.  Draw it free hand, from memory—on paper, a napkin, or something else, using whatever physical markers, pencils, or paints you wish to use.  Isn’t it amazing that your mental map of your childhood roaming spaces are at such detail?  These large scale maps reflect geographer Yi-Fu Tuan’s concept of topophilia–that as humans we have an affinity for and a deep connection to place and space.  Compare your map to those of your friends or co-workers:  What are the similarities and differences in terms of scale, symbols and colors you chose, cultural vs. natural elements on the landscape, whether north is at the top, and so on. Sketch maps from our childhood neighborhoods.  I regularly ask my own GIS students to draw these, and here is a small collection of these wonderfully detailed maps from memory that illustrate how tied we are as humans to place and space.  We all practice spatial thinking on a daily basis – where we put our keys, how we arrange clothes in our closet or dishes in our cupboards, how we arrange app shortcuts on our phones, how we organize our files on our computers and in the cloud.  Click here for 10 ways of thinking spatially each day. Where are your keys?  Do you always put them in the same place so you can more easily find them? Consider how you have arranged the objects that you use every day.  For example, I always put the hotel key on the corner of the desk everywhere I lodge so I will know exactly where it is.  This is important since I am on work travel about 1/3 of the time.  I once had the opportunity to hear Giorgia Lupi speak at a university.  She and her colleague Stefanie Posavec authored a book documenting their lives in a series of very compelling infographics called Dear Data.  This book focuses on how to effectively communicate the spatial and temporal arrangements of our day-to-day existence using infographics.  For more on the day-to-day theme, read the spatial perspectives on our travel day that Barbaree Duke and I wrote about, here, as we each left our homes, traveled to the airport, and how and where we met before a geography conference (with a dashboard shown below). Dashboard from an open survey about geography in everyday life. Why not make maps for fun? You make a lot of maps at work.  A lot!  But do you make some maps just for fun?  You could even create fantasy maps.  Have you uploaded your cycle rides, runs, or hikes to ArcGIS Online or a 3D Scene?  As one interesting example, I mapped my colleague’s paragliding route in Alaska in the ArcGIS 3D scene viewer, here and shown below.  The route of a paraglider that I mapped in the ArcGIS 3D Scene Viewer. Storymaps.com. Have you considered getting a personal subscription to Storymaps.com to document your favorite places around the world, the trip you took last year, or what makes your neighborhood special?  Some of your fun maps could be hand-drawn.  Consider Anton Thomas, who has spent 5 years creating an enormous hand-drawn map of North America, and a metropolitan area map that I made as a teenager, here. GIS and GPS. You can have some fun with GIS and GPS in the field, as well.  One of the earliest GPS-enabled field activities, which remains popular today, is geocaching.   It is basically the world’s largest treasure hunt.  My colleague and I found a tiny one here in an urban area, and I found one here:  This one was larger but still challenging to find as it was in the desert and under a pile of rocks.  When I worked for USGS, I set up an educational-related geocache, called an earthcache, on the San Andreas Fault in California, called “Gazing Across the Plate Boundary, with a series of geographic and geologic questions that I ask visitors to that cache to answer.  I also receive a fun email whenever anyone visits the point!    Map your adventures. Many of us keep track of the number of countries or political areas within countries (cities, states, provinces, districts) that we have visited.  You could use ArcGIS Pro or ArcGIS Online, or MapChart.net to digitally keep track of these.  I know GIS professionals who seek to visit political boundaries or even “tri-points” where 3 countries, provinces, or states “meet”, those who search for benchmarks, those who climb as many high points in countries or states as they can, and other activities that rely on maps and data.  As for me, I have been “collecting” as many of the 3,142 counties in the USA that I can visit over the course of my lifetime Not lost!  I am active in visiting full degree intersections of latitude-longitude lines.  Here I am in the middle of a field in Iowa where the lines of 43 North Latitude and 93 West Longitude cross!  I have also done a bit of “drawing” on the landscape with my fitness walks and runs, called “GPS drawing.”   Use caution though since location can be personal:  Some of my activities should not be mapped.  For example, I am a caver, and there is a USA federal cave resources protection act that among other things discourages the publishing of cave locations, so that these beautiful places can be as well conserved as possible.    Spatial thinking as observations. Through these activities, I do some experimenting and have learned some skills in these activities that I bring to my GIS in education job.  But your spatial thinking for fun does not have to be an activity—it can simply be thoughtful observations:  Consider, for example, the spatial patterns in everyday things—food, vegetation, architecture, landscapes, roads, animals, and more, as I illustrate in this video discussion. Get started. What activities and thoughts do you like to engage in that are related to spatial thinking and mapping?  Certainly “balance” in all things is wise, so don’t feel that you need to make all of your non-work activities geo-related!  But I encourage you to think about incorporating some of the above ideas, or, think of your own, and feel free to share them in the comments section below! ... View more

Explore how to enhance your meteorology instruction with GIS tools, methods, and data with this new set of resources.  These resources, presented as an ArcGIS Story Map, here, includes both core content and hand-on activities that you can use in upper primary schools, others most suitable for secondary instruction, and others that are perfect for college and university level.  The goals of this resource are three-fold:  (1)  To teach core meteorology content (air masses, temperature, weather-related hazards, pressure, cloud observations, and more), (2)  To use GIS to enhance content knowledge and skill building, to increase interest using a wide variety of fascinating data in problem-solving contexts, and (3) To empower students and foster career pathways via students using some of the same geospatial tools that meteorologists use everyday on the job.  These include spatial analytics, data services including live weather feeds, symbology, classification, image analysis, dashboards, field surveys, storymaps, graphs and charts, and expressions.  I created this content for educators enrolled in a summer program sponsored by the American Meteorological Society (AMS), with whom Esri has a longstanding good relationship and taught this workshop in an online virtual mode.  However, the resource can be used by any educator teaching about weather, climate, or geography.   It can also be used by educators teaching GIS as there is plenty of GIS skills embedded in the course.  It can be used in face-to-face and online settings.  All of the activities use ArcGIS Online; some can be completed even without signing in to ArcGIS Online. I structured the story map, which could be considered an e-book and mini-course given the breadth and depth of content,  as follows: 1.  Goals and philosophy of the mini-course. 2.  Why teaching with GIS matters, and why GIS matters to our planet. 3.  Definitions of maps and GIS. 4.  Activity 1:   Analyzing 70 years of tornadoes.  Filtering data by intensity, time of day, width, fatalities, and considering time of year and proximity to cities. 5.  What is the ArcGIS Platform? 6.  Why teach with GIS?  With reference to a e-book I wrote on this topic. 7.  Activity 2:  A course survey, online interactive maps, and dashboard. 8.  What is Esri?  How is GIS tied to all the sciences? 9.  Activity 3:  Mapping a spreadsheet.  This spreadsheet represents low and high temperatures across the USA for January and July of a specific year. 10.  Activity 4:  Symbolizing, classifying, and charting data.  These tools are used to examine patterns on maps, assessing the affect of coastlines, landforms, latitude, air currents, and other factors on extreme temperatures.  11.  Activity 5:   Creating expressions to analyze change over space and time.  The focus here is on current hurricanes and typhoons. 12.  Activity 6:  Examine current weather:  Temperature, wind speed and direction, pressure, precipitation, satellite imagery, and more, from live weather feeds. 13.  Activity 7:  Measuring central tendency:  Use spatial analysis tools to filter weather data to determine the mean center and standard deviational ellipse of weather data on maps. 14.  Activity 8:  Interpolating surfaces:  Create an interpolated surface from weather data.  Consider data quality as you do so. 15.  Activity 9:  Creating a weather field survey, map, dashboard, and story map:  The data includes date and time, cloud cover, cloud type, temperature, location, and a photograph of the sky. 16.  Activity 10:  Teaching approaches.  These include the 10 core GIS skills that if you gain confidence in, you and your students truly have superpowers.  They also include ways that educators start using GIS:  Using Esri Geoinquiries, ArcGIS Learn lessons, Living Atlas apps, and other ways. 17.   Keep learning:  How to continue your journey with GIS.  These resources include links to key data sources, courses and lessons, including the new Esri Climate Action MOOC, an essay that I co-wrote with Dr Michael Gould about using WebGIS to teach climate resilience, and more. A section of the story map linked above. I truly hope this resource is useful and I look forward to your reactions. --Joseph Kerski ... View more

There are very few topics to which GIS cannot add understanding.  One fun and engaging example is the examination of solar eclipses, illustrated in this short lesson with a data set that you can dig into with your students, to foster spatial thinking, critical thinking, content knowledge about Earth-Sun relationships, and engagement with mapping tools.   Solar eclipses represent an excellent theme for study for three key reasons.  One, it is anchored in key concepts of Earth science, geography, mathematics, and astronomy and thus teaching the topic bridges these disciplines.  Two, they exhibit spatial patterns that can be effectively analyzed using GIS.  Three, they afford the opportunity, particularly for those in the path of one, to get out into the field to observe.  Careful, though! -- use eye protection and get to a place you can safely observe without having to worry about vehicles or other potential hazards.  Once again, ArcGIS Online comes through as an amazing content library:  An investigation of possible content in ArcGIS Online resulted in a feature service containing 905 solar eclipses from 1601 to 2200!  That means that it includes future projections as well.  Impressive and definitely will meet my needs! https://services.arcgis.com/6DIQcwlPy8knb6sg/arcgis/rest/services/SolarEclipsePath/FeatureServer After adding this data to the ArcGIS Online Map Viewer, I filtered on date and got these results shown below for the next two that I and those near me in North America might experience – Oct 2023 and Apr 2024. My resulting map is here for you to use in your own investigation (or of course you could create your own!): https://www.arcgis.com/apps/mapviewer/index.html?webmap=7cb5db9c130a46709bcc7abe7060fa4e Questions to pose to students include the following: Describe the shape of the eclipse paths.  Use some directional components in your description.  Why do the eclipse paths have the shape they do? How are the eclipse paths predicted into the future in this data set? Which cities and regions will be able to see these selected eclipses?  Will you be able to view these eclipses where you live?  If not, how far away (use the measure tool) will you need to travel to see the eclipse? Will the eclipse be total during the entire width of each path, or only in the center of each? Will the eclipse be total during the entire length of each path, or only for a portion of each path? A 3D scene may enhance the learning experience.  Before creating one, so that all eclipses are not rendered atop the 3D scene (it works, but it looks rather like spaghetti on a beach ball), I first saved my filtered data set, added it to a 3D scene, saved, and shared it with you, here: https://www.arcgis.com/home/webscene/viewer.html?webscene=463f080222cf4928919a3c51b6384672 Since the content and tools in the modern GIS cloud-based environment are so rich, additional topics can also be examined using GIS.  For example, use the data and time slider in the 3D scene viewer to determine what the sun angle at the time of the solar eclipse will be where you are, as shown here: As the time draws closer for a particular eclipse, use the real-time weather feeds and forecasts in ArcGIS Online to determine what the cloud cover might be during the scheduled eclipse time.  Consider landforms in your area--will any mountains or canyon walls obscure your view during certain times of the day? Angles, sun, Earth, measurement, scale, and more---all of these are rich opportunities to foster spatial thinking. What additional questions could you pose with this data set and these tools?   Lunar eclipses, analyzing sunrise and sunset times, analyzing proposed building construction and areas of a community that would potentially be in shadow, time zones, and locations of meteorite impacts are just a few of the topics that can be studied with GIS.  What additional Earth-Sun-Moon relationships could you model and foster understanding using GIS?   I look forward to your comments. --Joseph Kerski         ... View more

In this new lesson I invite you to explore the depths of the Great Lakes with ArcGIS Online using several straightforward yet powerful tools.  One could also consider this lesson my tribute to musician Gordon Lightfoot, who passed away in 2023 after a lifetime of songwriting and performing.  I love his stories-set-to-music about space, place, and time (my particular favorite is the Canadian Railroad Trilogy).  Here we will include an investigation of his song, "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald".  However, the lesson has broader aims--to encourage spatial and critical thinking with a focus on understanding the physical geography of lakes--specifically, the Great Lakes. Perhaps it is even more fittingly a tribute to all who work on and under our oceans and lakes.   To examine the lesson in video form, watch these 3 videos: Part 1 of 3 Part 2 of 3 Part 3 of 3 Through this lesson, skills in Geography, GIS, and mathematics are fostered through inquiry and hands-on work.  This lesson is most suitable for secondary students and university students.  Some familiarity with the ArcGIS Online Map Viewer and 3D scene interfaces is helpful but not required.  The activity requires no sign in--only a web browser with an internet connection is needed.  If you wish to save your results, you will need to sign in to an ArcGIS Online organizational account.  Representing Numbers as Isolines Many ways exist to represent and analyze data and numbers using maps—choropleth maps, dot density maps, graduated symbol maps, and more. Another way to represent the world through maps is through isolines (iso="same"). These are lines that connect variables having the same value. You have seen weather maps, which often show isolines that connect areas that currently have the same temperature or pressure. You may have gone hiking and taken topographic maps so you know how steep your trail will be--on such maps, contours are isolines that show land with the same elevation.  Isolines can also show frequency of crime in a city, types of diseases in a region, or earthquakes around the world. The manner in which these isolines are symbolized affects the map reader's perception of how that variable changes across a particular area of the Earth. Think about that as you investigate depths in these magnificent lakes using isolines--in this case, lines of bathymetry. Open this linked map of Great Lakes bathymetry (shown below). This map shows data resulting from a cooperative effort between investigators at the NOAA National Geophysical Data Center's Marine Geology & Geophysics Division (NGDC/MGG) and the NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory (GLERL) showing the five Great Lakes plus Lake St Clair. Only one of the lakes is entirely within the territory of the USA.  Which one is it?   What 2 countries do the rest of the lakes share territory of? Make the legend visible.  Zoom in until you clearly see the individual contours—each of these lines is an isoline. These lines are similar to contour lines on land, but here, they represent the depth of the water. They are called bathymetric contours, showing the bathymetry (depth) of the water bodies. Each is a line representing equal depth, in meters. The lake floor is steeper where the bathymetric contours are closer together and flatter where they are farther apart. Expand the layer to see the sub-layer underneath > click to make it active > on the right, > enable popups > click on contours to view the depth in different parts of the lakes (as shown below). Just like land contours, the shape of bathymetric contours in lakes and oceans may reveal plains, canyons, hills, and other features across these floors—even volcanoes! Investigating the floors of the Great Lakes Based on your observations of the bathymetric contours in the Great Lakes, answer the following questions: Why do you suppose these lakes are so important to commerce in the USA and Canada? Which lake is the deepest?  The shallowest? Because a certain lake in the Great Lakes is so deep, it contains more than half of the total amount of water in all of the Great Lakes.  According to Michigan.org, the Great Lakes hold over 5,400 cubic miles of water. Of this amount, the lake you identified above as the deepest holds 2,900 cubic miles, or 3 quadrillion gallons (over 11 quadrillion liters). The rest is distributed among the other four lakes, with Lake Michigan holding the second most, Huron third, Ontario fourth, and Erie holding the least.  Because it is so large, to raise the water level of the deepest lake that you identified above by one inch, you would need to pour more than 500 billion additional gallons into it! Name the part of each lake (use cardinal directions in your answer) that is the deepest. Can you detect any underwater canyons or cliffs in the Great Lakes?  If so, where are they? What are the 3 largest towns or cities on the shores of each of the lakes?   Which of the cities have the deepest harbors? The shallowest? Between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario are the famous Niagara Falls.  Ships obviously cannot go over it as it is 57 m (187 ft) tall (at Horsehoe Falls)!  How do ships get around it? Search for and zoom to the city of Port Colborne, Ontario, Canada, noting the canal between this city on Lake Erie (shown below) north to the city of Port Dalhousie.  Ships use this canal to avoid Niagara Falls.  How long is this canal? Change the base map to USA topo map.  This map shows elevations of the land at selected places on the base map.  Careful!  The elevations on the largest scale maps here are in feet, the medium scale are in meters, and the small scale are in feet.  Choose your desired scale--ideally, the largest, so you can see the elevations most clearly.  Zoom and pan the map on the shoreline of Lake Ontario near Rochester New York.  Note the elevation of the shoreline.  Do the same thing for the shoreline around Duluth Minnesota at Lake Superior.  Based on your observation, which of the two lakes is the highest in elevation?  The lowest?  Knowing this, which direction does the water flow over Niagara Falls--from Lake Ontario to Lake Erie, or from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario.  Does water flow from Lake Superior to Lake Ontario or from Lake Ontario to Lake Superior?  Zoom out until you can see the Atlantic Ocean.  Which lake--Ontario or Superior--is closer to the ocean?  Does this confirm your earlier answer about the elevation of each lake, and which direction the water flows in the lakes?  Although modern-day water is constrained in the lakes through human intervention (locks), some does indeed flow to the ocean.  Indeed, 3,160 tons of water flows over Niagara Falls every second, or 75,750 gallons of water per second over the American and Bridal Veil Falls (286,745 liters/second) and 681,750 gallons per second (2580704 liters/second) over the Horseshoe Falls!  To get a sense for the volume, see my video that I filmed there. Suppose you are assigned the task of identifying the deep places in the lakes where shipwrecks may have occurred, at specified depths. Open the data table behind the contours via the ellipsis to the right of the data layer > click on the Depth (m) field > sort descending. Each of the 119,813 records in the table represents one bathymetric contour on the map. Scroll down in the table, looking at the deepest contours. In which lake are all these deepest places? Consider the following:   Maps are rich sources of information, but sometimes they contain too much information to be easily understood. Filtering maps or data tables can make specific data clearer. Use the Filter tool to the right of the map > Add an Expression > Depth is at least 100 meters (as shown).   Examine the resulting patterns: Which of the Great Lakes do you believe has the highest percentage of its depths at 100 meters or more? Which one(s)of the five Great Lakes have no depths more than 100 meters? Where is the deepest part of Lake Huron? Open the table. How many records exist in the newly filtered table? Jot this number down. Then, clear the filter and examine the original table to be able to compare the number of records in the original table versus the filtered table. What percentage of the original data set (as measured by the number of records) do you have in the filtered table of only the deep contours? The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald As you are learning from your study of the lake floors, these lakes are large, and deep.  They have sadly claimed many ships and the lives of people on those ships, over the centuries.  Probably the most famous Great Lakes shipwreck of all occurred in relatively modern times.  This was the sad tale of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, which sank on 10 November 1975. Tribute to the Edmund Fitzgerald.  I took this picture at the maritime museum in Duluth Minnesota. The Edmund Fitzgerald sank at a longitude and latitude of -85.11017, 46.998500.  Use the search tool to search for this shipwreck's location and add it to your map as a sketch. Zoom to this location. In which lake did this shipwreck occur? Is the shipwreck located in waters over 100 meters deep? Use the measure tool to answer this question:  How far is the wreck from the nearest shoreline? Conduct research on the shipwreck (such as with this source) and speculate on the theories as to why it sank.  Which do you find most likely?   How could it have sunk despite being so close to shore?  What were the final words that the captain sent over the wireless? Lake Superior can indeed be a dangerous place.  I took this photograph in October on the lakeshore on a blustery and rainy day. Lakes are 3D objects, after all, and the ArcGIS 3D scene viewer might be very useful for further investigation.  Examine the same set of bathymetric contours in this 3D scene.  How does this 3D visualization affect your understanding of the floors of the Great Lakes? Next, examine this 3D web mapping application showing Lake Superior shipwrecks.  Note that here, the bathymetric contours are colored differently than the 2D map you were examining up to this point:  Can you determine which colors signify the greatest depths?  In this 3D scene, note how many ships have been wrecked near where the Edmund Fitzgerald went down.  How does this 3D visualization affect your understanding of shipwrecks?  Did most of the wrecks occur in the middle of the lake or close to shore?  Why do you suppose this is the case? While the wreck was located a few days after the ship sank, using magnetic anomaly detection, shortly thereafter by sonar, and afterward by unstaffed and staffed submersibles, it wasn't until 1995 that a scuba dive resulted in the first people to touch the ship since 1975.  Examine the table showing the deepest technical scuba dives for shipwrecks around the world, in this article.  What rank in shipwreck dive depths was the 1995 dive to the Edmund Fitzgerald?   Read about this 1995 dive in this article.  Why was the dive controversial? Narrowing Your Investigation Suppose you just received word of new budgetary constraints on your shipwreck project that means that you can now only focus on the lake where you found the deepest contours and where you located the above wreck. Return to your original 2D map investigation in ArcGIS Online.  Again access the Filter tool.  You will need to re-run your filter on the deepest parts of the Great Lakes (100 meters or more).  Staying inside the Filter tool, now > Add an expression where the Lake Name is the name of the lake that meets both of the above criteria. What does your expression look like?  After running your expression, open the data table again. Now how many records exist in the newly filtered table? What percentage of the original data set (as measured by the number of records) do you now have? As you have seen, using mathematical expressions in filtering aids in analysis and decision-making.  Mathematical expressions can also be used in interactive maps to customize the appearance of the popups, for labeling features, for symbolization, for spatial analysis, and much more.  If time permits, add data for other Great Lakes shipwrecks, using ArcGIS Online as a starting point. What patterns do you notice? Now consider another way of visualizing Great Lakes bathymetry using a technique that results in an etched wood block effect, from my Esri colleague John Nelson, here: https://adventuresinmapping.com/2017/12/12/papercut-lake-map/  So much more could be done with this data, these tools, and this lesson.  Examples include the importance of the Great Lakes on the region's weather and climate, the importance of the Great Lakes as a freshwater source (for over 40 million people), the economic impact of the lakes, the transportation enabled by the lakes, how the lakes influenced historical and current settlement of the USA and Canada, how the 2 countries manage the lakes in terms of natural resources, law enforcement, and in other topics, the invasive aquatic species in the Great Lakes and what is being done about them, the impact of falling and rising water of the Great Lakes, the environmental importance of the lakes -- its watersheds, migratory birds, fish species, and much more.  Create your own question about the Great Lakes that has not been asked thus far.  How could you answer your own question?  How could you use GIS and these data sets to investigate your question?  As a fitting end to your investigation, listen to Gordon Lightfoot's song here.  Even after hearing the song for the first time as a kid all those years ago, it still gives me chills.  After listening, answer the following questions:  What did the Native People call Lake Superior?  What was the ship's destination?  What month was the wreck?  How many nights did the ship spend on the lake during that final voyage?  Where was the memorial service held?  How many men died in the shipwreck?   Isn't it amazing how much information can be learned even in one song?  The power of music.  And also how much can be learned in one GIS-based investigation.  The power of GIS. ... 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A new article that three professors from James Madison University and I co-authored in the Journal of the Decision Sciences Institute examines why and how location analytics can be effectively used in education.  This article, entitled "Bridging the gap between supply chain management practice and curriculum:  A location analytics exercise," is available for open access, here, and explores how and why location analytics should be taught in business schools. This research and development was another example of how GIS bridges boundaries:  Between research and instruction, and between disciplines:  GIScience, computer science, mathematics, and business.  Even the article itself evokes the collaborative nature of location analytics in education, as each of the co-authors hailed from different departments:   William J. Ritchie is a professor in the Department of Management at James Madison University (JMU) with a focus on supply chain management; Joseph Kerski is education manager at Esri, Luis J. Novoa is a professor in the Department of Computer Information Systems and Business Analytics at JMU, and Mert Tokman is a professor in the Department of Marketing in the JMU School of Business.   "Spatial analytics provides a whole new methodology to analyze and visualize data in business disciplines...information systems, strategy, and supply chain are areas where its application is timely...it's high time GIS is infused into these areas of study," says one of the article's authors, Dr Ritchie.   My three co-authors and I were thrilled the prestigious Decision Sciences Journal of Innovative Education chose to publish our article.  Dr Ritchie and I have presented in the past about location analytics in education at past Decision Sciences Institute (DSI) conferences, which led to collaborations with faculty and a webinar focused on Supply Chain Management in education for the DSI community.   In our article, we first made a strong case for the importance of including location analytics in the business school curriculum—especially in the field of supply chain management. Second, we demonstrated the lack of GIS-based location analytics methods in business school curricula. Third, we created and presented a three-part location analytics exercise for the supply chain management curriculum. The exercise, which was implemented at JMU, utilizes the output of a GIS-based location analytics software (namely, Esri's ArcGIS Online) as the input for a location set covering problem that can be solved using an integer programming solver. The exercise can also be used as a stand-alone example of GIS in a supply chain management course.  Our article aimed to (1) demonstrate a new method to use in teaching location analytics in supply chain management and analytics courses and (2) bridge an important gap between supply chain management practice and curriculum. We intend to keep collaborating on location analytics in education, and look forward to further development of approaches and curriculum.     Drive-time analysis from one of the lessons featured in the article, focused on determining the fewest distribution centers to place into service in order to serve a specified set of customers. This translates into formulating a location set covering problem (LSCP). What is your reaction to this article and these initiatives? Are you doing research or instruction with location analytics? ... View more