Maps and mappers of the 2018 GeoHipster calendar — Atanas Entchev, October

Q: Tell us about yourself.

A: I am an architect and urban planner by training, and GISer by circumstance since 1991. I founded ENTCHEV GIS in 2005 and GeoHipster in 2013. Currently (since 2015) I am the GIS specialist for Franklin Township, NJ. Read more about me in my GeoHipster interview.

Q: Tell us the story behind your map (what inspired you to make it, what did you learn while making it, or any other aspects of the map or its creation you would like people to know).

A: This map is one in a series offering visual representation of all reported animal-vehicle crashes in Franklin Township over the course of several years. The map series informs environmental policy decisions in the town, particularly with regard to hunting regulations. I felt that discrete representation of point events was not communicating well the story behind the data, being that many animal crashes locations were concentrated in tight clusters — hence my choice of heat mapping for the series. I learned that deer population moves over time, which is probably obvious, but I never thought about it before.

Q: Tell us about the tools, data, etc., you used to make the map.

A: The map uses data from police reports. The project started in a MapInfo derivative, moved to QGIS, then ArcMap, then Paint.net. Data was originally created in MapInfo TAB, moved to SHP (hi, @shapefile! 🙂 ), then to GeoTIFF, to PNG, to PDN, to PNG, ultimately to PDF (of course!).