Alumnus’s Hand in Digital Map Making Informs Public, Policy Makers During Pandemic
Jacob Lias | SFLS 8th Grade Class of 2003
While we may not typically think of geographers as storytellers, in the eyes of SFLS alumnus Jacob Lias it’s one of the most important and exciting roles they play. Throughout 2020, he and the team at the Environmental Science Research Institute (ESRI) have been helping organizations like Johns Hopkins University (JHU) tell the story of the COVID-19 pandemic by connecting people, locations, and data using ArcGIS Online—a cloud-based mapping software created by ESRI.
The software allows users to build interactive maps that help explain location-specific data to their audience. In the case of COVID, it’s helped scientists, doctors, and geographic information system (GIS) specialists at JHU build a powerful tracking app that now assists policy and decision makers in all kinds of different industries.
Locally, the City of Sioux Falls used ArcGIS Online in November, 2020, to create an interactive map informing residents of businesses in town that have taken the Safer Sioux Falls Pledge—a business’s promise to help slow the spread of COVID-19 by following COVID-19 mitigation efforts, including wearing facial coverings and other CDC recommended precautions.
“Regardless of the COVID-19 pandemic, informing people, specifically decision makers, is always a central goal for GIS professionals,” Lais said. “That being said, with the COVID-19 pandemic our responsibility is more pertinent than ever. Personally, it feels very rewarding to work on a team of professionals whose goal it is to ensure we're providing our leaders with cutting edge GIS tools in such a critical time.”
While it has certainly come in handy during the pandemic, ESRI’s mapping products are used on a more regular basis to inform the public on a variety of other newsworthy subjects.
“Our mapping technology has also been used to track such things as hurricane paths, wildfire activity, and election reporting throughout this year,” Lias shared. “2020 has kept us plenty busy with storytelling, that’s for sure.”
Lias currently serves as a product engineer at ESRI. He became acquainted with GIS in college and traces his initial interest in geography back to his days in Mr. Reick’s social studies class at Sioux Falls Lutheran School.
“I don't recall much of the actual geography education aside from memorizing states and capitals... but I do vividly remember the maps in the back of our Bibles that would show the holy lands,” Lias shared. “That sparked my interest in spatial thinking—tying stories to physical places is captivating!”
After finishing middle school at SFLS in 2003, Lias took as many geography classes as he could during his time at Lincoln High School and went on to study geography at Concordia University, Nebraska (CUNE). With inspiration and encouragement from his geography professor and mentor, Dr. Joel Helmer, Lias affirmed his interest in physical geography over human geography and began taking some of the first GIS courses offered at CUNE.
“Aside from the job opportunities that GIS can provide, the big draw for me was that, at its core, GIS is geographic storytelling,” Lias shared. “You can give me a boring Excel spreadsheet of all kinds of demographic data and I can turn that into a map that tells a whole story in a glance.”
After graduating from Concordia in 2011, Lias spent two years in grad school at the University of Akron, where he combined his passion for geography with his GIS knowledge to learn about map design, production, and curation. In 2013, he accepted a job as a technical support analyst at ESRI in Redlands, California.
While the bulk of his role as a technical support analyst involved assisting customers with hardware and software issues, Lias’s foundation in geography and GIS allowed him to communicate effectively with clients and various teams within ESRI to solve problems for customers. He now uses similar skills as a product engineer to help ESRI create robust products that meet the needs of its customers, which can be found across the globe as well as Lias’s home state of South Dakota.
This interactive bike map depicting the city of Sioux Falls was created using ArcGIS Online.
One of the more popular non-COVID uses for ArcGIS Online in Sioux Falls is the city’s interactive bike map, which depicts the complete bike path as well as bike lanes, street routes, “fix it” stations, and construction zones across town. The technology is also used by Black Hills National Forest to convey timber harvest and prescribed fire plans associated with the Black Hills Resilient Landscapes (BHRL) project.
It’s clear that, for Lias, the most rewarding part of his work is helping customers communicate their narrative and data to consumers in a visual way.
“It's one thing to know why the Black Hills are where they are, how they formed, and how they're so different from any other geologic formation in the rest of the state,” Lias said when summarizing his graduate work. “It's another thing entirely to create a map based on spatial data to show someone else that same conclusion in a way that is clear and concise. This is why GIS is so valuable: it turns geographers into storytellers.”
About Sioux Falls Lutheran School
At Sioux Falls Lutheran School, our mission is to develop capable, Christian servant-leaders in a complex world who are World Ready and Faith Secure. We are passionate about giving our students the tools they need to be successful academically, socially, emotionally, and spiritually. We strive to accomplish this goal by maintaining high academic standards, employing excellent teachers, and upholding a Christian worldview drawn from Scripture. Ultimately, we are committed to partnering with parents and the church to raise lifelong learners who use their gifts and the fruits of the Spirit, in faith, to touch a troubled world with God’s grace.