She can show you where storage tanks sit underground in Missoula.
And bets are the Office of Planning and Grants employee also has said “uff-da” more than anyone else working on UFDA. The Urban Fringe Development Area project examines where to put new homes in Missoula, and it required as many as 40 maps in countless iterations.
“We have had to make a lot of maps before, but I have never had my maps get so much attention,” Wilson said.
Also, never before have decision-makers had as much information about the Garden City at their fingertips, said Mike Barton, Wilson's supervisor at OPG.
“The public and elected officials get a much better idea of what information we can generate and what information they can have access to,” Barton said.
Wilson has worked at OPG for more than five years. Her undergraduate degree is in German, and at the University of Montana, the Oregon native completed a master's in geography with emphases in cartography and planning.
As a student, she worked as an intern at OPG and decided she preferred the more solitary craft of making maps than the constant pressure cooker of being a land-use planner.
“I didn't think I had the temperament to be a planner,” Wilson said.
She makes all those maps in her cubicle in the OPG basement in City Hall. A draft map of “Wildlife Buffer Zones” hangs on one wall. She's worked with bear expert Jamie Jonkel on that map, and it's how she knows where bears walk in town. She said knowing that kind of thing can save the lives of bears that would otherwise get themselves into trouble in neighborhoods and be euthanized. Such a map is also an educational tool useful for landowners and planners.
A print called “Right Map Making” also decorates her office. It's a mapmaker's creed of sorts that calls on the professionals to use their skills to create a better future. Wilson said the author, Steven Holloway, taught her first digital cartography class at UM, and she continues to think about his principles.
The print opens with two quotes: “The most obvious characteristic of our age is its destructiveness.”
And this: “The problem for the maker of maps being that our maps are, in part, engaged in the active and wanton destruction of the world. Thus awakened, we vow to take right effort and engage in cartographic disobedience, map making ‘for a future to be possible.' Unacceptable it is not to act.”
These days, the acts are high-tech. They use GIS, or geographic information systems, to create “intelligent maps” linked to data. So when Wilson sits at her desk, she faces not one but two computer screens, side by side. One shows data and the other shows a map. She can adjust the map simply by plugging in updated data. And her work can affect everyone else's computer.
“The computer is pretty powerful. It'll bog down the network,” Wilson said.
But the overabundance of information is a bonus for the public, said Brent Campbell, president of the planning and engineering firm WGM Group. The maps are available online and people can layer them as they wish.
Anyone, for instance, can look at where the most valuable agricultural land is in Missoula and compare those locations with where, say, sewer lines run. The maps trace bike routes, water lines, open space, fire response times, wildlife habitat and a whole lot more.
“It's really revolutionizing planning because of access to data,” Campbell said.
OPG has rolled the maps out to the public at more than 60 presentations. Most of the maps are available only on the OPG Web site, but for the public viewings, the office created 17-by-22-inch copies on its giant printer - a 36-inch plotter. They were mounted on 30-by-40-inch matting, and the first time the easels went up, Wilson said she felt like an artist opening a show.
“I was proud,” Wilson said. “It was fun - it was a fun emotion.”
Indeed, she gave the maps a personal touch. Wilson dipped into a palette of colors that included purples and reds, though she wasn't sure all her peers would be fans. At the time, she asked herself this: “Those are girl colors. I wonder how they'll fly?”
Some pinks and reds faded away, but most of them flew fine. And Wilson plugged the maps - for just a buck, they're available to the public on CD. Bring in your own CD or flash drive and OPG will load up the maps for free, she said.
OPG director Roger Millar said the maps have uses well beyond the UFDA project. Historians can look at historic buildings and school people can look at school district boundaries. The bus routes are mapped as well.
“All of it's there. And it's up to date as of this year and we're hoping we can continue to update it as we move forward,” Millar said.
The “composite map” is Millar's favorite. That's the one that shows the places it makes sense to develop homes based on the things Missoulians have said are important. It graphically grabs him, he said.
“You talk and talk about it, and then - boom - there it is on screen,” Millar said. “That's cool.”
Reporter Keila Szpaller can be reached at 523-5262 or at keila.szpaller@missoulian.com.
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margaret mallino wrote on Sep 14, 2008 7:53 AM: