Campus Map

Campus Map

Overview:

Sustainability is part of campus life at University of Calgary. From green buildings, to edible garden spaces and infrastructure that supports sustainable transportation, there are many sustainability features integrated throughout the campus. However, a significant portion of the campus community is not aware of the sustainable elements, their purposes, and the value they add to our built environment and campus landscape. To raise awareness for the benefits of these features, Peer Helpers from the Office of Sustainability utilized Geographic Information System (GIS) technology to enhance our campus map by identifying the location of sustainable built environment and landscape features at UCalgary. The new and improved interactive map was designed using a straightforward and accessible format that will help make the campus community aware of the many resources available; as well as the many ways to interact with sustainability on campus.  A similar work to this could be the Interactive Room Finder. 

Outcomes:

The Peer Helpers first determined which sustainability features they wanted to identify and subsequently located them. The next step was to classify the features into four categories:  

  1. Wellness & Sustainable Landscape 

  2. Transport 

  3. Waste Management  

  4. Food 

Next Steps:

  • Although the scope of the project was reduced, Peer Helpers will support the GIS team by collecting and verifying the sustainability features data points, taking high resolution photos and providing short descriptions for each feature to accompany the Sustainability Map layer.  

  • Another future step is to find a way to collect data points for the indoor sustainability features. This is currently not achievable using the Collector app, as the range of error is too large. In the future, students can utilize other methods to collect these sort of data points.