Regional Application Center at UL Lafayette

🔔 New AmericaView podcast on "Teaching GIS" features Courtney Poirier Chicola, PhD.

➡️ Listen here: https://lnkd.in/gWPbd-RM

This is Round Five of our special “Squared Circle” episodes, where a group of guests gets together to wrestle with a particular topic. For this episode, we're joined by Ms. Robbyn Abbitt from Miami University, Dr. Forrest Bowlick from University of Massachusetts Amherst, and Dr. Courtney Poirier Chicola from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and we’re discussing all things about teaching GIS today. We talk about approaches to teaching GIS, mixing fundamentals and application, students working on local projects, producing tangible products, incorporating topoquads and remote sensing, students taking on different roles in projects, relevancy of tasks, incorporating maps from current events, the challenges of online GIS courses, showing why things are happening, collaboration on GIS problems, fundamental changes in what’s been taught in GIS courses, data handling challenges, GeoAI, and much more. Show notes and photos are available at: https://lnkd.in/gkUbn5hw

LouisianaView

Thank you to everyone who joined us—both in person and virtually—for our Disaster Response/Geospatial Data Mining Workshop last week!

We were proud to bring together emergency management and GIS professionals to connect and strengthen disaster response. We hope you found the presentations, networking, and training valuable and supportive of your important work.

⭐ A special thank you to our sponsors for your generous support and for helping make this experience possible.

➡️Acadian Ambulance
➡️Andy Hollerman, PhD, Award-winning Barbecue Brisket
➡️Community Coffee
➡️Drone Institute
➡️Eagleview
➡️Esri
➡️Fenstermaker
➡️LouisianaView
➡️Seiler Geospatial
➡️Survey Equipment Services, Inc.
➡️University of Louisiana at Lafayette
➡️U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)

We appreciate you being part of this community—together, we’re building a more prepared and resilient future.


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Registration Announcements!

27th Annual Disaster Response Workshop + Geospatial Data Mining Training

June 4-5, 2026

In-person registration closes today, June 1, at 5:00 PM.

Virtual registration closes at 7:00 AM on Thursday, June 4.

Registration - https://arcg.is/0SyTHS1

For more information, contact Rodney Yantis ([email protected]) or Courtney Poirier Chicola
([email protected]).

The 27th annual Disaster Response Workshop + Geospatial Data Mining Training is next week at the Louisiana Immersive Technologies Enterprise (LITE) Center! We look forward to the exciting speaker lineup, networking, and enjoying some amazing BBQ!

We want to thank our incredible sponsors for helping put on this free event for the disaster response and GIS community.

🔵 Regional Application Center/LouisianaView
🔵 LouisianaView
🔵 University of Louisiana at Lafayette
🔵 Acadian Ambulance
🔵 Andy Hollerman, Barbecue
🔵 Community Coffee
🔵EagleView
🔵 Esri
🔵 Fenstermaker
🔵 Seiler Geospatial

Don't forget to meet us at Adopted Dog Brewing for Mappy Hour on Thursday, June 4, right after the workshop!

In-person registration closes today, but you can still attend virtually https://survey123.arcgis.com/share/a7e11bc640fc4b93921713fd72079699

The Regional Application Center at UL Lafayette and LouisianaView present a free disaster response workshop on Thursday, June 4, from 9 a.m. to - 5:00 pm at the LITE Center in Lafayette.

In-person registration will close soon!

A room block is available at the Hilton Garden Inn across the street, but the discount pricing ends tomorrow!

Please register - https://arcg.is/0SyTHS1. If you cannot attend in person, you can attend virtually!

Featured topics
- Coordinating geospatial response during hurricanes and wildfires
- Data clearinghouses, applications, and acquisition systems
- Best practices from federal and state emergency response
agencies
- Cross-organizational and regional collaboration strategies

Sponsorship Opportunities are still available!!

Contact Us
For more information, contact Rodney Yantis ([email protected]) or Courtney Poirier Chicola
([email protected]).

Don't miss the Mappy Hour networking event that will take place at Adopted Dog Brewing following the conclusion of Day 1 of the workshop on Thursday, June 4.

https://rac.louisiana.edu/news-events/2026-disaster-responsegeospatial-data-mining-workshop

Join us this Memorial Day as we remember and thank the brave men and women who sacrificed their lives to serve our nation. 🇺🇸

University flags fly at half-staff and offices are closed on Monday, May 25, in observance of the holiday. We will reopen for normal business hours on Tuesday at 7:30 a.m.

With IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society – I just made it onto their weekly engagement list by being one of their top engagers 🎉

Congratulations, Class of 2026!

The University of Louisiana at Lafayette awarded 1,775 degrees on Friday, May 15, during Spring 2026 Commencement exercises.

1,353 bachelor’s degrees
366 master’s degrees
43 doctoral degrees
6 post-master’s certificates
5 undergraduate certificates
2 graduate certificates See less

🌟 Article of the Week 🌟

This week’s featured article from the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Section within IEEE Access highlights a new benchmark dataset for complex urban airborne LiDAR point clouds.

🔍 This Week's Highlight
Title: Thiruvananthapuram Aerial LiDAR Dataset (TALD): A Benchmark for Complex Urban Point Cloud
Authors: Jayati Vijaywargiya, Anandakumar M. Ramiya

📖 🛰️ In this article, the authors introduce the Thiruvananthapuram Aerial LiDAR Dataset (TALD), a benchmark dataset covering 9 square kilometers from Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India. TALD, derived from airborne laser scanning (ALS) point clouds, includes colored LiDAR points classified into buildings, trees, shrubs, and ground, providing a valuable dataset for urban mapping and point cloud research in complex environments.

🔗 Read the full paper here: https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2025.3546628

Stay tuned for more groundbreaking research every week as we celebrate excellence in geoscience and remote sensing! 🌍📡