Education Policy, Business and Technology

U Oregon App Helps Plan for Safe Fall Return to Campus

Campus Technology: A university in the northwest is using mobile mapping technology to sort out plans for the fall return to campus. The University of Oregon's "Chief Resilience Officer," Andre Le Duc, called on Ken Kato, director of the institution's Campus GIS and Mapping Program, to customize a mapping app to help with physical distancing decisions.

Kato's group, which is a division of Safety and Risk Services, has ample experience in "story mapping," having built software programs to help people track campus construction projects, lead mitigation work and winter storm paths and hazards. The projects use room-level information to enable a virtual mapping pin to be dropped into any space on campus, which can then be mixed with other data to develop the maps.

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