January 2026 Program Update

Powering Computational Research

This month, BTAA-GIN is highlighting a new step-by-step tutorial that shows students and faculty how to apply deep learning models to geospatial data. The tutorial uses high-resolution aerial imagery from the BTAA Geoportal to teach machine learning workflows for spatial analysis.

What makes this possible? BTAA-GIN's work curating geospatial data and applying standardized workflows and metadata. This behind-the-scenes effort to ensure authoritative, well-described data means researchers can move directly from discovery to hands-on analysis using familiar GIS and data science tools to explore patterns, detect features, and ask new spatial questions.

As BTAA-GIN continues shaping its FY26-FY28 roadmap, examples like this show how shared collections continue to evolve alongside changing research and teaching practices across Big Ten universities.

Read more: Applying deep learning models to BTAA Geoportal collections

Aerial imagery showing residential units outlined in red as detected by the AI model.

Program Activities

Committees

TECHnology

• Shared Geoportal rebuild updates, including frontend branding, feature development, documentation, and potential institutional customizations.
• Reviewed fixture records representing different resource types and use cases and discussed collection-level pages and opportunities for enhancement.

Community Engagement

• Reviewed the GIN blog editorial calendar and progress on the Maps in the Wild blogging sprint.
• Coordinated promotion and activities for Love Data Week.
• Reviewed the 2026 Big Ten GIS Conference plan and the Planning Committee's role.

Knowledge

• Met asynchronously to share updates from the Coordination Committee.

Coordination

• Reviewed the Priority Working Group coordination and reporting plan.
• Discussed the feasibility and management implications of a Fellowship program.
• Considered a proposal to develop an updated 2025 Impact Report.

Workgroups

Workgroups

Data Curation

• Celebrated publication of data from three cities in the Geoportal: Philadelphia, Columbus, and Minneapolis.
• Reviewed a near-final draft of the Curation Plan, with publication as the next step.

Data Citation

• Set a plan to promote the citation tool at the April Big Ten GIS Conference and collect feedback via a survey.
• Identified faculty partners to pilot the tool with students during the semester and gather feedback.

BTAA Geoportal

This month by the numbers

Chart showing monthly users year over year.

• Visitors: 23,834
• Visits: 25,029
• Downloads: 698
• Visits with download: 2.79%
• Outlinks: 2,352
• Visits with outlink: 10.12%
• Num. searches: 3,804
• Search keywords: 603
• Pageviews: 39,531

More stats

Link to the analytics dashboard for additional reporting.

Top Google searches leading to the Geoportal

• We're unable to publish our usual search analytics this month. We're investigating an issue where Google appears to have indexed one of our internal metadata pages as if it were a dataset, which has skewed our search traffic data. We're working to resolve this and will resume reporting accurate search trends once the issue is corrected.

Top internal search keywords

• geology
• PLSS
• highway roads
• sanborn
• pottstown
• lincoln, Nebraska
• geological series
• europe
• minneapolis
• Maps Index

Collections

Total records as of January 2026: 115,569

Harvesting Activities

Title	Records added	Records retired
Full Scan and replacement of all records from ArcGIS Hubs	21,592	625
Full Scan and replacement of all records from Humanitarian Data Exchange	11,226	74
Full replacement of UW DCC plat maps	2,590	2,524
Reharvest Wisconsin Commit 88ae876	20	0
2026-01-13 Scan ArcGIS Hubs	139	100
Urban Base Layers for City of Columbus	6	0
Urban Base Layers (zoning datasets) for City of Minneapolis	2	0

Web Development

• Presented to the Geo4Lib community on the BTAA Geospatial API and the future of OpenGeoMetadata, with a focus on scalable onboarding for new institutions.
• Streamlined the platform by unifying the backend and frontend into a single codebase and migrating to server-side rendering to improve performance and security.
• Improved the user experience and infrastructure with new search views, institutional branding, IIIF viewing, performance optimizations, and support for very large file uploads.