About

 

Michael Markieta

Email: michael[a]spatialanalysis[d0t]ca
Located: Toronto, ON, Canada

Michael is cur­rently a can­di­date for a Bach­e­lor of Arts in Geo­graphic Analy­sis, at Ryer­son Uni­ver­sity. He spe­cial­izes in advanced GIS tech­niques, such as mul­ti­ple cri­te­ria deci­sion analy­sis, as well as pre­dic­tive mod­el­ling using mul­ti­vari­ate sta­tis­tics. Through­out his aca­d­e­mic career, Michael has become a spe­cial­ist with well known indus­try prod­ucts such as ArcGIS, SPSS and MS Access. He also has a fond­ness for open-source soft­ware like QGIS, Post­greSQL and OpenOffice.

You will likely find Michael writ­ing web map­ping and GIS tuto­ri­als on his blog or answer­ing ques­tions on gis.stackexchange. You can also fol­low Michael on LinkedIn and Twit­ter.

Education

Ryer­son Uni­ver­sity
Bach­e­lor of Arts Can­di­date — Geo­graphic Analy­sis
Expected grad­u­a­tion — Spring 2013
Under­grad­u­ate The­sis — A Locally Weighted Human Influ­ence Index for the Province of Ontario

The­sis Abstract: Map­ping anthro­pogenic influence on the Earth’s sur­face has been a focus in GIS since the mid 1960’s, but it is only until recently that Sander­son et al (2002) pub­lished a study that com­pleted this research on a global scale. How­ever, sim­i­lar to the stud­ies pre­vi­ous to that, it fails to uti­lize respected mul­ti­ple cri­te­ria deci­sion analy­sis tech­niques. This research aims to repli­cate Sander­son and colleague’s study, albeit for the Province of Ontario, as well as apply best prac­tise mul­ti­ple cri­te­ria deci­sion analy­sis tech­niques in the form of weighted lin­ear com­bi­na­tion. Fur­ther, we explore the appli­ca­tion of a novel mul­ti­ple cri­te­ria deci­sion analy­sis tech­nique, the local weighted lin­ear com­bi­na­tion. The results indi­cate that the local weighted lin­ear com­bi­na­tion reveals greater vari­abil­ity in influence val­ues in areas that the orig­i­nal research claims to be only of high influence.

Hard Skills

GIS: ArcInfo, Map­Info, QGIS and FME
Data­base and Sta­tis­tics:Access & Excel, SQL/PostgreSQL/PostGIS, SPSS and R
Web Map­ping: Open­Lay­ers, Cloudmade/Leaflet, Tilemill/MapBox and Google Maps
Pro­gram­ming Lan­guages: Python, JavaScript, HTML5 and CSS3
Word Pro­cess­ing: Word, OpenOf­fice, Latex/LyX and Acro­bat Pro
Oper­at­ing Sys­tems: OS X Lion and Win­dows 7

Professional Work Experience

GIS Ana­lyst & Research Assis­tant — Depart­ment of Geog­ra­phy
Ryer­son Uni­ver­sity
Toronto, ON
July 2011 — Present
· Devel­op­ing a MCDA web map­ping appli­ca­tion to explore the Human Influ­ence Index using Mapserver, Open­Lay­ers and jQuery.
· Prac­tic­ing effec­tive per­sonal man­age­ment of work tasks and duties, specif­i­cally on indi­vid­ual research projects and man­u­script writ­ing.
· Work­ing towards aca­d­e­mic jour­nal pub­li­ca­tions and oral pre­sen­ta­tions, includ­ing a poster for the 2012 Geoide Global Geospa­tial Conference.

GIS Ana­lyst — Wild­land Research Insti­tute — Intern­ship
Uni­ver­sity of Leeds
Leeds, UK
May 2011 — July 2011
· Explored wind farm devel­op­ment on the Scot­tish Coun­try­side using novel view­shed tools and re-engineered meth­ods to cap­ture loca­tions of top low impact areas.
· Devel­oped guid­ance for policy-making and wind farm devel­op­ment.
· Col­lab­o­rated with mul­ti­ple stake­hold­ers, includ­ing John Muir Trust, High­land Coun­cil and the Scot­tish Government.

Tech­ni­cal Advi­sor and Mechanic — Ser­vice Depart­ment
Skiis and Biikes
Mis­sis­sauga, ON
Oct 2006 — Present
· Demon­strates effec­tive ana­lyt­i­cal skills in solv­ing novel tasks.
· Dis­sem­i­nates daily job duties and trains new staff mem­bers.
· Com­pletes yearly cer­ti­fi­ca­tion to safely ser­vice ski and bicy­cle equipment.

Awards and Achievements

· Esri Canada GIS Schol­ar­ship (2012)
· Award of Merit for Out­stand­ing Progress in the Pro­gram (2010/11)
· Skills Canada Ontario Games gold medal awardee in the GIS com­pe­ti­tion (2006)

Publications, Presentations and Invited Talks

· Carver, S., Marki­eta, M. (2012). No High Ground: visu­al­is­ing Scotland’s renew­able energy land­scapes using rapid view­shed assess­ment tools. (Eds.), Pro­ceed­ings of the GIS Research UK 20-th Annual Con­fer­ence (pp 115–123). Lan­caster, UK: The Uni­ver­sity of Lan­caster.
· Marki­eta, M. (2011). Visual Impact Assess­ment for Wind Farms in Scot­land. Paper pre­sented at Ryer­son Uni­ver­sity: Depart­ment of Geog­ra­phy.
· Marki­eta, M. (2011). No High Ground: Mapping-out the Scot­tish Wind Farm Debate. Paper pre­sented at the Uni­ver­sity of Leeds: Cen­tre for Spa­tial Analy­sis and Pol­icy.
· Marki­eta, M. and Carver, S. (2011). No High Ground: map­ping out the land­scape and renew­able energy con­flict. UKHill­walk­ing. Retrieved from http://tinyurl.com/8yu2b59
· Marki­eta, M. (2006). Geo­mat­ics in the K-12 cur­ricu­lum. Project pre­sented at the Toronto ESRI Regional User Conference.