Mission
The AMPO GIS and Data Visualization Interest Group seeks to advance the state of practice for GIS capabilities within MPOs. Emerging technology, big data, shared mobility, and consumer preference are fundamentally changing the transportation network in many metropolitan areas throughout the country. In addition, GIS serves as a critical tool for the role MPOs play in transportation performance management. As a result, GIS has become a critical element of the metropolitan transportation planning process. Focus areas for this group include:
- Software
- Implementation
- Best practices
- GIS analysis
- Data acquisition and management
- Data partnerships
- New technologies, services, and application development
Goals
Provide a forum for peer exchange and sharing of GIS tools, best practices, guidance, and resources that support:
- Advancing the state of practice as it relates to data, map, and application development
- Integrating GIS capabilities into the metropolitan planning process
- Coordinating with a diverse group of multi-jurisdictional policymakers and stakeholders
- Developing strategies, techniques, and methods to meet the diverse needs of MPO stakeholders, projects, programs, and activities
- Identifying opportunities, challenges, needs, and emerging issues as they relate to GIS, data, mapping, and application development
- Communicating and sharing best practices, guidance, resources, and activities with other MPOs and at transportation planning events, and
- Communicating and sharing best practices, guidance, resources, and activities with, AASHTO, FHWA, FTA, and regional planning partners
GIS and Data Visualization Discussion Forum
Join the GIS and Data Visualization Interest Group leadership team and its members on the My AMPO discussion forum. Click My AMPO on the top right side of this page and log in to join the discussion. If you have any questions, click the how-to instructions below.
Leadership Team
Ashley Moran
Acadiana Planning Commission
Ashley Moran is a transportation planner with the Acadiana Planning Commission’s Metropolitan Planning Organization. She has a certification from the American Institute of Certified Planners, and primarily works in data analysis, project development, and public involvement.
Joe Gordon
Metro
Joe is a Senior GIS Specialist at Metro (Portland, Oregon), specializing in demographic and remote sensing analysis. He has done work on equity and environmental justice analyses, including indicator development, social vulnerability indices, environmental vulnerabilities (e.g., flood, urban heat), and hazard preparedness. A recent project that Joe managed, in partnership with the Regional Disaster Preparedness Organization, is the Social Vulnerability Tools project: https://rdpo.net/social-vulnerability-tools-project.
Stuart Kearns
Lexington Area MPO
Stuart graduated from Eastern Kentucky University with a B.A. in Geography in 1990 and an MPA in 1997. He worked for the Lexington Area MPO from 1991-2001 as a transportation planner, then as a consultant until 2004. From 2004 to 2017, Stuart served as Associate Director of Transportation for the University of Kentucky. In 2018, he returned to the Lexington Area MPO as a senior transportation planner.
Lakshmi Gurram
Chartlotte County-Punta Gorda MPO
Lakshmi is a principal planner with CCMPO. He has worked as a Transportation Planner with MPOs in Florida and in Texas. His passion is to provide the best knowledge to the members and the citizens of his MPO region.
Committee Liaison
Melissa Taylor
City of Chattanooga
Technical Committee
Melissa Taylor is the Director of Strategic Long-range Planning for the City of Chattanooga. She holds a Master of Science Degree in Environmental Science from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and has been a land use and transportation planner in the City for 23 years. She has spent the last 15 of those years directing federal transportation planning and programming for the region’s MPO, the Chattanooga-Hamilton County/N. Georgia Transportation Planning Organization (TPO). In 2020, she received AMPO’s Individual Staff Achievement Award for Leadership in the Field of Metropolitan Transportation Planning and Programming. She was the driving force behind the TPO’s 2015 Transportation Planning Excellence Award from FHWA and FTA for Community-Sensitive Performance-based Planning. Much of her work has been distributed nationally as best practice by FHWA and Transportation for America, most notably in the areas of performance-based planning and programming, active living and safety, and meaningful public engagement.
Lethal Coe
Whatcom COG
Technical Committee
Principal Planner with nearly 15 years of experience at two distinct MPOs, a TMA and non-TMA, coordinating and managing various core regional transportation planning products and in collaboration with a variety of government entities and stakeholderstransportation planning products and in collaboration with a variety of government entities and stakeholders
Erick Aune
Santa Fe MPO
Policy Committee
Erick is a Transportation and Urban Planner employed with the Santa Fe Metropolitan Planning Organization as the MPO Officer. He has practiced land use and transportation planning in the Southwest since 1996 and began his career working for the USDA Rural Development AmeriCorps Program in Aztec, NM. He has served as Planning Director for Aztec, NM and La Plata County, CO and worked with the New Mexico MainStreet Program as Aztec’s Mainstreet Director and directly as Program Associate.
FHWA Liaison
Mark Sarmiento: Mark is a Community Planner at the Federal Highway Administration in Washington, D.C., with over 25 years of experience using GIS, working with geospatial data, and enabling transportation agencies to become more effective through these technologies. For the last 10 years he has concentrated on providing capacity building resources that highlight the noteworthy efforts by transportation agencies to apply GIS and use geospatial data in the work that they do. He has a Bachelor’s of Science in Civil Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and a Master’s of Engineering in Civil Engineering from the University of Virginia.
AMPO Contact
Ellen Zavisca: ezavisca@ampo.org
