Before the pandemic, I was working on a major update for Washington Hometown’s recreation mapping work. They’ve long been a major provider of outdoor recreation data, but wanted to put more of that data into public-facing maps that they host. They partnered with TOTAGO for mobile maps, and I built a map generator for their desktop maps so that they would be able to quickly publish new thematic maps by just updating some configuration files rather than having to write code each time.

This flexibility turned out to be more important than any of us had anticipated, because before the project wrapped up the pandemic hit. In the first months of Washington State’s lockdown, a lot of public land was either entirely closed to the public or had very limited services. Suddenly being able to publish a spring hiking map just didn’t seem relevant or even appropriate any more. But WHT’s speciality is keeping data current as things change, and they applied the same mindset to the map themes themselves. At the height of public confusion about where to find COVID tests, sanitiser supplies, and so on, they released a “crisis” map with that information updated daily.

As things calmed down, they quickly pivoted away from the crisis map (quickly enough that I didn’t even get a screenshot of the working map!), and started focusing on the ever-changing list of which public lands were open, closed, or somewhere in between. Now that we all know that outdoor activities are relatively safe, there are far fewer closures, but still enough that it’s valuable to have someone keeping track.

I was impressed with my client’s ability to keep this project relevant when I was afraid that the pandemic would sink it. And in the end it’s been a great validation of the map generator itself, which has helped them to stay agile.