Speaker: Benjamin Brower
Bio: Benjamin is currently a GIS Specialist II at Ocean County, New Jersey. He mainly works in 911 data maintenance, and is currently leading the county's Enterprise GIS consolidation. Benjamin received his Master's in Geographic Information Systems and Certificate in Remote Sensing from Penn State University (August 2023).
Webinar: Benjamin will share details of his capstone project, which involves the creation of a Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) within the Pinelands National Reserve. Located within Southern New Jersey, the reserve is the largest open space along the Northeast corridor of the United States between Boston and Richmond. Urban development has increased around the Pinelands, but the area is also prone to wildfires. To ascertain the risks of residents to potential future fires within the Pinelands, a WUI was created through the use of artificial intelligence for the year 2019. This WUI will be compared to the one created by the Spatial Analysis for Conservation and Sustainability (SILVIS) Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for accuracy. The purpose of this project is to ascertain if retrieval of data from artificial intelligence provides an accurate WUI, and the possibilities that could be done in the future.
This webinar is part of the North Atlantice Fire Science Exchange (NAFSE) Student Webinar Series.