Sandra Koenigseder started an internship at the GIS lab in September 2015 and finished her stint at VUW in December. During this time, Sandra was involved in a number of research projects and reflects on her experience below.
Sandra hard at work in the GIS lab
This summer in New Zealand, I worked as a Research Assistant intern at the GIS laboratory in Victoria University of Wellington (VUW) under the supervision of Dr Mairead de Roiste. The internship gave me the opportunity to work on different projects and gain a better understanding of data collection, mapping and network analysis. I was also involved in meetings associated with different research projects and worked with students from the university.
I was motivated to do the internship after finishing my Masters to gain some work experience in GIS, to get to know a research environment and to figure out if a GIS career is for me, as well as improving my English.
I started the internship with GIS tutorials to refresh my knowledge of ArcGIS. One of my first tasks was to create a thematic map of the university showing the food locations for the GeoSciences 2015 conference. This mapping project helped me to get to know the university buildings and was a good way start of my internship.
I also worked on a project using data from ‘The Great Kereru Count 2015’ with the School of Biological Sciences and Wellington City Council (WCC). I joined Mairead at the very first meetings and got to see the start of a research project. My tasks for this project were to collect the data including preparing the metadata as well as attending all project meetings to contribute my knowledge and ideas. I passed on this project to a summer scholarship student who continues to work with WCC and VUW. It has been interesting to see the project develop and some of the preliminary results.
Another piece of work was to clean up data from a project already completed and update the project maps. The research was a participatory GIS project. It was interesting to note that the customer’s wishes and cartographic integrity are not always compatible but that it is also important to find an adequate way to combine both.
In addition, I helped my supervisor with some administrative work which is also part of the duties of a researcher and which showed me a wider view of academic work. I also wrote an article about ‘Studying Cartography in Germany’ for the news webpage of the New Zealand Cartographic Society.
The final project, I worked on, uses Network Analysis to assess the spatial accessibility of aged residential care facilities in New Zealand. My aim was to repair the existing road network by using Network Analyst in ArcGIS and to examine the data files to figure out which data already exists and what would be needed to finish this project. As a student is directly involved in this project and the work is ongoing, I interacted and communicated with him around what was needed and shared my results.
During my internship, I communicated with different people (e. g. professional staff, students, researchers from university or other institutions by email or in person) and was able to improve my communication skills. As a result, I learned and adapted to cultural differences between New Zealand and Germany!
As I am also interested in plant ecology, I was able to go on a biology one-day field trip concerning the flora of New Zealand – an opportunity that I might not have again.
Over the internship, I learned how important it is to manage my time and structure tasks to ensure they can be done on time. I learned to be open to new software and had to adapt fast! I also improved my English which was an important goal of mine and am now much more confident of working in an English speaking environment.
People were respectful of each other, welcoming and helpful and open to my questions. I appreciate that my supervisor introduced me at the meetings and made me feel part of the GIS department. This department is a small unit within a much larger organisation but, as GIS is used for many different disciplines, cooperation with other departments and organisations is essential. As a result, it was simple to find connections to colleagues at the university which made me feel a part of this multidisciplinary environment.
The internship helped me to get a perception of work within a research environment within GIS and give me the motivation to pursue an academic career. I had the chance to use different software, work with different disciplines and broaden my mind. My supervisor encouraged me to solve problems on my own and helped me to develop a structured working style.
My time at the GIS laboratory of the VUW helped me finding my strengths and interests and I gained new knowledge and skills.
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