• About me

    • About me

    My name is Gee Fernando, and this portfolio is a representation of my work over the last 3.5 years.

    After graduating with honours as a Civil Engineer from the University of New South Wales, I started my career working as a Project Manager for the Capital Works team with Transport Canberra. I delivered multiple award-winning projects ranging across construction, information technology and policy changes.

    Meanwhile, I became increasingly interested in data and the benefits of data-driven insights to inform decision-making in my work. As a result of this, I moved into the Innovation and Data Analytics team and began to lead innovation initiatives within the ACT (Australian Capital Territory) government and build solutions that streamlined business practices. This experience consolidated my love for helping businesses through data and technology. Since then, I have worked in private and public sectors with a strong focus on using Web-GIS solutions.

    Data analyst ⋅ Transport Canberra ⋅ 2017 Sep to 2019 Mar

    1. Designed and implemented a system for handling over 4,000 road work applications lodged per year - Director General Awards for Innovation, 2018.

    2. Built a platform to share road closure feeds with the public and app developers (including Google Maps, TomTom and Waze).

      • Implemented a two-way partnership between ACT Government and Waze.

      • Modified a python script to ingest Waze data into ArcGIS Online and in-turn use this valuable data to communicate back to the public.

      • Automated traffic reports using Waze data and ArcGIS Insights.

    3. Developed add-on tools for Survey123 using JavaScript functions - to assist business areas within ACT Government.

    Professional Services Consultant ⋅ Esri Australia ⋅ 2019 Mar to 2020 Nov

    1. Due to my background in Civil Engineering, I was tasked with determining a solution for the current crisis across the construction industry in Canberra (buildings have been failing - affecting building longevity and tenant safety, resulting in costly remedial actions, class actions against developers, and multi-million-dollar court judgments against consultants and builders). The solution I built not only served the organisational needs but will now serve as a blueprint for the rest of Australia’s state and territory governments; ensuring smarter, more efficient workflows and safer practices are integrated across the board – to revolutionise the national construction industry. We were nominated and received a SAG Award for this work.

      Attached below is a selective list of video documents created for the project.

    2. Working in Professional Services I have had the opportunity to work with various clients across utilities, landscaping services, disaster assistance, and Rugby Australia. But my favourite was the time spent in Human Services Australia - where I got the opportunity to make maps and apps for the Prime Minister and local Ministers to assist with the 2019/20 bushfires. I was also tasked with making policy maps around national welfare debts - which were instrumental in making new policies and education campaigns around debt management.

      • I received a Recognising Client Focus award for my work at Human Services Australia.

    Spatial Data Officer, Conservation Research ⋅ 2020 Nov to Present

    Currently I work as a Spatial data officer within Conservation Research. I help staff in our team with any GIS or data related matters. I have spent most of my time migrating paper-based surveys and manually conducted workflows into the ArcGIS platform whilst automating reports and visualisations.

    1. Winner - Director General Award of Excellence (Innovation category) - 2020

      • For streamlining data capture and automating reports.

    2. Using the Waze for cities program API, I developed a script to record hazards, incidents and accidents reported by Waze users along Canberra's roads. And this dashboard shows reported animal incidents over time - https://bit.ly/31E4faZ

    3. Using ArcGIS Survey123 and Dashboards, I built this Kanban board for our team to submit job requests, assign personnel to jobs and track progress. Due to its success and popularity I made a video documentation of how I built it - https://youtu.be/yPcr8f18bqo

    Passion projects

    I consider my self blessed to be working in a job where it also happens to be my hobby. The following are a selection of projects that I've done outside of work for fun.

    Contributions to ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World

    I love making data accessible for people to easily make maps and apps to support their work. Attached below are data layers and apps that I've contributed the ArcGIS Living Atlas. Scripts for most of these layers are on Google Cloud Funtions and scheduled to run using Google Cloud Scheduler.

    1. A dashboard of live traffic conditions in Canberra (using the API provided by Waze for Cities)

    2. An app showing unimproved land values in terms of dollars per square metre and percent change in the last 4 years. This is currently being used for upcoming land evaluations.

    3. A dashboard showing current and historical air quality for Canberra

    Blog posts

    I love writing blogs and articles around different use cases of GIS.

    1. A blog post around time aware popups using - https://bit.ly/2uQ79fS

    2. A blog post on displaying data from related tables - https://bit.ly/2YSHo9z

    3. Co-authored a FAQ blog post with the Living Atlas Team (Esri Inc) - https://bit.ly/3ekJAx3

    4. An app to find out your next available bus given your location or bus stop number

    5. A blog post on how to share ///your.three.words using Survey123 - https://bit.ly/2Lzlu59

    Webinar around COVID-19 related apps I put together using datasets from the Australian COVID-19 hub.

    1. A dot density map of - differentiating people over the age of 65 and under - with interactive popups - https://bit.ly/2UgP7gy

    2. Showcasing hover over popups and blank base maps with Health and Economic indexes published by the Australian National University - https://bit.ly/2TbVBMI, https://bit.ly/3cHanD9

    3. Showcasing ACTIVE COVID-19 case numbers at densely populated areas - https://bit.ly/2HuMp33

    4. Showcasing new label classes with LIVE COVID-19 case numbers, death numbers and new case numbers for the last 10 days at a State and a Local Government Area level - https://bit.ly/3cfXHlO

    5. An app to find your nearest COVID-19 test centre and its opening hours (for anywhere in Australia)

    6. A StoryMap and configurable apps to record and view locations of teddy bears during the COVID-19 pandemic - https://bit.ly/2z5v64W

    Work with open data

    I am a strong advocate for encouraging Government agencies to release open data.

    Open data does not only enable citizens to make better-informed decisions but more importantly, empowers citizens to contribute to policies that are better designed to their needs and to a more engaging relationship with their governments - https://www.europeandataportal.eu/en/highlights/empowering-people-open-data

    1. A presentation I did for Surveying & Spatial Sciences Institute (SSSI) around ArcGIS Online and Data visualisations using Open datasets - https://sssi.org.au/events-awards/e-cpd/data-visualisation

    2. An app to find your next bin collection day (and which bins to put out) - https://bit.ly/3ewEdfu

    3. A dashboard for the public to view land blocks sold by the Suburban Land Agency (Canberra) - https://bit.ly/2PoeYTT

    4. A dashboard for the public to view development applications in Canberra - rather than relying on a text based website - https://arcg.is/1Wzbef

    5. A zone lookup app to find out your priority enrolment schools based on a location - rather than having to go through multiple PDF reports - https://arcg.is/1vqia1

    6. A map of live air quality readings from around the world (with Arcade rich popups to show any other stations within a 50km radius) - https://bit.ly/3ex82eE

    7. A map of recent earthquakes from around the world - https://bit.ly/2Cspmna

      The live earthquakes map I made (https://bit.ly/2Cspmna) was featured in one of esri's Living Atlas blogs for the use of advanced spatial analytics and disseminating popup information in a user-friendly manner. Please see the following extract from the blog post "Below is an advanced example that compares recent earthquakes to the location of major cities. Using these two Living Atlas layers, the popup gives a formatted list of any earthquakes within 250km of a major city, or reports that no cities are nearby in order of their distance." - Lisa Berry (Living Atlas Team)

    8. An app converting Time-Zones into Local Time - https://bit.ly/3ea6jvG

    9. An app showing where it is day or night (alongside sunrise and sunset times) - https://bit.ly/2YirlCQ

    10. An app showing road crashes per kilometre for Canberra - https://bit.ly/2GcO1Ow

    1. An app showing road crashes per kilometre for Western Australia - https://bit.ly/340gIpX