This week our group met for the first time and settled on a geospatial article to try and replicate. There were several topics we debated on, ranging from articles on the opioid epidemic in the Midwest to recreational area mapping in West Virginia. We finally settled on an article, proposed by the lovely Maddy, titled "A GIS-based method for the selection of the location of residence," which established a methodology for selecting homes based on services and accessibility in Kuopio, Finland. We are very excited to pursue this project and think that it has relevant implications for W&M students looking for off-campus homes!

This week our group made a website! Ryan and John took the lead on this part of the project and settled on a google sites page as our medium. Highlights include playing with drop down boxes and fiddling with fonts. Meanwhile, Maddy spent some time brushing up on her Finnish and trying to figure out how to download the original data.

One of the big findings we had over the weekend is that the data used in the original article isn't as accessible as we previously thought. Specifically, Maddy has had trouble finding realtor home data because it is hidden behind a paywall. If we were certified realtors in Finland, we wouldn't have an issue, but the lack of accessibility is concerning from a paper that emphasizes reproducibility. We are pivoting away from their case study area of Koupio in favor of Helsinki, where the data does exist, but it is nonetheless disappointing that the data used in the original paper is blocked.

Our big goal this week was to finish up our first video on our article's background! We have broken up the video between the three of us and are recording each section separately. You will get a chance to see our video production skills in addition to our smiling faces in our final product.

This week is out meeting with the client! We have been hard at work putting together our project while also trucking through midterms. Maddy and Ryan have been chugging away with the data recreation while John has been consolidating our work into the storymap we will be presenting with. We are very excited to show our clients what we have been working and what our plan is going forward!