Team UNAM

The Geospatial Technology for Infrastructure Transportation and Sustainability Work Group (GITS) of the Institute of Geography of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (IGG-UNAM) is staffed by an interdisciplinary group of professionals.  GITS offers customized geospatial technology solutions for the public and private sectors based on free and open source software.

GITS research in spatial analysis, software development, road safety geography, transportation, standards and spatial data infrastructure is linked to academic activity.  The primary focus is to train experts through specialized courses in undergraduate and postgraduate education at UNAM and in several University centers in Latin America. As a result of the academic efforts, GITS has published a variety of scientific articles with significant social impact.

Members

• Luis Chias BecerrilGeneral Coordinator

  He holds a Bachelor and a Master in Geography from UNAM and is Doctor in Geography with specialization in Territorial Organization from the University of Toulouse, France. He is a Principal investigator of the institute of Geography of the UNAM since 1974. He has numerous publications: 3 international articles, 12 national articles, 30 book chapters and 9 books. He is Head of the Geotechnology in infrastructure, Transportation and Sustainability group of the Institute of Geography, UNAM. He has served as Link Coordinator at the Institute of Geography, UNAM, was Director of the magazine “Geography and Development,” has been invited to give lectures and courses at foreign universities (Complutense de Madrid, Agustín Codazzi Geographic Institute of Colombia, Institute of Tropical Geography of Havana, Cuba and National University of Costa Rica). His main line of research is centered on the development and application of spatial analysis methods in the transport sector, with the support of various geographic information technologies.

• Héctor Daniel Reséndiz LópezTechnical Coordinator

  Civil Engineer, Master in Transportation Systems Engineering with honorable mention from the UNAM and PhD candidate in Geography at the same university. For more than 15 years he has specialized in the development of Geographic information Systems (GIS) projects applied to the investigation of traffic accidents, modeling of socio-economic phenomena, analysis of transport networks, the design and creation of geospatial databases For transport. He has experience in the coordination of work groups for the development of projects applying GIS technologies for various public agencies such as the Ministry of Social Development (SEDESOL), the Secretariat of Communications and Transportation (SCT), the National Center for Accident Prevention (CENAPRA), the National Institute of Public Health (INSP) and the Government of Mexico City (GDF).

  He has also developed Geographic information Systems projects for consulting companies such as USTRAN, The Boston Consulting Group and Felipe Ochoa y Asociados. He has taught several courses on GIS application in transportation in Mexico, Colombia (Agustín Codazzi Geographical Institute and the University of Córdoba) and Ecuador (Quito Mobility Secretariat). He has also participated in various international forums in Mexico, Colombia, Costa Rica, Peru and the United States. His line of work includes the generation of high quality geospatial databases, the design and creation of interfaces for consultation, management and massive mapping of geospatial data and conceptualization of territorial problems by applying spatial analysis in vector and raster models. He is a professor in the Graduate Program in Systems Engineering at UNAM and is currently working as technical coordinator of GITS-IGg-UNAM.

• Jesús Olvera RamírezRegulations Manager

  Graduated as a Geological Engineer by the Higher School of Engineering and Architecture of the National Polytechnic Institute. With postgraduate studies in Geological Surveys with Aerospace Remote Sensing Techniques at ITC in the Netherlands in 1987 and 1988. He worked at INEGI for almost 36 years in activities of Topographic Restitution, Photogrammetry, Photointerpretation and Geological Cartography, Spatial Data Base Design, Cartographic Generalization, Air Operations, Spatial Data infrastructures and Standards and Specs. for Geographic Info. He has published articles in national and foreign journals and has participated with presentations in numerous national and international events. In INEGI he held various management positions in the areas of Digital Cartography, Geodesy, Spatial Data infrastructure and Air Operations. He was Executive Secretary of the Permanent Committee on Spatial Data infrastructure of the Americas. He is currently a consultant in regulations for the GITS Unit at the Institute of Geography of UNAM.

• Armando Martínez SantiagoGeodatabase and Statistics Manager

  Since August 2010, the geographer Armando Martínez is part of the Geotechnology Unit of the Institute of Geography (IGg) of UNAM. At GITS, he supported the integration and normalization of tabular databases, georreferencing of data, preparation of results reports, monitoring the quality control of the datasets generated, as well as the coordination and training of personnel for data processing. He is currently responsible for the technical-operational team of the Geography of Road Safety (GEOSEV). He has experience in the Federal Public Administration, from 2007 to 2010, worked as a geographical analyst in the Young Rural Entrepreneur Program and Land Fund in charge of the General Directorate of Policy and Agrarian Planning of the Secretariat of Agrarian Reform (SRA). In SAGARPA, during 2006 he participated in ASERCA as a consultant for the lnter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), assigned to the PRONESPRE Project, where he supported the Vectorization and Databases activities.

• Juan Luis Torres VacaGIS Technician

  Geographer from the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of UNAM. He has collaborated with the GITS team since 2017, as a GIS Technician in the area of ​​Road Safety Geography and the International Spatial Technology and Research Laboratory (iSTAR). He participated as a Scholar of the Institute of Geography of UNAM within the programs "Initiation to research" (2017-2018) and "María Teresa Gutiérrez de MacGregor Scholarship" (2019). His main interests and specialty are oriented towards the application of geographic information systems, the design and elaboration of cartographic models and the processing of geospatial data for decision making.

  In the academic field, he has participated in collaborative projects managed by the GITS-iSTAR Group with the California State University, Northridge (CSUN), the Superior Audit of the Federation, the Ibero-American Network for Digital Preservation of Sound and Audiovisual Files (RIPDASA) and the Telecommunications Investment Promotion Agency (PROMTEL). He has also participated in national and international congresses as a speaker and presenter of scientific posters and maps, in addition to collaborating in the training of personnel entering the GITS-iSTAR Group in the use of geographic information systems for cartographic design and spatial analysis with Open data on various territorial problems in Mexico.

• Tonatiuh Suárez MeaneySpatial analysis Manager

  Degree in Human Settlements, and in Criminalistics and criminology. TSU in mathematics. With master's studies in intelligence and analytics. Studies in crime prevention, and different areas of criminology and geographic information systems.

• Rodrigo Jiménez Del ValleResearch and Software Development Manager

  Bachelor of Computer Science graduated from the Faculty of Sciences of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Technological development consultant for the Institute of Geography of the UNAM for the GITS unit during the period from April 2011 to date where he has participated as a project team leader and manager in the development of many information web systems.

  He has experience in the design and development of geographic information web systems (GIS), geoportals as well as spatial data infrastructures and corporate systems, among those that stand out are the Specialized Geoportal for Transportation for the Sub-Secretariat of Infrastructure of the SCT 2010 – 2012, the Integral System of Results of Evaluations (SIRE) for the National Institute for the Evaluation of Education (INEE) in Mexico 2014 – 2016, the Prototype of an Information System to Promote Road Safety for the Collaborative Safety Research Center Toyota (CSRC – TOYOTA), and the Visual shared network management service for the Telecommunications Investment Promotion Agency PROMTEL in 2017. He has also participated as an international consultant.

  In the academic field, he was an assistant professor for the Faculty of Sciences (UNAM) from 2008 to 2012, in the fields of databases, database managers systems, software engineering, selected computer topics and geographic information systems. He has taught geographic information systems courses with free and open source software at the Geography Institute from 2014 to 2017. He has also been an instructor courses related to the use of the Geostatistical Geoportal of Educational Evaluation for the Institute National Educational Evaluation of Ecuador, in 2013 and 2014 and has participated as a speaker in different conferences and forums such as the National Congress of Geography from 2012 to 2016, in the Latin American Geospatial Forum 2015 and in the gvSIG Latin American Congress 2015 and gvSIG Mexican Congress 2016 sessions.

  Currently, he is responsible for the integration of high-level technical personnel for the Software Research and Development area. His work is focused on the management and integration of software developments and products generated by GITS-Igg-UNAM.

• Juan Carlos Cortés OrtizSoftware Architect and Hardware Infrastructure Administrator

  Graduated as a Bachelor of Computer Science from the Faculty of Sciences of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). He has extensive experience in software architecture and development, as well as in hardware infrastructure management and server virtualization.

  He has worked as Software Engineer for the Mexican security solutions company RUSOFT, and for the Mexican software development consultancy SIGA. In both dedicated to the development and support of software of the highest quality.

  From 2013 to the present, he works as a technological development advisor for the Geotechnology in Infrastructure Transportation and Sustainability Unit (GITS) at the Institute of Geography of the UNAM. He is responsible for the definition of the software architecture and the hardware infrastructure for the projects developed and hosted by the GITS unit. At the same time, he is responsible for implementing the “Software Factory” concept, defining the processes and work phases based on a set of good practices that measure and control the productivity of the developer team in order to produce quality software. Their job is to be at the forefront of current development trends and methodologies that generate a high level professional development environment.

  His experience and knowledge is crucial for the generation of competitive projects such as the Integral System of Results of Evaluations for the National Institute for the Evaluation of Education (SIRE – INEE), the Information System Prototype to Promote Road Safety, for the Collaborative Safety Research Center Toyota (CSRC-TOYOTA) and the Visual shared network management service for the Telecommunications Investment Promotion Agency PROMTEL in 2017, where he designed the system architecture and managed the hosting infrastructure.

• Felipe Navarrete CórdovaSoftware Architect

  Master in Computer Science by the Institute of Research in Applied Mathematics and Systems (IIMAS) of the UNAM, with special interests in genetic algorithms, artificial neural networks and data mining. He is a specialist in the design and programming of web based Geographic Information Systems (GIS). He has been assistant professor at the Faculty of Sciences of the UNAM teaching the subjects of “Introduction to Computer Science”, “Data Structures”, “Basics of Databases”, “Computer Architecture” and “Concurrent Computing”. Professionally, he has developed systems to perform big data searches, distributed systems integration, web based GIS, web applications for administration tasks, database and software design and hybrid mobile apps.

  He has worked in projects for organizations like Public Security Secretariat of Mexico City (SSPDF), Institute of Marine Sciences and Limnology, UNAM, IIMAS, UNAM and currently at the Geotechnology in Infrastructure Transport and Sustainability Unit (GITS) at the Institute of Geography (UNAM) where has collaborated as a developer of: the Integral System of Results of Evaluations (SIRE) for the National Institute for the Evaluation of Education (INEE) from 2014 to 2016, the Information System Prototype to Promote Road Safety for the Collaborative Safety Research Center Toyota (CSRC-TOYOTA) from 2015 to 2016 and the visual shared network management service for the Telecommunications Investment Promotion Agency PROMTEL in 2017.

• Luis Alberto Montecillo Salaslmage and Media Manager

  He has a Bachelor in Graphic Communication Design from the Metropolitan Autonomous University (UAM) and a Master in Communication with Virtual Media with honorable mention from the Research Institute of Communication and Culture. He has experience in various design activities and is a specialist in frontend technologies, UI and multimedia development for diverse applications from interactive and high impact corporate presentations to Web design and development, which has allowed him to participate in local, national and international projects. As a complement to his profile, he emphasizes his skill in retouching and digital manipulation, editorial design, corporate design, photography and editing and post-production of video.

  Currently and since 2010, he is responsible for lmage and Media in the GITS Unit of the Institute of Geography of the UNAM, highlighting his participation in the digital-interactive version of the National Safety Atlas update Vial 2010, design and development of the interactive Atlas of the Road Network of Mexico and the development of a User Interface for the Specialized Geoportal in Transportation as well as other systems and webapps developed by GITS. He participated in multidisciplinary projects of local character with the work team of the Workshop on Projects and Research of Urban Areas and Patrimonial Centers of the UAM, generating proposals and graphic applications in multimedia supports.

• Harvey Spencer Sánchez RestrepoTechnical Advisor in Education

  He is a technical advisor to GITS since 2012 and specializes in public policies, evaluation and complex systems.

  Harvey Spencer Sánchez Restrepo is a 39-year-old Mexican professional working in the development and management of long-scale evaluations, geostatistical systems for managing high-level public policies and mathematical modeling of complex systems. During his professional career, he has held several top-level positions with multiple budgets of great magnitude and has been the founder of three institutions: The National Institute of Educational Evaluation of Ecuador (Ineval, 2012), The Latin American Agency for Evaluation and Public Policy (Aleph, 2017). , The unit of Geotechnology in Infrastructure Transport and Sustainability of the UNAM (GITS, 2010). Furthermore, he has been a member of the International Advisory Group and National Project Manager of the following OECD projects: The Programme for International Students Assessment (PISA), The Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competences (PIACC).
  He is a member of the High Level Technical Council and National Coordinator of the Regional Evaluation of education`s quality within UNESCO`s evaluation laboratory (LLECE), as well as founder of the Ecuadorian admission system to higher education (SNNA,2011). He has also designed and implemented the first evaluation of Panama’s education and learning (Crecer, 2017) and has promoted educational and evaluation policies in several Latin American Countries.