LITTLE EARTH · Jamie Popkin
◇ 49.2476° N  124.0807° W — Lantzville, BC

Jamie Popkin

Full-Stack Spatial Developer

I turn maps, sensors, and big geographic data into fast, interactive software that runs anywhere — from PostGIS pipelines and Node APIs to browser-native WebGL terrain. 28 years, from hydrographic charts to real-time viewsheds.

28yr
spatial software
683
public commits · bcgov
50+
engagements delivered
3
continents · NA · Oceania · Africa

Signature work

the deep end
The Skywatch workspace: a translucent teal visibility dome drawn as a triangulated mesh over 3D terrain with amber coastlines and a blue observer marker, alongside the layer/viewshed-style panel and a bird's-eye radar scope. viewshed · line-of-sight · WebGL
R&D showpiece

Skywatch — a real-time viewshed in the browser

An interactive 3D line-of-sight engine: pick any point on real terrain and see exactly what's visible from it, computed and rendered live with WebGL. This is the deep-tech end of my work — DEM meshing, viewshed maths, and Rust → WebAssembly — and the piece I'm proudest of. More lab than product, but it's where the geomatics gets serious.

Selected work

verifiable, not vapourware

BC Road Value Assessment

2018–26
BC Ministry of Forests · Coastal Engineering — sole developer

Provincial-scale DEM & road-network conflation in PostGIS, a bridge-asset “network-crawl” tool, and a forest-engineering dashboard modernised to SvelteKit / MapLibre vector tiles.

PostGISSvelteKitMapLibreNode.js
3,750+ hrscurrent

BC Telemetry Warehouse

2020–21
BC Ministry of Forests — via Quartech

Wildlife GPS-collar telemetry data warehouse: database endpoints, authentication, and React-Hooks state migration.

ReactVueLeafletPostGIS

BC Invasive Species (InvasivesBC)

2020–22
BC Ministry of Environment — via Quartech

Province-wide invasive-species tracking: field-data mobile app, admin portal, GeoJSON coastline processing, Metabase reporting.

ReactOpenLayersGeoServerPostGIS

BC LNG Portal

2019–20
BC Gov Exchange Lab — via Quartech

Public LNG-project tracking & engagement portal with document management and public mapping.

ReactLeafletNode.jsOpenShift

Northeast Restoration Tracker

2024
BC Ministry of Environment — via Quartech

Environmental-restoration tracking: search API, MapLibre performance tuning, React-Hooks render optimisation.

ReactMapLibreTypeScriptNode.js

Mines Digital Trust

2022–23
BC Energy & Mines · Exchange Lab — via Quartech

Digital-trust & compliance platform for the BC mining sector — WebRTC feature work, REST API enhancements, knowledge transfer.

ReactVueWebRTCOpenShift
2,862 hrsgov · no public link

GlobalMaps — Telecom Planning

2019–now
Research ICT Solutions · 6 African nations

Telecom-infrastructure planning across South Sudan, Namibia, Malawi, Uganda, Ethiopia & Kenya — radio-propagation dashboards, MapLibre 3D terrain, and viewshed in Rust / WASM.

SvelteKitMapLibreRust/WASMPostGIS
internationalbehind firewall

VSLS & MoTI Corporate Spatial Web

2012–21
BC Ministry of Transportation & Infrastructure

Real-time highway variable-speed-sign API (WebSocket, HA-clustered) and long-running DriveBC / corporate spatial-web maintenance; replaced a licensed mapping framework with open source.

Node.jsOpenLayersGeoServerOracle
~1,500 hrssince re-platformed

New Zealand Spatial Platforms

2010–24
Lat37 Ltd. / Keewai — private sector

Commercial spatial apps: Catch Analyst lobster-fishery monitoring (millions of records), a Manuka-honey hive-management tool with real-time field data, and an offline-capable crayfish field-data PWA.

Node.jsPostGISAWSD3
14 yrsprivate · NDA

Skywatch — Interactive Viewshed

R&D
Little Earth — browser-native 3D line-of-sight

WebGL terrain viewshed engine (Three.js + Rust/WASM). The technical showpiece — see the featured section above.

Three.jsWebGLRust/WASMDEM
live demoopen ↗

Things you can actually click

self-hosted · durable

Capabilities

GIS · geomatics · web mapping
Languages
JavaScript (~20 yr), TypeScript, SQL / PL-SQL (~24 yr), Python, Perl, Bash, R, Elixir, Rust
Frontend
React, Vue, SvelteKit, Angular, D3; Leaflet, OpenLayers, MapLibre GL (3D), Turf, offline-first PWAs
Backend
Node.js / Express, Django, Phoenix, REST / WebSockets; PostgreSQL, Oracle Spatial, GeoServer, Martin
GIS / geomatics
PostGIS, ArcGIS / ArcInfo / AML, QGIS, GDAL / OGR, GRASS, FME, CARIS; DEM & terrain analysis, viewshed, vector tiles, H3
DevOps / cloud
Linux (~24 yr), Docker, OpenShift, Kubernetes, AWS, GitHub Actions, CI/CD, Git