Selected work · 1998 – 2026 · Vancouver Island, BC
I'm Jamie Popkin. Since 1998 I've built software around maps and geographic data — first as a GIS specialist, then as a web-mapping architect, and today as a full-stack developer shipping production spatial systems. Little Earth is how I do that work now.
The through-line
I started in the late 1990s doing hands-on GIS and cartographic production — Arc/Info, Perl, Oracle — building the spatial-data plumbing behind provincial land-use planning in British Columbia.
As the web grew up, so did the work: desktop GIS gave way to web mapping, and I moved into JavaScript and full-stack development while keeping the spatial and database fundamentals. Over the last decade that's meant delivering modern, containerized geospatial applications — React and Vue front ends, Node and PostGIS back ends, CI/CD on government infrastructure.
The constant through all of it is spatial: turning maps, sensors, and big geographic datasets into software people can actually use. I work as a one-person practice, which means a single point of contact who can carry a spatial project from the database to the pixels.
§ Selected work
A cross-section across two-plus decades — government and private, field data to real-time systems.
Province of BC · Forests
Long-running spatial-data and analysis work for BC's forests ministry — turning province-scale elevation and resource datasets into tools that support forest engineering and natural-resource decisions.
Vue · Node · PostGIS · GDAL
Province of BC · Transportation
Web applications and data pipelines feeding the province's transportation systems, including variable-speed-limit data surfaced to the public through DriveBC.
Node · React · D3 · OpenLayers
DriveBCProvince of BC · Mining
Full-stack work on a compliance platform for BC's mining sector, built and shipped with modern CI/CD on the province's container platform.
React · TypeScript · OpenShift · GitHub Actions
Open source · bcgov
Field mobile data collection plus an administrative web portal with spatial analysis, helping track and manage invasive species across British Columbia.
React · PostGIS · WMS / WFS
Open source · bcgov
Ingestion and mapping of high-frequency wildlife GPS-collar telemetry — a moving picture of animal movement for biologists and managers.
Node · PostgreSQL · web mapping
Open source · bcgov
Tracking environmental restoration projects in BC's northeast, with rich spatial visualization and document management.
React · MapLibre · Node
Private · Lat37
A run of applications for a marine and environmental data company — supply-chain traceability, fisheries catch analysis, and long-running data tools.
D3 · PostGIS · AWS
International · Research ICT
Geospatial web applications supporting telecommunications planning for clients in Namibia, Uganda, and beyond.
MapLibre · GeoServer · PostGIS
Several of these projects are open source on the BC Government's GitHub — see github.com/bcgov. My own experiments live at github.com/popkinj.
Foundations · 1998 – 2010
The early years were spent deep in provincial GIS: the land-use plan for Haida Gwaii (then the Queen Charlotte Islands) and its published map atlas, landscape-unit planning, and years of spatial-data infrastructure and analysis for BC's land and resource agencies.
That era — Arc/Info, AML, Perl, Oracle, SDE, the first web-mapping frameworks — is where the spatial instincts came from, and it still shapes how I build things today.
Whether it's a spatial system, a web map, or a stubborn data problem — I'd be glad to hear about it.