Rachel Lawson was the 2023 New Zealand Esri Young Scholar while studying at the University of Auckland. Her award-winning project examined the effect of the New Zealand International Convention Centre fire on human mobility, combining GIS datasets and social-media imagery to analyse disrupted movement, smoke exposure and public response.
Her project is a documented example of GIS being used to study a recent urban emergency through mobility and volunteered digital information, and it connected university GIS study with the international Esri Young Scholar programme.