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Anca Brisan
By Yardi Blog Staff on Feb 10, 2014 in People
Anca Brisan is a woman of many talents. As a cartographer at Yardi’s Cluj office, she spends her time deeply immersed in technica
l activities, creating parcel-level maps for all of the major cities in the United States.
A graduate of Geography and Territorial planning, Anca completed a master’s degree at the Babes – Bolyai University in Cluj with a full scholarship at the University of Glasgow, Scotland – Msc in Geoinformation Technology and Cartography.
She has been with Yardi’s PropertyShark for more than three years now and her involvement was instrumental in the rapid development of the firm’s mapping team. Her incredible passion for spatial data, her pragmatic vision and ability to coherently render spatial coordinates have been of real help in consolidating PropertyShark as a must-have research tool for real estate professionals.
PropertyShark provides comprehensive property reports for both the commercial and residential sectors, including pre-foreclosure and foreclosure listings, sales comparables, maps, building photos, for sale and lease listings. When zooming in on a property parcel, users get a mini-report that includes property summary, zoning information, building photo, last sale price, air rights and much more.
“We do parcel based maps for all the counties where we have property reports, if we have the geometry data representing the parcels,” Anca told us. “We receive our spatial data from our colleagues in NYC, Data Acquisition Team and, using the data processed by the Data Team, we proceed to creating complex maps highlighting different aspects of the real estate market for more than 435 counties in 41 states. We are only five cartographers and we have a total number of 3401 maps, with 230 distinct maps and an average speed of 75 maps/week. Each map is an organized puzzle of small tiled images. We have more than 1.317.779.000 tiles in the maps database. Our internal joke is that we are payed 1$ a tile each.”
For providing such detailed maps of the U.S. counties, Anca’s team works closely with other Yardi departments, including Data, Neighborhood Research (NRT) and Marketing. The Businesses in NYC and School Attendance maps are great examples of the successful collaboration between the Maps and NRT departments.
“Besides the standard maps we make for each county (default land cover, land use, tax maps, price per square foot, recent sales, year built etc.), we also make custom maps that can come as suggestions from the Marketing Team, like this map we made illustrating the Median Sale Price/Median Household Income Ratio for New York City.”
“If there’s data available and we consider it can be relevant for a certain area, we take on the project on our own initiative,” she further explained. “We also try to stay up to date with significant happenings and major events; for example, we created a Halloween event location map for Halloween and after Hurricane Sandy we added the new FEMA ABFE Zones overlay to the great map collection we have for NYC.”
When it comes to pursuing the things she is passionate about, Anca’s dedication has no limits. It’s after work that her active, most vivacious side kicks in. Cycling, mountain hiking, ski touring and martial arts are just a few of her spare time endeavors, each challenging and rewarding in its own way.
As both an urban and recreational cyclist, she bikes all the way to work every day (weather permitting) and loves exploring nature on two wheels whenever she gets the chance. Retezat Mountains, Vladeasa, Şureanu Mountains as well as Scrind, the place where she grew up with a loving family, all trigger happy memories and make her smile as she talks about her many adventures.
Two years ago Anca discovered a real passion for shotokan, a style derived from traditional Japanese Karate. Its techniques are self-defense based, and their effectiveness comes from body control, rhythm, timing, and agility. With a background in ballet and theatrical performance, she found it easy to relate to this new form of art which emphasizes correct posture, correct joint alignment, and formality of basic technique.
“I joined my local Karate club to get fit and achieve mental relaxation,” Anca explained. “And I still look at it this way although my friends joke about it saying that karate is my second job. It’s true though, I never miss a practice”, she added in a serious voice. “I enjoy the commitment and the respect that this sport entails, even if we’re technically engaged in ‘fighting’. I also like the fact that I can see evolution in my exercises; even if the choreography of a kata (a pre-arranged fighting scenario) does not change, the way I’m performing it does. Additionally, I find the whole martial arts history fascinating, especially when thinking of its evolution, the steps it went through and where it got now.”
Trained by emeritus master Marin Bucur, a fifth degree black belt in traditional Karate, Anca represented Romania at the 5th World Traditional Fudokan Shotokan Karate-Do Championship held in Walcz, Poland, November 27th – December 2nd, 2013. She entered the Enbu Women-Men competition alongside Alin Morar, a fellow karate practitioner at the Seishin club in Cluj. The proficient duo brought home the bronze, making everyone, including the Yardi team in Cluj, proud of their evolution. Way to go, Anca! Osu!
Learn more about Anca:
1. What is your favorite type of music?
I like all kinds of music, I can’t say I prefer a certain type; it’s all about the context and the mood I’m in.
2. What is your favorite book of all time? Any favorite movie? TV shows?
I don’t read as much as I’d like to these days, but when I get the chance I read biographies, psychology or technical books. A book that I’ve read and marked me deeply is Elephant Memory by Antonio Lobo Atunes; I don’t know if it had the same effect on me now, but at the time I found it inspiring. I love movies, I can’t say I have a favorite one; I resonate in a distinct manner with each of them. A while ago, I tried to watch a few of the movies that didn’t seem quite well positioned on the NYC filming locations map; it’s interesting to try to spot locations from a movie like Kramer vs. Kramer or figure out why Working Girl’s filming location is settled in the middle of the Upper New York Bay waters.
3. Where is the most interesting place you’ve ever traveled to?
It’s hard to say, every place is special in its own way. But I remember one of the most challenging trips I ever embarked on was back in 2003 when I took a Greyhound bus from New York to Salt Lake City. I was alone and it was my first trip outside Romania in a culture that was different from mine, meeting all kinds of people, some of which were very nice. When I got to my final destination in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, the place where I was supposed to work for the summer, my employee said: “Oh, Anca, I had a first class plane ticket for you, from New York to Jackson Hole, but I couldn’t reach you in time.”
4. Is there anything in particular you’d like to see or travel to in the future?
There are many places I would like to see in Romania and Europe and maybe even travel to Asia and Africa. There are so many places to see.
5. What do you like best about your job?
I love my job, having the chance to work with so much spatial data, in a great team and great environment. I think it’s good that people get more and more spatially aware and the speed of development for almost all map/location related aspects is fast and challenging.
6. What do you want to be when you grow up?
A Samurai cartographer 😉
7. Do you speak any other languages, and which ones?
I understand some French and Spanish, too.
