Since yesterday, November 20, was International GIS Day, I say happy GIS Day to you! That may beg the question for some of you, "What is GIS?" GIS is short for geographic information systems. Now that I've used jargon to clarify an acronym, I'll try to explain what GIS really is.
Space: the Final Frontier
We geographers have a joke about our discipline: geography is what geographers do. We talk about the importance of "where?" as a question, and offer up slogans like, "Everything happens somewhere." But really, the best definition of geography goes a little something like this; geography is the study of how phenomena interrelate to one another spatially.
This is best explained by way of example, so let's take a look at South America. There is a reason why the Atacama Desert is the driest place on earth in terms of total rainfall, and the Amazon Basin is one of the wettest. Both of these are a partial result of their location in relationship to the Andes Mountains. By defining the spatial factors that cause the patterns, we can examine why these phenomena occur in such close proximity–such is the definition of geography.
Geography... Peyton Manning... and Beyoncé?
When I meet people socially and get asked "What do you do?" I usually say I'm a geographer, that I do computer mapping, and then cite a couple of examples that most everyone recognizes–they nod and smile that they understand. Now to call GIS computer mapping is like saying, "Peyton Manning plays football," or, "Beyoncé sings well." While true, it misses a whole lot. GIS allows us to analyze phenomena geographically to understand the relationships that exist among them, like the relationship taking place between the Atacama and the Amazon.
Again, examples help. Let's say we have a client who wants to find a location for a new facility, one that fits within their criteria; they have to be at least a half mile away from all rivers; they want to be within a quarter mile of a major highway; they want to be no more than forty-five minutes from an airport; they prefer wooded areas; they want to be within fifty miles of the District of Colombia. GIS analyzes each of those phenomena to show where such a location exists. I can enter the basic data, or map it, if you will, into the GIS. I may have to derive it from a source like LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) or aerial imagery, but regardless of how I came to have the data, I can create a query and generate new geographic information that shows the perfect locations that fit the client's needs.
You Probably Use GIS and Don't Even Realize It
If you're like me, you check the traffic on your smart phone with a map app before driving home from work. When you do this, you're creating a geographic query that answers, "How long will it take me to get home today using this route?" The GIS underlying those tools determine alternate routes for you to take, calculate the travel time according to the speed limits associated with the routes, perhaps even factor in other traffic related data like traffic signals or red light cycles, and finally account for real-time traffic averages. All of this data ends up telling you how early or late you'll be for dinner.
Dewberry, as a national leader in geographic information processing, celebrates GIS Day every day by capturing, deriving, processing, analyzing and presenting some of the most complex geospatial datasets in the world. We invite you to contact us to understand how important the saying "Everything happens somewhere," really is, and how Dewberry maps a changing world.