X-ray: Jake Carroll peers into the GIS way of life.
Your plane has crash-landed on a tiny island in what you suspect to be the Pacific. There are no nice coconut palms, no hammocks to kick back in, and not a sign of a helpful local. The survivors are in a blind panic because they have no idea where they are. You whip out your trusty GPS enabled mobile phone. Aha! You have cellular network coverage and a GPS signal. You're on the island of 'Greene Punty' which, as it turns out, is somewhere near the republic of Kiribati, too small for any government to care about, unless it involves nuclear detonation testing. Score one for you. You might just have saved lives, and if not lives, at least some sanity.
In the movies, information systems are made to look cool, sexy and sometimes arcane. It's all about the zooming in on things from above the earth, then peering into buildings with some kind of magical X-ray and thermal imaging device. The glorious 'eye in the sky' can see everything, everywhere, all of the time. Some random military guy screams 'enhance' and magically, we've got pixel information and bit depth where there was none before, all powered by the magic of HollywoodOSTM. Chill out. They'll spot you and your fellow Lost extras in no time.
We are made to believe that big brother really is watching us from every angle and we can be seen from space. This month, we're asking you to don that tin foil reflector hat (take off the pirate hat from last month) as we look into the science and spectacular technology of geographical information systems (GIS).
Give me some of that UnobtainiumJames Cameron showed us recently with Avatar that three dimensionally visualised geospatial data could be used in numerous ways for good and evil. Cool maps on floating screens manipulated by touch were used to zoom in on a rich deposit of 'Unobtainium' that also happened to be home to an entire race of aliens. Queue environmental impact concerns and a little bit of genocide. Cameron showed us Geographical Information Systems in action.
Back in the real world, GIS have long been an established technology for defence, agriculture, geospatial analysis, environmental conservation, forestry and preventative early warning from natural disasters. GIS can be defined simply as any set of tools or systems that analyse, collate, store and manage data that is in some way linked to a spatial location. More generically, (in modern times) GIS can be considered as any software stack that allows a user to create ad hoc queries to learn something about location based data.
All too often we consider 'systems' intimately linked with computers. The history of GIS dates back to a time long before computers (or any large scale calculation mechanism or machine). GIS dates back to the 1850's in the time of the great cholera epidemic, in London, England.
The GIS used in 1854-55 to track the cholera outbreak was cartography and statistics: locations, times and incidence of cholera outbreaks marked on a paper map. The picture that was built up showed a 'sector' of London with a high density of dots, where each dot represented a case of Cholera. The scientists working on the problem made some inferences about what the density of those dots could mean, and thanks to the map, were able to isolate the infected well within the area with the highest density of outbreaks. The well was shut down and cholera outbreaks ground to a halt. GIS in action.
Today, GIS represents something much larger and more accessible to a wider audience. Google Earth, Maps, WikiMapia, NASA's World Wind, Microsoft Virtual Earth, Bhuvan and Marble all roll into the picture. The explosion of information (and within this, freedom of information and the information age) has given us resources at our fingertips. Map data, and geospatial data is just a part of that.
Issue: 133 | February, 2012