GIS in the real worldGIS has far reaching applications; everything from farming healthier crops to preventing loss of life as a result of natural disasters.
GIS versus the Volcano: In 1006, a Volcano just outside of Yogyakarta, Indonesia erupted, killing many thousands of people. It plastered the entirety of central Java with hot ash and mud. The eruption was so large that it destroyed an entire civilisation and way of life for the Hindu Mataram kingdom. The volcano, known locally as Gunung Merapi (Mountain of Fire) would go on to erupt again in 1786, 1822, 1872, 1930 and then again in 1994. With thousands of lives lost, vulcanologists turned to GIS as a means to understand when and where the volcano would erupt again. On May 26th 2006, things were not right. The ground was rumbling, and sensors were crossing safety thresholds. All the while, a group of response-team scientists had been working for months with tools such as ArcGIS to predict the forcefulness of the explosion, the pyroclastic flows and the gas emissions, in a desperate attempt to minimise loss of human life and infrastructure.
Using diverse sensors such as GeoEye (discussed later in this article), ground based seismic vibration monitoring, gas emission detection tools and aerial photography; ArcGIS could build a powerful image of the potential path of destruction.
GIS versus the famine: On May 2nd, 2008, cyclone Nargis hit the coastline of Myanmar (once known as Burma). The storm was so intense, and created such high seas, that it flooded inland area of approximately 5180 square kilometres. More than 90 000 people died. Perhaps more concerning for the long term than the lives lost, was the damage to a vital agricultural industry. The cyclone destroyed much of the prime rice land (Yangon, Mon and Bago), as well as stores and livestock. By the end of the cyclone, 62% of the land used to grow the countries rice had been destroyed through inundation of sea water.
Back in the United States, the FAS (Foreign Agricultural Services) were producing reports about Myanmar's damaged agricultural areas. Using RS-GIS (Remote Sensing) and NASA's moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS), composite sets of images were being put together to understand the true extent of the damage.
Once the extent of the flooding itself had been determined, it was then possible to start working backwards to figure out just how the regeneration of crops would take place, and how the area would recover. Due to the lack of cooperation of the Burmese military, it was very difficult to provide foreign aid effectively or quickly, so the best the rest of the world could do in an attempt to save lives was make some analysis as to the areas that should be prioritised for aid and make recommendations to the Burmese government. The results of the interpolation of remote sensing data and simple aerial telemetry built a powerful picture of who needed help and who didn't.
GIS on defence: Like so many other clichéd statements about military technology in the world today, war is not waged on foot or by hand, anymore. It is in the sky, inside computers and all about data. The power of GIS is realised in military applications, as so well exemplified by many a war movie.
An exemplification of the continued use of GIS in defence is the GMOSS (Global Monitoring of Security and Stability) system.
Using GMOSS as the network aggregate, a database has been created of the attacks on the gas and oil pipelines in Iraq dating back as far as June 2003 and monitored by the EUSC (European Union Satellite Centre). In attempting to combat terrorism, the database maps the physical infrastructure from imagery and generic cable maps, then overlays the sights of the attacks geospatially to derive relevant security information such as the pipeline sections under more intense attacks, the relationship of the attacks to border proximity and the frequency of the attacks.
Issue: 137 | June, 2012