Views on Geographic Information System (GIS) and Its
Applications
Salvador T. Miranda, Jr.
A geographic
information system (GIS) is a technological tool for comprehending geography
and making intelligent decisions. GIS organizes geographic data so that a
person reading a map can select data necessary for a specific project or task. A
thematic map has a table of contents that allows the reader to add layers of
information to a base map of real-world locations. A good GIS program
is able to process geographic data from a variety of sources and integrate it
into a map project. GIS
maps are interactive. On the computer screen, map users can scan a GIS map in
any direction, zoom in or out, and change the nature of the information contained
in the map. They can choose whether to see the roads, how many roads to see,
and how roads should be depicted. Then they can select what other items they
wish to view alongside these roads such as storm drains, gas lines, rare
plants, or hospitals. Some GIS programs are designed to perform sophisticated calculations
for tracking storms or predicting erosion patterns. GIS applications can be
embedded into common activities such as verifying an address. From routinely
performing work-related tasks to scientifically exploring the complexities of
our world, GIS gives people the geographic advantage to become more productive,
more aware, and more responsive citizens of planet Earth (ESRI, 2014)
According to (Gethis, 2008) , the tremendous
response to GIS over the last 20 years did not happen by chance. As children, when
we matured from being self-centered individuals to externally oriented people, we
developed a strong sense of place and a strong curiosity about the world around
us. The spatial point of view was latent within us. Educational theorists have
always said that a spatial perspective exists among all normal people. GIS and all of its
related techniques and methods have helped open our geographic door. Now we
"see everything," manipulate it, overlay it, add to it, and make
great prints of what we have created. One of the wonders of these discoveries
and activities is that many of us earn our keep being professional spatialists.
I use the word spatialists purposefully, because it is by virtually manipulating
earth space that we have tweaked our natural tendency to develop our spatial
cognitive abilities. "Spatial" has meaning to the extent that it is
spatial concepts that hold us together and allow us to skip all the preliminaries
and get right to our interactions with the earth, with maps, and with
colleagues.
Exploration of our
planet through fieldwork and, hence, discovery of new places is still on-going,
but so is the exploration of environmental databases, even information spaces
that do not necessarily include spatial data. Therefore, "discovery"
of a place does not necessarily mean having to "be there" in the field.
Under the umbrella of cyberinfrastructures, exciting new research topics are
being developed in the areas of Web GIS (e.g., modeling, algorithms, data
structures, stability, performance, and other computing issues), ontological libraries
and semantic interoperability within Web GIS, and networks of data and metadata
clearinghouses that are being built with open-specification Web mapping services
and Web feature services. So in our quest to build a "digital
earth"—global access to all possible geographic data about places on the
surface and the subsurface—researchers and practitioners face many enticing challenges,
including the development of visualization systems with user-friendly
interfaces that enable the analysis, modeling, and simulation of data, as well
as just the simple viewing of it (Wright, 2007) .
Reality is
dynamic. In fact, dynamics is so essential to reality that a static world is
difficult to imagine. Space and time penetrate physical, biological, social, and
humanistic inquiries. The accumulative nature of sensing and knowing our world
arises through spatiotemporal experiences and interpretations. Some
disciplines, such as geography and landscape ecology, emphasize the spatial
dimension of world knowledge, and other disciplines, such as history and
climatology, take time centric approaches to organize evidences of reality.
However, it is the space-time integration that provides the explanatory power
to understand and predict reality. In this article, I advocate for the concept
of dynamics GIS to fundamentally rethink the role of geographic information
science as a means to improve our understanding of reality and, through that
understanding, to develop geographic information systems that enhance our
ability to formulate interpretations, make informed decisions, and develop
adaptation strategies for this ever-changing world. Before continuing, I would
like to clarify my use of dynamics GIS instead of dynamic GIS. The emphasis
refers to the fact that a GIS can represent, analyse, and model geographic
dynamics, not that a GIS is dynamic. Several academic publications review the
development of temporal GIS. Most research efforts emphasize the integration of
temporal data into GIS databases. Change and movement are two fundamental
elements in temporal GIS research. Temporal GIS research has prospered in many
applications, such as map animation; change detection; movement tracking; and
spatiotemporal clusters, simulation, and visualization. A later emphasis on
processes and events set forth the basis for a dynamics GIS to reveal the
causes or driving forces responsible for change and movement and the mechanisms
by which the change or movement proceeds. After all, change and movement are
observable elements of dynamics (Yuan, 2008) .
In the world of
GIS, we are still living out the original dreams of the 1960s. An institution
would spend great time and effort to develop a geographic information system.
Note that the term is singular. It implies one integrated system, a centralized
one, built by experts to respond to specific needs. There is some vague hope
that others will beat a path to the door of the big centralized system. If one
of these users wants the data, they will be offered 1974 technology: a File
Transfer Protocol (FTP) to take a copy. FTP has survived virtually unchanged
for more than 30 years. Now implemented as a Web-based portal under the
disguise of a download, this looks modern and sophisticated, but it leads to
the most horrible duplication and proliferation of unsynchronized data
holdings. We have a worldwide communication network, but we are still managing
it with some elements of the telegraph mentality of centralization. Somehow the
official-looking professional presence of a clearinghouse inspires confidence,
even if the business model fails to grasp how the world has changed. In the GIS
community, the movement was fi rst heard under the title of Digital Earth—the
idea that libraries of information could be referenced by location as a special
kind of content index. The term also tied in a real-time camera pointed at the
Earth from orbit. Although Al Gore did not invent the Internet, his name and
office were used to validate the Digital Earth vision. The term geo web is
perhaps a better term for the technical trick to search for content based on location.
Certainly the emphasis on spatial search is the key to Google Earth and
Microsoft'sVirtual Earth. Yet these initiatives miss the social side of
networking. One of the key elements of the technology is the empowerment of
citizens to produce their own spatial information, then to present it publicly.
This overthrows the specialist model of the centralized model from decades past
(Christman, 2007) .
Bibliography
Christman, N.
(2007). Living Inside Network of Knowledge. ARCNews Magazine, pp.25-30.
ESRI. (2014,
December 1). Products, ArcGIS. Retrieved December 1, 2014, from
http://www.esri.com/products/index.html
Gethis, A. (2008).
Essays on Geography and GIS. ArcNews Magazine, pp. 3-4.
Wright, D. (2007).
Exploration in the Age of Digital Earth. ARCNews Magazine, pp.9-16.
Yuan, M. (2008).
Dynamics GIS:Recognizing the Dynamic Reality. ARCNews Magazine,
pp.17-19.
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