What is GIS? GIS Applications How has it been used in science Trends

1. Geography Awareness Week 2013
Why Does
GIS Matter?
Song Gao
UCSB Geography
Email: sgao@geog.ucsb.edu
http://www.geog.ucsb.edu/~sgao/
Nov 19, 2013

2. GIS in Daily Life
Wayfinding, Navigation, Location-based Search and Decision Making

3. Content
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What is GIS?
GIS Applications
How has it been used in science
Trends
Nov 19, 2013, Song Gao

4. What is GIS?
A geographic information system (GIS) integrates hardware,
software, and data for capturing, managing, analyzing, and
displaying all forms of geographically referenced information.
GIS allows us to view, understand, question, interpret, and visualize
data in many ways that reveal spatial relationships, patterns, and
trends in the form of digital maps, globes, reports, and charts.
Nov 19, 2013, Song Gao

5. Three Views of GIS
Database
GIS
Analysis
Visualization

6. (1) GIS as GeoDatabase
• Geodatabase: a spatial database containing data
that associate with geographic information.
Attributes + Geometry
http://www.census.gov/geo/maps-data/data/tiger.html

7. (2) GIS as GeoVisualization
• Geovisualization: a set of intelligent maps and
other views that shows features and feature
relationships on the earth's surface.

9. Mapping Every McDonald's in the U.S.

10. Starbucks vs. Dunkin Donuts
http://www.boston.com/yourtown/specials/starbucks_vs_dunkin_donuts/

11. (3) GIS as Spatial Analysis
• Geoprocessing: a set of tools take geographic
information from existing data, apply spatial
analysis functions to identify patterns or discovery
knowledge.
P.A. Longley, M.F. Goodchild, D.J. Maguire, and D.W. Rhind (2011) Geographical Information Systems and Science. Third Edition. Hoboken,
NJ: Wiley.

12. Find the “Hot Spot” Regions

13. Content
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What is GIS?
GIS Applications
How has it been used in science
Trends
Nov 19, 2013, Song Gao

14. What things
do you think
are related to
GIS?

15. The Canada Geographic Information
System
• Roger Tomlinson
– IBM contracts 1964-68
• 7 layers of land characteristics
–
–
–
–
soil capability for agriculture
recreation capability
current land use
….
• To assess the current use of Canadian land
– to measure area, plan new uses

16. Esri UC 2011

17. Natural Resources Management
Esri UC 2011

18. Esri UC 2011

19. Delivery Route Planning

21. Esri UC 2011

22. Geospatial data and tools have the potential
to contribute to the saving of lives, the
limitation of damage, and reduction in the
costs to society of dealing with emergencies

23. Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda GIS

24. Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda GIS

25. Hurricane Sandy Tweetbeat
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3AqdIDYG0c
SGI

26. Google Earth

27. Discrete global grid based on the
Icosahedron (20 triangles, 1:4
recursive subdivision)
Ross Heikes and David Randall,
Colorado State University
Question:
How to divide the
globe into different
levels of details?

29. Content
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What is GIS?
GIS Applications
How has it been used in science
Trends
Nov 19, 2013, Song Gao

31. Source: Gilbert E. W. 1958 ‘Pioneer maps of health and disease in England.’ Geographical Journal, 124: 172–183

32. Terrain Viewshed Analysis
• A viewshed is an environmental area that is visible
to the human eye from a fixed point.

33. Terrain Viewshed Analysis

35. Noise Assessment
http://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/54696/how-to-create-noise-maps-open-source-orscripted-in-arcgis

36. Human
Study
Social
Science
Environment
Spatially Integrated Social Science
http://www.csiss.org/

37. History and Archaeology
Overlap Layers
Digitizing features for excavations

38. GIS to identify social divide

39. Information Age
• Location Awareness Devices（Mobile Phone、GPS)
• Large scale spatio-temporal datasets

41. Tracking the $ dollar bills
http://rocs.northwestern.edu/clips/

42. Phone call patterns in different places
Phone call patterns in different places
AM 03-04
AM 06-07
PM 15-16
PM 18-19
http://www.spatial.ucsb.edu/events/local13/posters.php
AM 09-10
PM 21-22
By Song Gao

43. Mobile Landscape:
People in MIT SENSEable City Lab have developed a continuously changing realtime maps of cell phone usage in Graz, Austria.
http://senseable.mit.edu/grazrealtime/

44. Content
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What is GIS?
GIS Applications
How it has been used in science
Trends
Nov 19, 2013, Song Gao

45. Online GIS
Access GIS techniques without installing any software
on your computers.

46. Cloud GIS/ Mobile GIS

47. 3D-GIS

48. Space-Time GIS

49. The GPS tracks of individuals in
spatio-temporal space
Regular
Irregular
by Song Gao

50. Volunteered Geographic Information
(VGI)
• Citizens as sensors: the world of volunteered
geography – by Professor Michael F. Goodchild
www.wikimapia.org

51. www.openstreetmap.org

52. OpenStreetMap Edits in US
Created by ITO World

53. Mapping Social Media
by Paul Butler
https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/visualizing-friendships/469716398919

54. Crandall et al. 2009. Mapping the world’s photos.
http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~crandall/papers/mapping09www.pdf

55. Dots
Yellow: Photos
Blue: Tweets
White: Both
by Erik Fischer
http://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/sets/72157627140310742/

56. Tracks inferred from Flickr postings
(http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~crandall/papers/mapping09www.pdf)
See also http://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/sets/72157624209158632/

57. Spatial is special,
To know the unknown!

58. http://www.geog.ucsb.edu/~sgao/