ArcGIS Tutorial Blog

Write Up:

This Lab was all about getting to play around and familiarize ourselves with ArcGIS, a brand of GIS software. Essentially we were walked through a five part tutorial in which we created a mapping system representing all the data involved in a plan to expand an airport. The software allowed us to combine different "levels" of information (eg land use, population density, etc) together to see how they all interacted with one another. We added roads, created graphs, assigned colors to data types, and in doing so, were able to get a pretty clear picture of what the effects of the expansion project would be.

Actually using the software really made me realize how useful GIS is, and why it is in such hot demand right now. It can be useful in almost any area: land conservation, urban planning, remote sensing, utility management (and basically every other kind of management, including human resources!), agriculture, and basically everything else. GIS does it all - it inputs data, stores that data, edits, analyzes and displays that data, and in the end, makes for a really great tool for informed decision making. 

Unlike with conventional maps, which are two dimensional and difficult to integrate with one another, GIS is very three-dimensional, in that you can add and subtract geographic and statistical data at will. In the map we did for lab, we were steadily increasing the amount of information our map was displaying, in order to show us just how much one can do with the software. However, just as easily we could have been using it to display only a few, isolated areas of interest, and seeing how they interact with one another.

Yet, the part of GIS that makes it the most useful, I think, is its ability to incorporate time into the picture. GIS not only can accurately model the complexities of the real world with it's various layers, it can show how they will continue to interact and change over time. Thus it's a really great tool for predicting what will happen, given that x, y, and z interact like this, allowing companies/environmentalists/individuals/whomever to optimize their behavior.

This is not to say that GIS is without certain drawbacks. As was made clear to me doing this lab, GIS is REALLY COMPLICATED. To be proficient in it, one really needs to have a decent understand of computers, and data manipulation. In our lab, all of the hard work was done for us: all of the data was handed to us on a silver platter, and we had our hand held every step of the way as we moved it around. And of course, this means that GIS is very dependent on the source material of one's date: ie all the various inputs. If your data is not accurate, then your map will not be accurate. Or it could be accurate, but still conflict with someone else's also-accurate map, if the two have conflicting agendas. 

In summary: GIS is a great, awesome tool BUT - be careful with it! it's not the easiest to use, and is often employed to serve someone's agenda, and thus should be taken with a grain of salt, like all things.