GIS Applications

Outline

One day in life with GISScience, geography and applicationsApplied problem solvingKey example applications

GovernmentBusiness and service planningLogisticsEnvironment

A Day of Life with GISActivity GIS Application

Alarm goes off Electricity asset management

Shower Hydraulic model predicts water usage

Mail Target consumer marketing

Partner’s Work Teach GIS

School transport School bus route optimization

A Day of Life with GIS (2)

Activity GIS Application

Train to work Real time traffic monitoring

Read newspaper Sustainable forestry

Work City GIS Manager

Lunch Precision agriculture

Shopping Target consumer marketing

Public participation On-line collaboration

GIS Interest is RisingApplications via InternetPrice reductionsGreater awarenessImproved ease of useBetter technologyProliferation of dataCommercial software packagesReal applicationsProven cost:benefit cases

Applied Problem Solving Goals

Rational resource allocationMonitoring spatial distributionsUnderstanding the importance of placeUnderstanding processesPrescription of strategies for maintenance and conservation

Five Ms of Applied GIS

MappingMeasuringMonitoringModelingManaging

Roger’s Diffusion Model

Innovators – risk takersEarly Adopters – opinion formersEarly Majority – peers followers Late Majority – mass market trend followers Laggards – oriented to the past

Local Government

Major user of GIS70-80% of local government tasks are geographically-related

Many applications, e.g.Asset inventoriesTransportation planningLand managementEconomic developmentElectionsPublic health delivery

Tax Assessment

Raising revenue from property taxes

Maintain property registerEvaluate land/property value fairlyDeal with public enquiries and complaints

Assign value to property based onCost of replacementIncome if rentedMarket comparison with recent sales

Business and Service Planning

Application of GIS to retail market decision makingGIS has been applied at all scales

Operational – processing day-to-day transactions (e.g. delivery vehicle routing)Tactical – allocation of resources to short-term (weekly) problems (e.g. target marketing promotional campaigns)Strategic – longer term goals and missions (e.g. store location planning)

Geo-demographic profile analysis for business and service planning

Logistics

Many applications of GIS in transportation and logistics, e.g.

Infrastructure maintenanceTravel planningRoutingVehicle tracking

Two componentsStatic – infrastructureDynamic - vehicles

Planning for Emergency Evacuation

Major natural and human-induced events may necessitate area evacuationsGIS can be used to create effective evacuation vulnerability maps based on

Distribution of populationStreet map

Model demand and impact of bottlenecks on speed of evacuation using standard GIS network tools

Adjacency, connectivity, shortest path network calculation

Evacuation vulnerability map of the area of Santa Barbara, CA, USA.

Environment

Many environmental applications of GIS

Natural resource inventoryEnvironmental remediationSustainable developmentPrecision agricultureNatural hazard mitigationEnvironmental impact analysis

Impact of urban sprawl

Summary

GIS is fundamentally a problem-solving scienceMany application of GIS across a very wide range of areasUnderstanding the science behind applications will help

Interpretation of resultsUnderstanding the weight that results carry