Computers, Society, and Nature

(h/t M. L.)

After delivering countless presents and tidings of joy to the people of the world, Santa Claus is finally taking his operations into the twenty-first century. Data was painstakingly collected by magical GPS technicians, statisticians and advertising companies, and all the Christmas elves have been trained to use state-of-the-art GIS software to improve the efficiency of Santa’s Christmas Eve global journey.

The elves created numerous layers of data, both raster and vector, that will provide Santa and his reindeer with vital information. A vector layer of lines joining cities around the world allows the elves to do shortest path analysis to ensure the trip is completed well before sunrise. Another vector layer consists of points representing every house in the world; symbology is used to differentiate houses with chimneys from those that will require a little more Christmas magic to infiltrate. Also within this layer is data on the location of naughty and nice children, which permitted Santa’s apprentices to make selections and create a new layer consisting only of the houses where nice children live. Raster layers were also created, namely one representing population densities within cities worldwide. The reindeer must know the location of suitable landing areas, and by creating buffer zones around these areas, Santa knows how many houses he can visit without using his sleigh. Finally, another raster layer representing the distribution of Christmas cheer will serve as an indicator of his success in bringing happiness to the people of the world.

Although this information will speed up the Christmas Eve rush, the ridiculous amount of received gift lists was also taken into account. Santa paired up with Google to determine the interests and wants of each person in the world, young and old. The elves simply scrape relevant search subjects and relate it to the attribute table containing house points. Hence, there is no longer a need to check each list twice, which will greatly increase productivity in the workshop.

Evidently, governments are scrambling to get ahold of Santa’s new geodatabase. However, the GIS technology at the elves’ disposal is far too advanced for non-magically assisted computers. Besides, jolly old Saint Nick is keeping his data as elusive as his formula for Christmas spirit.

For a “real world” implementation geospatial technologies for Santa, NORAD created a system to track Santa Claus along his Christmas Eve journey. They use satellites, radars, fighter jets and Santa Cams to collect data for visualization on the Google Earth platform.

Forty seven radars positioned along the northern border of North America closely detect Santa’s sleigh taking off from the workshop. Then, geo-synchronous satellites, that is satellites that remain in the same spot over Earth, detect heat generated from Rudolph’s nose as the sleigh travels all over the world. Throughout the night of Christmas Eve, information on Santa’s whereabouts is loaded onto Google Earth and updated frequently. Numerous cameras used only on Christmas Eve photograph Santa and his reindeer. As the sleigh approaches North America, Norad fighter jets take off from Newfoundland to escort it in safely.

Another clever system for tracking Santa is SantaGPS, but unlike NORAD Tracks Santa, users must pay for the full version. According to feedback entries, the interface is quite easy to use and is easily understandable by children. The system has features like World Map Tracking View, Satellite Tracking View and other novelties like Santa Sounds and Christmas music.

Unfortunately, I have been unable to find blogs by other people who viewed GIS as an asset for Santa himself.

(written by Intro to GIS student, J. L.)

With the growing popularity of Google Maps and other digital earth platforms, it seems that there are an increasing number of interactive applications available to Internet users. Many are targeted at consumers and/or travelers and others are geared towards activists and those seeking to better understand the world around them. One example is the Crisis in Darfur project, a partnership between The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Google Earth. Another example is an interactive map of child poverty across Canada.

To understand exactly what sorts of information one is getting from these sources, one may want to question the way in which it is displayed. Consider the example of the child poverty map. This interactive map allows you to click on the province and “see how your province compares” with others. The information is derived from Statistics Canada’s 2005 figures and provides the total number of children living in poverty, as well as percentages, such as “children under 18 below low-income cutoff.” Unfortunately, the way in which this information is depicted can be rather misleading.

First, the map does not provide any information on sample sizes and for Alberta, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland and Labrador (half of the provinces), “Statistics Canada warns of small sample sizes.” Second, although interactive buttons are displayed for the territories, when one clicks on the point, there is no information about child poverty available. Further, aggregated information is given for all of Canada, but when one clicks to see the information he/she discovers that the “[s]urvey does not cover residents of the territories and people living in institutions, on Indian reserves or in military barracks. Thus, considering the often extreme inequities experienced on Aboriginal reserves throughout the country, the statistics are most likely grossly underestimating the levels of child poverty in Canada. A student of GIS may also wonder about the oversimplification of the data. The differences in concentrations of poverty between rural and urban areas and within urban areas themselves are non-existent on this map. Thus, one can not critically assess “how his or her province compares.”

In conclusion, although interactive maps allow the user to become engaged in the learning process and hopefully become better informed about the world around them, as with any information that one acquires on the Internet, one must be critical of the content and delivery to assess the accuracy and presentation of the data.

(written by Intro to GIS student, H. C.)

Data access and sharing is an issue that I admit is very close to my heart. It’s hard to believe it hadn’t really crossed my mind until last summer, when I spent weeks upon weeks in the field in chest waders and 40°C Southern Ontario weather collecting redundant data. I say this data was redundant because most of it had already been collected by a partner organization to the Canadian governmental organization that employed me (the agency will remain nameless). And why, you ask? Because they had spent employee wages and Canadian tax payer dollars collecting it, but couldn’t decide how to price it out to sell to us. And even though the end result was equally beneficial to both partners, giving the data to us free of charge was completely out of the question.

On a government level, this seems to be a fairly common problem. The Commission on Geosciences, Environment and Resources (CGER) recommends that national policies be implemented to reduce pointless data collection. I think the Canadian government, as well as associated organizations on the provincial level, could benefit greatly from something like it. The United States, for its part, is considering something similar for Florida, and in the USGS Third Annual Caribbean GIS conference the advantages were discussed in detail.

Presumably, some of this redundant gathering is the result of uncoordinated guidelines of data collection. Taking an example from my own experience, the data being collected was physical measurements and locations of culvert barriers to fish mobility, and the other organization had not normalized barrier numbers, photo references, or GPS accuracy. For certain sites, then, it would have made sense for my partner and I to recollect the information we needed. However, for the cases where we actually ran into members of that organization checking their temperature monitors the same day we drove to out-of-the-way sites, we did indeed feel rather ridiculous waiting our turn to crawl down to the culvert and take ten minutes worth of measurements. It’s clear that data sharing would reduce the total cost and effort associated with any data collection initiative, but in the current situation it seems like data is more jealously guarded than shared, even between partners working towards a common goal.

(written by Intro to GIS student, B. Y.)

As a history major I was interested in finding practical applications of geographic information systems (GIS) in any field of history. Although we discuss possible applications of DEMs (digital elevation models) for Art History in class–it was about the Parthenon–I actually found a lot of interesting information and possibilities in archeology. In digging a bit further, it’s interesting that this topic is being widely debated and discussed. I even found a few monographs on the subject.

Within archaeology, the topic is known as GeoArcheology (which is actually more geological study of Archeology, but it involves spatial data management). ESRI actually has a page in its industry section for archeology. ESRI indicates five different possible applications for GIS in archeology: modeling, museums and public education, data management, research, and surveying and excavation. What is interesting about GIS’s application in many industries, but especially for me, is how interdisciplinary it can be. However, in a well established, and in many ways a very old field people may be resistant to the use of technology (think of my parents and computers and the Internet). When researching archeology and GIS you see that many people have acknowledged the boundless possibilities of this kind of union.

I’ve found out what some archeologists have had to say on the topic. According to Wikipedia (not always the best source), many archeologists were early adopters of GIS, many as early as ten years ago [earlier than that–Sieber]. Professor Mark Aldenderfer agrees that the field of archeology has been using GIS and even remote sensing for some time now, but these days the prospects are becoming more exciting due to innovations in the technology. What is most interesting in the article, which was a Q&A with Prof. Aldenderfer (the director of the office of information technology for the department of anthropology at the University of California- Santa Barbara) was the difficulties encountered by archaeologists with GIS. There are two basic kinds of problems: (1) data quality and accuracy, and (2) lack of training, support and infrastructure. Although GIS is becoming more popular in the field, Prof. Aldenderfer points out that there are still very few archaeologists who are GIS experts.

There are however, still many incredible things being done in association with archeology. A few examples illustrate this. One of the most interesting was about the mapping of mausoleums in China from the Tang Dynasty. These mausoleums cover up to 15 kilometers2, but there is not much left of them today except some unrecognizable mounds and a few very large statutes over an area of 5000 km2. Another interesting example is a way GIS supplemented data that was collected by W.E.B. Dubois in the 1890s. He went door to door collecting data for a book he wrote called The Philadelphia Negro. Nearly 100 years later it was reprinted, and the topic was reopened. A GIS analysis of the data was included and unveiled new questions and a potentially deeper analysis of a neighborhood that basically no longer exists (or at least as it was in 1896). These two examples are only a modicum of the information and the actual work going on in the field with GIS and archeology.

(written by Intro to GIS student KdS)

I am just now starting to understand the Geographic Information (GIS) world in its 2D frame. So a 4D GIS seemed like a far fetched idea. I was shocked to learn that it is in fact not that far off at all. 4D GIS is already being implemented in some very interesting ways and in ways that would put 4D GIS to positive uses.

When most people think of using GIS for mapping they think of 2D and maybe even some 3D (into the z-axis), but in the future 4D GIS might become common place. In the realm of physics the 4th dimension is usually associated with time. Applying this to GIS allow us to add time changes to data, creating maps that change as time changes. One could make real time queries and receive real time results.

I came across two examples that illustrate the potential of 4D GIS. The first is already in practice in Kyoto, Japan, called “Kyoto virtual time-space”. The second is a proposed idea for using 4D GIS to create constantly up-to-date maps that account for the constantly moving earth’s surface. This highlights two different but creative uses for 4D GIS technology.

At Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto Japan geography professors Yano Keiji , Nakaya Tomoki, and Isoda Yuzuru are working on a project titled Kyoto virtual time-space. This project utilizes 4D GIS to create a virtual environment of Kyoto Japan, by using 3D modelling that changes over time. One can travel through the streets of Kyoto in both space and time. The researchers hope to create a virtual museum of Kyoto that people would be able to access through virtual reality or the Internet. Aside from being useful as a historical tool, the program has very promising capabilities in urban planning and disaster management. The application can show to the public changes over time and hopefully achieve better social consensus around planning issues because the application can simulate reality. For example, realistic simulations can show the temporal impacts of building new high rises in a region or protecting certain areas. Researchers also talk about the application’s capabilities to create better disaster planning strategies and hazard maps.

The second example is proposed by Rahmi Nurhan Celik, N. Necla Ulugtekin and Caner Guney from Istanbul Technical University. The researchers are geodesists, so they are most interested in measurements and representations of earth. Their macro application of 4D GIS concentrates on the very base of map making so that the actual base map changes with changes of the earth. They argue that GIS, as currently envisioned, is based on stable geospatial information provision, including stable geodetic control and datum, when in fact it needs to be dynamic. In the universe there are no fixed points; everything is moving and so should GIS. The researchers focus on tectonic plates, the movement of which may be very small every year. However, in a earthquake prone area like Turkey a few centimetres can mean major damage and loss of life. They propose a system in which every time you query the data you get data from the time of the query. A series of control stations will always provide up to date data. The authors realize that the application will require considerable international cooperation, although they point out that organizations like the ITRF (International Terrestrial Frame) are already compiling global reference frames, an important step towards this 4D GIS future. They also point out the usefulness of the system for such issues as landslides or even tides. In the future a system like this could take this data and apply artificial intelligence to answer questions about the future of global change. They believe that even though it would require a large amount of effort, the application is well worth it and will soon be a part of the future.

(written by Intro to GIS student, J.J., who’s provided a review of the use of remote sensing for mineral exploration.)

As easily accessible resources are being used up, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find new caches, even in resource-rich continents such as Africa. Cameroon has realized an advantage by using new satellite technology to catalogue its riches, while decreasing its exploration costs. As more foreign capital is invested in Africa – a record $38.8 billion in 2006 – the need to find blocks of previously undiscovered stores is becoming more urgent. Streaming data from 500 miles above the Earth’s surface, satellites use the STeP™ data processing technique (designed by Terra Energy & Resource Technologies, Inc.) to identify potential resource sites. Not only will this reduce the time needed to find, survey and extract resources at sites, but it will also allow the country to properly build infrastructure and allocate resources in a way that will also protect the economic and environmental future of Cameroon.

Satellite imagery has been used since the 1960’s to provide images of the Earth’s surface. In 1972 the United States launched the Landsat program to collect “spectral information from the Earth’s surface.” This has led to the creation of detailed archives that catalogue our interactions with the environment on a global scale, such as urban development and land use. Various other satellite imaging programs have sprung up since then, most notably in Europe with the ERS and Envisat systems. Satellite technology has come a long way, and newer industrial applications include geosensing (as in the case of Cameroon), agriculture, which can help in crop assessment, as well as environmental and meteorological change assessment, and real estate, where developers can use imagery to minimize construction costs and environmental impact.

STePâ„¢, has already seen success as a method for finding previously hidden resources. In 2002 it found a river in the west Saharan Desert 800 feet underground that today provides water to 50,000 citizens of Mauritania.

I believe that the practice of cataloguing a country’s resources will prove to be indispensable to every country in the coming decades. As preservation efforts increase in momentum, and calls for conservation of already used resources become louder, a complete roadmap for resources will aid in policy-making. With the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol coming a close in 2012 and the goals largely not have being met, we may find ourselves dramatically changing our resource consumption practices and an accurate schematic of global deposits may help with resource allocation.