GIS Across the GIS Across the CurriculumCurriculum

Meg StewartJanuary 22, 2013

Agenda

• What is GIS?• What does GIS look like across the

curriculum?• How does one do GIS?

Spatial thinking is an ability to visualize and interpret location, distance, direction, relationships, movement and change through space.

Spatial literacy is an important component in digital literacy and media fluency.

With GIS, one can gain an understanding of data and how data can be represented.

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GIS Data Management

Thematic layers

One layer for each theme… Roads Land use Streams Elevation Aerial photographs…

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Aerial photograph

Railroad lines

Tax parcels

Building points

Select

Buffer & select

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GISGIS

Science, Technology, Engineering & Math -

STEM

Digital humanities

Digital social

sciences

Why Is GIS Unique?

• GIS handles Spatial information– Information referenced by its location in space

• GIS helps make connections between features based on spatial proximity

• GIS addresses and helps to evaluate relationships between otherwise un-relatable data

If you have some sort of information (current, past, or projected)

andyou have a location to attach to that information, you can analyze it in GIS.

Examples of GIS

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2012/11/28/a-color-coded-map-of-the-worlds-most-and-least-emotional-countries/?tid=pm_world_pop

http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/pcpn/us_precip.gif

Sites of "Civil Disorders" in the United StatesJanuary - September, 1967

http://desmond.imageshack.us/Himg190/scaled.php?server=190&filename=totalcounty.gif&res=medium

http://www.evl.uic.edu/aej/424/pics/week2/county_gas_prices.jpg

http://opensignal.com/

NY Times: http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/22/mapping-toilets-in-a-mumbai-slum-yields-unexpected-results/

Map: https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?vps=2&hl=en&ie=UTF8&oe=UTF8&msa=0&msid=213281544174043702623.0004b617c56e89532fff9

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323894704578105031877259720.html

What County-by-County Results Tell Us About the Election

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2012/Mark Newman, Department of Physics and Center for the Study of Complex Systems, University of Michigan

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2012/Mark Newman, Department of Physics and Center for the Study of Complex Systems, University of Michigan

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2012/Mark Newman, Department of Physics and Center for the Study of Complex Systems, University of Michigan

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/11/red-state-blue-city-how-the-urban-rural-divide-is-splitting-america/265686/

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/11/red-state-blue-city-how-the-urban-rural-divide-is-splitting-america/265686/

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2012/Mark Newman, Department of Physics and Center for the Study of Complex Systems, University of Michigan

http://makingmaps.net/2008/02/05/more-principles-of-map-design/

Two themes

Economics

GeologyGeophysicsHistory

Biology

Environmental JusticeEnvironmental Justice

http://www.nytimes.com/projects/hurricanes/#!/2011/Irene

Source (Nov. 2012): http://www.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2012/1120-sandy/survey-of-the-flooding-in-new-york-after-the-hurricane.html

Source (Dec 23, 2012): http://www.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2012/1120-sandy/survey-of-the-flooding-in-new-york-after-the-hurricane.html

Source (Dec 23, 2012): http://www.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2012/1120-sandy/survey-of-the-flooding-in-new-york-after-the-hurricane.html

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/12/17/science/1218-sand.html

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/12/17/science/1218-sand.html

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b5/Chicago_Demographics_in_1950_Map.jpg

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_eGaEK4qv950/TDyOOi3M3HI/AAAAAAAABF8/tinud8dBnoI/s1600/Secession_Vote_by_CountyA.jpg

1860-61

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/media/3841/Vote-on-secession-in-the-South-by-counties

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/13/petition-to-secede-states_n_2120410.html#slide=more32984

What could the Confederate general Robert E. Lee, actually see during the battle of Gettysburg?

Anne Kelly Knowles, a geographer at Middlebury College

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/07/27/arts/spatial-maps.html

http://www.conflicthistory.com/

http://michaelporath.com/projects/manifest-destiny/

http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/salem/maps/regionmap/regionmap.html

Witchcraft Charges

Why did witchcraft charges spread so rapidly and widely in 1692, affecting 156 people — 15 times more than in any other incident — across 25 communities in Essex County, Mass?

Benjamin Ray, the director of the Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive at the University of Virginia

Where did Georgia O’Keeffe paintRoof with Snow?

Mapping the SS Concentration Camp System Over Space and Time

Map Showing Overlap of Concentration Camps and Subcamp System with Industrial Resources and Installations, 1933-1945. Each cross represents a main camp or subcamp, while the red shading indicates concentrations of the iron/steel industry and blue shading references centers of machine tool production.

Anne Kelly Knowles and Paul B. Jaskot, with Chester W. Harvey, Charlie Hofmann, Toral Patel, Roz Vara, and Alexander Yule

http://www.ushmm.org/maps/projects/holocaust-geographies/?content=sscamp

http://www.1940snewyork.com/

http://www.whatwasthere.com/

Map: http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-desert-locator/go-to-the-locator.aspx

NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/18/health/research/pairing-of-food-deserts-and-obesity-challenged-in-studies.html?_r=1&

http://tinyurl.com/ZipCodePhilanthr

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/sep/11/education-compared-oecd-country-pisa

http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/atlas-of-rural-and-small-town-america/go-to-the-atlas.aspx

How do you do GIS?

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CountryStateCountyCensus Tract

Census BlockgroupCensus Block

Zip codeArea codeSchool districtTax parcel

GIS Data Polygons

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GIS is the best way to answer spatial questions

like…• Which properties are within 500 feet

of Lawrenceville Road?• How many people live within a mile

of the elementary school?• What terrain is visible from the

Franklin Moore Library?• When and where might the next

hurricane hit?

Functions of a GISor

How GIS is different than Google Earth

• Query• Buffer• Proximity• Connectivity• Modeling

If you have some sort of information (current, past, or projected)

andyou have a location to attach to that information, you can analyze it in GIS.

Contact: meg.stewart@fulbrightmail.org