GIS?

So a lot of people ask me what GIS (geospatial information systems) is and why I use it. I am currently learning GIS for my Space Grant work with Barron, but I also feel like it will become increasingly important in various fields. Most importantly, I feel like it will be VERY important in development.

I am currently in the lab working on some tutorial exercises and I thought I would show everyone a bit of what I do...



It's a bit hard to see in this picture, but above is what the screen I work on looks like in ARCMaps. "Behind" this is a bunch of data that can be accessed in a sister application called ARCCatalog. Why is GIS so compelling? What you're looking at on the screen is a VISUAL representation of mines in Africa (the data in this is just for a tutorial and its accuracy is not the point here). It's a map with locations on it, so what? The way I have manipulated the data now shows you the location and the size of the mine by using symbology. Embedded in this map is all kinds of information on the names of the mines, coordinates of its location etc etc. It's basically an awesome way to hold and manipulate data that also has the important feature of displaying the data in a way that is easy to understand and would be useful in development, showing policymakers, or getting a community to visualize and understand its composition.

Nerdy stuff, but very useful.