GIS Day 2009
Discovering the World through GIS
Friday, 20 November 2009
107 Hesburg Library Auditorium
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame
IN
Key Note Speaker
Paul Collins (CEO, Skyline Software Systems, VA & ND Allumnus)
Invited Speaker
Phil Worrall (Executive Director, Indiana Geographic Information Council)
Welcome to GIS Day 2009 at University of Notre Dame
"GIS" stands for Geographic Information System. GIS software represents features on the earth as digital, spatial data. GIS is used to visualize, question, analyze and understand digital geospatial data. Spatial analysis of GIS data can reveal patterns and highlight spatial connections and correlations not readily apparent.
GIS applications
Fresh Water/Hydrology
Environmental management and stewardship programs integrate a broad spectrum of data with the analysis tools of GIS to provide a better understanding of how elements of natural communities interact across a landscape. GIS is used worldwide in ecology labs, planning departments, parks, agencies, and nonprofit organizations to promote sustainable growth.
Oceans
Marine GIS uses data from oceans and seas to represent nearshore and deepwater phenomena such as current, salinity, temperature, biological and ecological mass, and density.
Land
GIS about the local landscape is critical to making decisions about what to protect and how to protect it. Digital maps of sites can be linked to a relational database that stores topography, baseline data, site documentation, and aerial digital photography.
Vegetation
GIS is ideal for mapping and inventorying vegetation across landscapes and to better understand threatened and endangered species inventories for scientific and managerial applications.
Homeland security
GIS assets at local, regional, and national levels are used in emergency response in the areas of detection, risk assessment, mitigation and prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery.
Military defense
Military defense uses GIS for intelligence, terrain analysis, mission planning, and facilities management.
Fire/Emergency Medical Services/Disaster
GIS allows public safety personnel to effectively plan for emergency response, determine mitigation priorities, analyze historical events, and predict future events.
Transportation
GIS serves three distinct transportation needs: infrastructure management, fleet and logistics management, and transit management. GIS offers insight for network planning and analysis, vehicle tracking and routing, inventory tracking, and route planning analysis.
Health
Effective health care services management uses GIS to show not only what resources and needs exist, but also where to find them. Health experts also put GIS to work in epidemiological and public health monitoring. They can geographically track public health indicators, identify disease clusters, and explore sites of environmental risk. For example, public health departments use GIS for mosquito abatement programs.
Wildlife
GIS is an important tool in habitat and species management and protection. GIS enables the study of animal populations at a variety of scales as well as analysis tools to study habitat corridors; migration patterns; and the influence of parks, reserves, and sanctuaries for wildlife conservation.
Real Estate
From map-based contact management to sophisticated investment analysis in large real estate investment trusts, real estate agencies rely heavily on electronic mapping. Many realtors have found great success in using the Internet to market properties.
Retail Business
Businesses maintain information about sales, customers, inventory, demographic profiles, and mailing lists, all of which have geographic locations. Therefore, business managers, marketing strategists, financial analysts, and professional planners increasingly rely on GIS to organize, analyze, and present their business data.
Banking
Financial analysts employ GIS for targeting their markets by visualizing service needs on a map.
Insurance
Many insurance companies have made GIS a central component of their business, using it to visualize, analyze, and distribute risk.
Logistics
Logistics management requires planning the distribution fleet's activities, route locations, and schedules.
Media
GIS is used by media bureaus for everything from analyzing circulation and attracting advertisers to creating the maps used in the material itself.
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