Zeroing in: Geographic Information Systems at Work in the Community - Softcover

Mitchell, Andy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1879102501 ISBN 13: 9781879102507

Publisher: Esri Press, 1998

Synopsis

Real-life stories of GIS at work in every corner of the community: tracking crime, drawing school boundaries, managing growth, and more.

About this title

About the Author

Andy Mitchell is a technical writer with more than 20 years experience in GIS. He is the author of ""The ESRI Guide to GIS Analysis, Volume 1: Geographic Patterns and Relationships"" and ""Zeroing In"" and the coauthor of ""Getting Started with ArcGIS,"" He lives in Santa Barbara, California.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

From the Introduction: In recent years people have been taking more responsibility for running their own communities, from deciding about education and public safety to planning growth and development. But running a community is not easy. Even within the smallest neighborhoods people often have differing points of view. In many towns, less and less money is available for public services. Having good information about the people, places, and things in the community is critical for making decisions that are practical and for working more efficiently.

Since geographic information systems came into common use in the early 1980s, more and more people have used computers to get detailed, up-to-date information about their community in the form of digital maps. But even more people who could be using GIS have yet to discover it. It's not for lack of books on the subject, a number of books about GIS exist. Some explain how GIS works from a conceptual or technical perspective. Others address the management side of GIS - how to implement it in an organization - while many other books teach how to use GIS software. But few books have shown how real people actually use GIS.

This book does just that, introducing what GIS is and how it works by showing some of the many ways people are using GIS to solve everyday problems in their communities. In these "tales from the digital map age," people talk about why, and how, they use GIS. You'll see GIS put to a variety of uses - quickly finding an address in an emergency, creating efficient delivery routes, drawing new school boundaries, comparing the health of children from different neighborhoods, tracking the change in crime throughout a city, and many others.

For many years, GIS was a specialized field, composed of people whose sole job was to build geographic databases, perform analyses, and create maps. And while many still do specialize in GIS, many more use GIS as just one of the tools of their job, like a word processor or an electronic spreadsheet. Some use GIS software and data right out of the box, adding in their own data. Others customize the software with menus and buttons designed specifically for their data and their tasks. Still others combine GIS with information from other programs, such as spreadsheets or computer models. In this book, you'll see all of these approaches in action. And you'll see examples of how these systems look on screen, as well as maps that have been created and printed out on paper.

The book presents other information besides the stories of what people are using GIS to accomplish. To get an idea of how GIS works, you can read the full-page sidebar in each chapter that presents the computer "story-behind-the-story." Other sidebars throughout the book take a look at the most common types of GIS data used in towns and cities. While each chapter stands on its own, the GIS concepts presented progress from basic to more advanced. So if you're reading the technical details, the earlier chapters present information that might be helpful to know in the later chapters.

What all this information presents is how GIS affects the daily lives of all of us, those who use it as well as those who benefit from it. You may even start to think about how GIS can play a role in your work and your community.

Edition details

• Publisher: Esri Press
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1879102501
• ISBN 13: 9781879102507
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 114