People around the world continue to compile scientific data about resources, ecosystems, and human impact. GIS enables us to visualize and analyze these massive collections of data. Establishing a base for determining cause and effect, GIS tracks ecological change and provides chains of evidence of human impact. It tracks people’s land use, methods of resource extraction, and peripheral activities, such as supporting road networks.  GIS manages large databases, depicts and prioritizes problems, models scenarios of both positive and negative practices, and predicts environmental outcomes. It provides the quantified information and analytical capabilities required for making location-based decisions that increase economic efficiencies and reduce consumption and contamination.

GIS can be used to reroute shipping lanes away from ecologically sensitive areas such as whale migration grounds.

People’s stakes in our environment vary.  GIS gives us a lens to understand different objectives and create an environment for collaboration. Among these objectives are economic potentials, equality, environmental and social justice, environmental preservation, land use, and more.  Understanding these concerns requires data and analysis. Many countries have setup spatial data infrastructures (SDI) that enable data exchange via standards and interoperability.  Organizations have created GIS portals that enable fast access to geodata and map services.  GIS platforms serve as frameworks for multidisciplinary collaboration in designing sustainable practice policies, implementation, and administration. These technologies promote dialogue by helping different organizations articulate their concerns within the scope of sustainable planning.

The environment is a global responsibility. Forests do not stop at a border; one ocean touches many coastlines; and climate change impacts every continent. The implementation of sustainable polices and administration must cross borders. The common language of geography expressed through the tools of GIS can bring people together, and thereby tip the balance toward a more sustainable planet.

A recent Specialist Meeting on “Spatial Thinking across the College Curriculum” highlighted these different perspectives. The meeting’s purpose was to “identify the current state of our understanding of spatial thinking, identify gaps in our knowledge, and identify priorities for both research and practice in educating spatial thinkers at the college level.” Forty-three thought leaders were invited to participate, including those from Geography and GIScience, cognitive and developmental psychology, research librarians, and science education, history, landscape architecture, philosophy, and political science.

We were honored to represent Esri at the event. Our interest in a comprehensive approach to spatial thinking in education follows from the Esri Education Team’s mission to cultivate the next generation of GIS users and spatial thinkers. As we pointed out in our recent essay “Envisioning the Spatial University,” no college or university to our knowledge has included spatial thinking among its overarching objectives for general education, despite compelling evidence of its value. We approached the Specialist Meeting with high hopes that a consensus could be reached about how to realize spatial thinking in higher education. Ultimately, little consensus emerged about the broad nature of spatial thinking or about strategies for advancing it in higher education.

Why consensus eludes us

Why does consensus about spatial thinking remain elusive, seven years after the National Research Council’s landmark publication of Learning to Think Spatially? We suggest at least four contributing factors:

1. Spatial thinking is a transdisciplinary habit of mind. Kindred disciplines span a dizzying range of scales, from subatomic to human to cosmic, as illustrated so effectively in the animation “The Scale of the Universe”. Spatial thinking means different things at different scales, and within different academic disciplines.

2. Academic disciplines are frequently based on different theories and constructions of knowledge. At times, social scientists may be content with anecdotal efficacy of GIS in fostering spatial thinking. Other disciplines marshal longitudinal research to demonstrate the relevance of spatial abilities to STEM careers. Still others are satisfied with nothing less than controlled experimental results.

3. Spatial thinking seems to be contested territory. Several disciplines vie for authority over its research agenda and curriculum design. Although geographers like Roger Downs have played pivotal roles in highlighting the relevance of spatial thinking across the curriculum, others note geographers tend to conflate spatial thinking with a subset of “geospatial” thinking skills.

4. A compelling value proposition for a discrete spatial thinking curriculum is elusive. No one at the meeting was able to satisfactorily address Bob Kolvoord’s thought experiment, “what happens if we do nothing?”

Now what?

Many geographers are already convinced by recommendations of the Learning to Think Spatially report. We feel a sense of urgency about advancing geospatial thinking in higher education. Ambitious efforts to encourage geospatial thinking across the curriculum are underway at a few bold universities, including the University of Redlands, Harvard University, the University of California at Santa Barbara, and the University of Southern California. Esri encourages and supports these and related efforts elsewhere.

Do you see value in spatial thinking across the college curriculum and what role should GIS play in advancing (geo)spatial thinking at universities? We invite your comments below, and hope you’ll join us at the 2013 Esri Education GIS Conference to continue the conversation.

Thanks to Tom Baker, who co-authored this post.

More than 50 attendees triumphed over agency travel restrictions, budget cuts, busy schedules, the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, and other obstacles in order to be here with us at their own expense. They came ready to discuss with more than 40 Esri employees the various GIS functional requirements for ocean science, justification for and validation of such approaches, use cases, and the like. One major goal was for Esri to listen carefully to these attendees in order to help us move forward in our thinking about our approaches and our products to better serve ocean science and resource management.  Esri employees came from all parts of the organization: Industry Solutions/Marketing, Core Development, Sales, Professional Services, and more.

Most of the work of the Summit was done in smaller break-out groups, which provided attendees, Esri and non-Esri alike, with the opportunity to share and discuss their knowledge, perspectives, needs, lessons learned, and/or future visions.

On day one we focused on science themes, with the goal of identifying barriers to the use of GIS in ocean science and management, as well as associated functional requirements, in the following areas:

• Marine Geology and Geophysics
• Physical/Chemical Oceanography/Ocean Observing
• Marine Ecology
• Fisheries Science (including the commercial sector)
• Coastal and Marine Spatial Planning (including human dimensions data and the social sciences)

On day two we focused on technology themes, with an aim toward removal of the barriers in these areas:

• Multidimensional Data Formats (netCDF, HDF, OpenDAP, THREDDS,[1] etc. [this group essentially continued discussions begun at the Esri Scientific Data Formats Summit in February 2012])
• Sensors and Sensor Formats (e.g., multibeam bathymetry, buoys, floats, gliders, remotely-operated vehicles, and submersibles, and satellites)
• 3D/4D
• Analytic Tools, Data Models, and Associated Workflows
• Data Distribution (servers, services, and computing platforms)

Reports from the breakout groups and ensuing discussions were lively and substantive, and thus will go a long way toward defining what the ArcGIS system (i.e., desktop, mobile, online, server, and apps) should mean for the oceans. This has great implications for many other areas of the Earth sciences as well. For example, there was consensus among the attendees that, at a functional level, the capabilities required by the oceans community for the ArcGIS system (e.g., data ingest, visualization, analysis, and sharing) are very similar to those required by the atmospheric community. Esri developers have already received some of these enhancement requests through their support analysts, solution engineers, and account managers. They are aiming at developing both short- and long-term plans to better support our scientific community.

Thanks to all of the participants for helping to set a new course for GIS in oceans science and management.

We are working on compiling all of the items recorded on white boards, flip charts, by way of oral commentary, and more. In the coming weeks a full set of proceedings will be produced and many results of the summit and additional resources will be shared on the event web site.

Given the success of the Esri Oceans Summit, plans are underway for an annual Esri Ocean GIS Conference, open to all users, with regular paper sessions and panels, map galleries, and demos, which will serve further to move our long-term strategy forward. Stay tuned for more information on such an event, which will likely be scheduled for November 2013 and beyond.

Notes:

[1] netCDF = network common data format, HDF = hierarchical data format, OpenDAP = Open-source Project for a Network Data Access Protocol, THREDDS = Thematic Real-time Environmental Data Distributed Services

The technology we use today, both in our work and personal lives, has become interchangeable. The smartphone that is available through any retailer today is as capable, or more capable, than what most people need for work. The computer that I used at my desk, just a few years ago, is less capable than the phone that I carry at my hip. One might say that we are holding onto an overabundance of computing potential in our very hand. Add to this the throughput broadband and 4G wireless networks allow. One only has to watch the news to see how citizens are reacting to this abundance of connectivity. Information about your family, friends, and business acquaintances is at your fingertips. So is information about your bank accounts, credit cards, hotel reservations, or a sale at your favorite store. But government is a different animal—it is cautious and slow to change. And it is this change that occupies the thoughts of many public leaders. Just as we’re growing to expect more information and answers at our fingertips, citizens’ expectations of government are also growing.

The need to meet these growing expectations couldn’t come at a more difficult time. For government, it’s the perfect storm: increased expectations for transparency, severe budget pressure, and rapidly evolving technology patterns.

But I would propose that these three difficulties provide a transformative opportunity for government officials, and IT leaders in particular. This perfect storm is driving innovation in state and local government. And it’s GIS that is providing a critical inflection point that allows governments to transform and thrive in this new environment, changing the very way government works. Maryland’s StateStat effort is an obvious example, but look at the states of Utah and Colorado and how they reoriented their websites to be place-centric. The City of Charlotte, North Carolina, Bexar County, Texas, and many others provide map and app galleries that direct citizens to services and data.

This new era of cloud and mobile computing has led to a new approach of delivering solutions. The truly interesting part of all this is that we are seeing state and local government GIS practitioners exploit these computing strategies and evolve GIS as a platform. In short, they’ve become change agents. And the changes they are leading are steering the way for their governments to an extent never before considered.

How can GIS help government respond to growing expectations?

Despite the digital revolution, many public works departments are still in the paper age. Typically, these departments serve smaller communities and have yet to adopt GIS technology for a variety of reasons, including cost and complexity. The steps in implementing a traditional GIS include buying a system; converting paper basemaps; adding infrastructure layers such as roads, pipes, and wires; building applications; and training users, all of which is often too resource intensive. Cloud-based GIS removes these barriers.

Conversely, most large public works departments, with their larger budgets and access to IT resources, have implemented GIS for well-documented reasons including the ability to automatically update geospatial databases and the opportunity to share digital resources throughout the city. However, these departments have been cautious in embracing cloud technology, with security being a primary concern.

GIS in the cloud is the future for geospatial computing. With ready-to-use basemaps and imagery available over the Internet, the cloud computing platform provides low entry costs and high security, and it is available when you need it.

I propose that this is the perfect time for those public works departments in smaller communities to leapfrog their bigger brethren. With cloud computing, they do not have to make the investment in IT services or the paradigm shift in computing architectures to make use of the powerful capabilities available to them with a GIS.

Because of many reasons, including scalability, flexibility, availability, and security, using GIS services in the cloud is an inevitable step for public works departments, regardless of their size. Cloud computing will allow smaller departments to transition their paper-based systems to GIS, while larger departments can further expand their GIS capabilities.

The bottom line is that all public works departments should now be poised to move to a cloud-based GIS so that they can do more with less.

How can a cloud-based approach help your public works department?

Today’s telecommunications networks involve a growing number of choices of technologies for use in the outside plant. To accommodate varying technologies, engineers need new tools for planning and design. Fiber optics and wireless technology have revolutionized the local telecommunications network. Over the last two decades, fiber has transitioned from backbone and long-haul transmission lines to the local loop and become critical to delivering broadband. Wireless continues to evolve into a replacement for traditional landline service, and with the explosion of smartphones, wireless itself is becoming a medium for broadband data delivery.

Prior to the introduction of these technologies, telecommunications were predominantly landline voice services and delivered over copper wires. When copper cables approached call carrying capacity, relief was providing by installing new or larger copper cable.

Unlike the past, today, when networks become congested, engineers have a myriad of technology choices ranging from upgrading wireless or fiber transmission equipment to migrating to a completely new transmission technology. It is far more complicated, due to the large array of data that must be considered, to select the most appropriate technology and then design a network. To optimize capital investment, the telecommunications professional must be able to understand market potential, identify competitive threats, and evaluate the network interconnection technology available at customer locations.

A geographic information system (GIS) can help optimize the network investment. Engineers use GIS to integrate all critical factors into an effective decision-making process. The spatial capabilities of GIS provide a platform to display and analyze all necessary data. Mapping and visualization allow the integration of market and network information onto a single, simple-to-use platform. Modeling within a GIS allows multiple scenarios to be run. By varying the assumptions, users can compare capital cost and revenue for each scenario to determine the network deployment that maximizes return on investment.

As the telecommunications technology revolution continues to unfold, the market is becoming more competitive. Technology options, if properly deployed, can provide a competitive edge. However, seizing the advantage that technology offers can only be realized if companies have the tools to optimize the network investment.

How is your organization optimizing its network investment?

Yes, GIS does have huge value for kids as well as adults! Today’s youth are tomorrow’s decision makers and GIS users. “Geo-Literacy“—the ability to use geographic understanding and geographic reasoning to make decisions—is a critical skill for addressing the tough issues affecting global health and community life.  It’s also crucial to students’ personal success.

Youth today are using GIS in and out of the classroom to look at issues from local to global scale, learning important classroom content, and gaining skills valuable for college and career.

Charlie Fitzpatrick. Photograph by Kris Krüg.

The watchword for education today is “STEM,” which stands for “science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.” Policy leaders and decision makers alike want youth to expand their STEM knowledge and skills, to improve long-term futures. GIS is STEM, through and through. With GIS, students and teachers handle the same technical issues that professional GIS users face every day, dealing with software, data, analysis, and project management. Some are building data for classrooms elsewhere, solving real-world problems for their communities, or helping professionals in varied fields. Youth with GIS skills are doing community service projects, taking on internships, or even getting jobs helping local organizations tackle real-world issues.

Meanwhile, in these challenging economic times, more school administrators are using GIS to make decisions about safety, transportation, or facilities management; every dollar saved in operations is a dollar that doesn’t have to be cut from instruction. Web-based maps allow the public to get relevant, accurate, and timely information easily, 24×7.

ArcGIS Online now makes it “one-click easy” for students and educators to begin making maps and learning using unlimited content that spans from global to local. Students can examine rich, dynamic, interactive content, and construct their own custom presentations, while scaffolding skills for their future. Educators can incorporate storehouses of professional content or generate their own to share with students, the community, or the world. Administrators can integrate data to provide better information to the public and facilitate decision-making. A free, quick, powerful, online course has helped hundreds of educators learn why and how to use ArcGIS Online. Educators and administrators can find extensive support at the Esri GIS Education Community website.

GIS in action at Washington-Lee High School in Arlington, Virginia.
Watch the video from the 2012 Esri User Conference here.

GIS professionals can help local schools and clubs by adopting a classroom or group, providing support as they build knowledge of geography and learn GIS. Esri and National Geographic introduced the GeoMentor program in 2009 to foster these relationships. Anyone can be a GeoMentor and support youth, educators, and their community.

The May 2011 decision by the US Supreme Court ordering California to ease prison overcrowding by aggressively reducing their prisoner population sent shockwaves through the California corrections and law enforcement community. It also served to put the other states on notice as well. For California, the result has been the release of thousands of prisoners into communities at a time when state and local police are ill-equipped to deal with them, and parole and probation agencies are already overburdened and understaffed. The consequence is that there are now significantly more offenders requiring community supervision, but fewer personnel to meet this need. The subsequent increase in caseloads requires local agencies to work smarter and work together—in essence, to have an intelligence-led approach to community corrections.

As in other areas of law enforcement, a geographic approach provides increased efficiency and effectiveness for all of the agencies engaged in community corrections. Those offenders sentenced to supervised release can be tracked passively or actively and geo-fences can be created to alert law enforcement, parole or probation if a subject strays into a prohibited area (i.e.; schools, daycare centers). Their “tracks” can also be plotted against crime data for location, crime type and time. Additionally, parole and probationary caseloads can be analyzed to assign officers geographically and optimize routing of personnel to maximize their effectiveness. This information can be easily disseminated among participating agencies and shared with the public through mapping portals and apps. The result is increased offender supervision, proactive case management, an improved view of daily operations, better interagency cooperation, improved planning capability, strategic resource deployment and management, and in the end, cost and time savings.

The correctional facility similarly benefits from the use of GIS in a multitude of areas. Facility management provides the opportunity to digitally map an entire correctional facility to understand the “where” within. This provides the opportunity to visualize camera locations and viewsheds as well as the location of other types of sensors (microphones, fire alarms, door alarms). It provides the location of safety equipment (first aid, breathing apparatus), controls and locks, shutoffs (water, electrical) as well as the ability to create a knowledge-based system providing alerts for employee training, inspections and scheduled equipment maintenance. A geospatially enabled facility can use GIS not only to map and identify specific locations within the facility (beds, cells, cell blocks, dining areas, etc.), but also connect inmates to a specific location (bed and cell), with all of the associated data about that inmate, including booking information, criminal history and housing classification data. Other information can also be made available, including gang affiliation, officer safety, escape-risk or suicide hazard, and disciplinary history. As on the streets, crime data within the facility can be identified, analyzed, and mapped. Trends are then identified and mitigation (prevention) measures can be taken, increasing both officer and inmate safety.

Both corrections and law enforcement are facing new and difficult challenges in offender management. GIS provides an opportunity to save time and money while providing an intelligence-led approach for improving safety in corrections facilities and in our communities.

How do you envision the future use and value of GIS in corrections?

Spatial thinking and geospatial technologies remain unrealized opportunities for much of higher education. For example:

• There’s now compelling evidence suggesting that spatial abilities prepare students for success in STEM coursework and early employment. However, no college or university includes such preparation among its overarching general education objectives.
• Despite the synthetic power of the spatial perspective, research discoveries too often remain segregated and hidden in disciplinary silos.
• For nearly a decade, the US Department of Labor has highlighted career opportunities associated with geospatial technologies. Still, relatively few higher education institutions offer advanced, practice-oriented educational programs to prepare students for such opportunities.
• Geospatial technologies enable students to perform valued service learning projects in their communities. Even among those colleges and universities that have institution-wide service learning programs, however, precious few prepare students to leverage GIS.
• Enterprise GIS infrastructures offer the potential to save money in campus planning, operations, and facilities management. Given the severe fiscal challenges that confront most higher education institutions, it’s remarkable that so few institutions have realized this potential.

There are plenty of reasons why spatial thinking and geospatial technologies have yet to fulfill their transformative potential in higher education. However, it’s likely that concerted efforts by a few key institutions could have a dramatic impact. Mindful of this, it is apparent that there are five characteristics of “The Spatial University”:

• Spatial thinking is included in the institution’s general education objectives. Courses that prepare students to fulfill the objective are available across the general education curriculum.
• The institution hosts and disseminates multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research enabled by the spatial perspective and geospatial technologies.
• The institution hosts specialized certificate or degree programs whose curricula align with geospatial work force needs.
• Students are required or at least encouraged to participate in community-based service learning projects or internships, and they are prepared to use GIS and other geospatial technologies as part of those projects.
• An enterprise GIS infrastructure is in place to support campus planning, operations, maintenance, and sustainability.

Some higher education institutions have several of these characteristics, and a few may have all five. However, no institution has made a point of declaring its commitment to fulfilling the potential of spatial thinking and geospatial technology. This is likely a missed opportunity. In an increasingly competitive higher education marketplace, we believe that a commitment to be a spatial university would be a valuable differentiator.

The distinction is appealing primarily because of a genuine conviction that a spatially literate populace is essential for a sustainable future, as well as a belief that GIS technology can empower spatial thinking.

How would you describe the vision of a Spatial University?

This year, New England had one of its worst late season storms in recent history. Heavy snow brought down trees, which in turn, brought down many power lines. Some people were out of power for more than a week. In March, a fire in a substation shut off power to the historic Back Bay section of Boston for several days. The blackout left hotels, office buildings, and subway stations dark and shuttered some of the most exclusive shops in the city.

Utilities have faced outage problems since Thomas Edison strung wire from his Pearl Street station in New York City to 80 customers in 1882. Although restoration costs are expensive and disruptive to the utility, they are part of doing business. Utilities plan and budget for power failures. It always snows in New England. Hurricanes always hit Florida. Restoration costs are minimal when compared to the cost of permanently eliminating blackouts.

In the midst of an outage, most customers would probably say they are willing to pay more for power that doesn’t go out during a heavy snowstorm or a substation fire. A week after power is restored, about 30 percent fewer customers would agree to the higher payment. Why is that? No one calculates the cost of power failures to the customers.

Nearly every utility has a GIS. However, most utilities use GIS for keeping track of assets—wires and poles and such. Imagine using GIS to estimate commercial, industrial, and residential business and property losses incurred during a power failure based on the demographic and business activity in the area. GIS can do that. Once the model is established, spatial analysis could be run continuously before and during an outage. The results could be shared with everyone. Then they would know. We all would know.

If we knew the costs, would we make different decisions about the value of electric reliability?