The Earth is (was) Flat: A Brief History of GIS, How it Benefits Us Today, and How YOU Can Get Involved!

by B. McL

Everyone knows what a map is. We use and see them every day, from a slick infographic on the news, to the handy smart phone app we trust to get us correctly from A to B. Or, for those outdoor adventurers we caller hikers, a crinkly old paper topo map with hard to read text. But what about the science that comes behind these maps?

 

Since the Canadian government decided to map all its lands in the 1960s, we have called that science GIS or, for the rest of us, Geographic Information Systems. Modern day GIS is a science that deals, essentially, with representing the physical world in a digital environment. Most basically, we choose to make this digital world flat or round or somewhat egg-like, give it the fancy name “geoid” (JEE-oyd), and then we stretch what we observe in reality to make it fit our 2-dimensional (or more and more often 3-dimensional) model. This is what we call a “projection”. Remember that for your next dinner party! The result is often a pretty map, whose simplicity (or complexity!) says little about the databases, projections, programming, surveying, etc. that it takes to produce it.

 

But GIS, or map making in general, hasn’t always been so sophisticated. Or, rather, it was sophisticated in other ways. While the maps of today are more often than not produced by satellites orbiting our earth hundreds of miles above us, or by GPS-enabled survey equipment that can pinpoint a location down to a fraction of an inch (at the cost of more than your car!!!), all of which is fed into computers that runs programs with thousands of lines of code, the maps of the past were often the result of barebones surveying equipment that relied on star charts and fairly complex trigonometry, and all taken down on paper that could easily be lost, burned, or both. To see how accurately the cartographers of the past mapped our coastlines, countries, and world, with nothing more than a sextant (or a length of chain!), puts many of us modern day mappers to shame.

GIS Data Layer, Over-Lays

So you may ask, “OK, so maps can tell us where we are, and how far interpret from that map. This is what we now call “spatial analysis”, and it affects us in ways we don’t even see, and in some ways we do.
away another place is, but that’s it, right?” Wrong. Maps can do so much more, and have done for hundreds of years. The way that a map can affect every one of our lives is what we

Here are a few examples, spanning the centuries and sciences.

GIS and Public Health

The godfather (not that kind!) of modern day spatial analysis, and of an often linked science known the method used to find the causes of health outcomes and diseases in populations;  http://www.cdc.gov/careerpaths/k12teacherroadmap/epidemiology.html) was a doctor named John Snow. Yes, like from Game of Thrones, although arguably much more heroic (although less immortal). Doctor Snow was an English physician in London during the mid 1800s. In many GIS and epidemiology texts, he is rightly credited for his investigation into the cause of a cholera epidemic in London in 1854. At the time, many doctors and public health officials thought that disease was spread by “miasma”, or bad air. While we know now that some diseases are indeed airborne, many others are spread through media such as water. Dr. Snow wasn’t as fortunate as us to know about germs, but he also didn’t believe that cholera as being spread through the air in a toxic “miasma”. So he took to the streets, and with the help of a local reverend surveyed the residents of the neighborhood in Soho where the outbreak was worst. From his survey, he produced what many consider to be one of the first recorded instances of spatial analysis. It was a map that tallied the number of people who had become ill due to cholera. In the map, the black bars represent individuals, and they are tallied up per household along each street.

as epidemiology (which the US Centers for Disease Control defines as “

While somewhat hard to read, one can see that the bars are thickest at the center of the map, on Broad Street. This was where the most sicknesses occurred, and this trend let Dr. Snow to believe that the cholera was coming from a water pump on Broad Street. We know today that cholera bacteria are transported primarily through water, but at the time, Dr. Snow was met with much resistance from local officials, although he did succeed in shutting down the tainted pump. Consequently, the cholera outbreak was contained, and many people avoided sickness thanks to his efforts. (Source: Gunn, S. William A.; Masellis, Michele (23 October 2007). Concepts and Practice of Humanitarian Medicine. Springer. pp. 87–. ISBN 978-0-387-72264-1.)

Today, GIS is an integral part of public health planning and disaster response. During the ebola epidemic of 2014-16, governments and public health non-profits used GIS to analyze where

Source: http://www.who.int/csr/disease/ebola/maps/en/index1.html

outbreaks were worst, and where they might be heading. This allowed them to prioritize resources to the heaviest hit areas, and ultimately contain the epidemic, although at a high cost in lives. Without the visualization provided by GIS, decision makers would have made blind decisions, which could have extended the epidemic. The map below uses “graduated symbols”, or symbols that get bigger or smaller depending on what they represent, to show the number of ebola cases in different districts of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone in West Africa. By comparing the size and color of the symbols, they could see where ebola cases were decreasing, and where they were increasing.

 

 

GIS and the Environment

GIS has also provided a great many benefits to the managers of our world’s natural resources. All over the world, changes are taking place to the environment that will affect life on earth in many different ways. GIS has been used to map and predict sea level rise due to global climate change, identifying areas that will see the most inundation, and giving people in those areas more information they need to prepare and adapt.

Maps have also helped forestry managers right here in the US identify where forests are struggling to survive due to drought, tree-killing beetles, and other threats from a changing climate. The map below shows how often fires occur in different parts of the US, which will help forest managers make decisions about where to apply fuel-suppressing treatments (burning dead wood to reduce the risk of fire) or other strategies to revitalize dying forests. Forest fires can affect millions of Americans with bad air quality, destruction of infrastructure and homes, and also contributes greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.

GIS in Local Government

Chinese Holy Field Plan

While not the most glamorous or the most global in perspective, GIS used in local government often has wide ranging effects on where, how, and how well we live day to day. City planners have been literally deciding where we live for centuries, and their decisions are informed and enforced by maps. In ancient China, cities were often laid out as a representation of the Holy Field, which was a philosophical concept related to numbers. In the modern day, new philosophies inform how people and activities are grouped together. For example, it is often desirable to keep heavy industry away from residential areas or environmentally sensitive areas such as wetlands or streams. Many cities and counties adopt zoning rules which decide how land is used, although there are many notable exceptions around the world (or better or for worse! I’m looking at you Houston!). 

GIS analysis of traffic patterns and public transit use helps governments plan out road, bus, and rail expansions. As traffic is one of the biggest headaches in the lives of most Americans, imagine how bad it might be if we had no idea where the clogged routes are, and where the alternatives lie. GIS enables informed decision making.

Citizen GIS

We’ve covered a few different ways GIS is used to better our lives. Be sure, there are many more, and probably a few not-so-good ways as well. If you made it through all this, you might think, wow, GIS is very exciting, but too hard for me to understand or contribute to. That is where you are wrong! There a variety of ways that any citizen with a smart phone or a computer can contribute to the field of GIS, for the betterment of all life on earth. Here are just a few:

·         Open Street Map. OSM is “the Free Wiki World Map – An openly licensed map of the world being created by volunteers using local knowledge”. Anyone can quickly and easily learn how to add to the map. Add your house, or different features around your neighborhood such as trails, parks, restaurants, etc. https://www.openstreetmap.org/

·         Missing Maps: This program, founded by the Red Cross and others, directs the improvement of Open Street Map by targeting where maps are missing in the world’s most vulnerable places and recruiting citizen mappers to improve them, from the comfort of your own home! http://www.missingmaps.org/

·         Find It Fix It: Find It Fix It is a public service request app by the City of Seattle. Many cities and counties have similar apps downloadable on the Google Play or Apple store. Find out if your city has a similar map app, and start helping to improve the area you live! https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=gov.seattle.searequests&hl=en

·         What’s Invasive: What’s Invasive is an app that turns you into a citizen scientist! You can report where you observe potential invasive species, help managers respond before it is too late! https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=edu.ucla.cens.whatsinvasive

·         For other crowd-sourced apps and websites, see this article: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/8-apps-that-turn-citizens-into-scientists/

Disposal of the dead: Bones II

Happy Dia de Muertos (a day late)! 

Today we will briefly explore a few of the ways in which humans deal with the physical remains of their dead. In Western cultures, we predominantly bury our dead in cemeteries. In fact, this is so ubiquitous that I have met people who did not know that there were other well-accepted means of disposing of the dead beyond cremation!

There are a huge variety of ways in which people deal with their dead, and a variety of reasons, from practical to esoteric, why these practices arise. Please remember before passing judgement on any other cultures' treatment of the dead that these are frequently deeply personal, and deeply culturally ingrained traditions that may seem strange, but it is quite possible that what you would do seems just as strange to other people! For example, embalming and huge lacquered coffins (you know, like the normal kind) which keep the elements from decomposing a body kind of weird me out! Some of the ways people deal with their dead listed below are probably familiar to you. Others are likely not.
This post is meant to be a quick introduction, and by no means a comprehensive treatment of any of them. If you think of ways I have not listed, or would like to have a conversation (I would love to talk to you), please post below!

To start with, there are a number of considerations to be made when dealing with a corpse of any variety. Disease and decay are two of the big ones. It's not safe to leave a body lying around for very long, and the phobias that people develop around the dead are largely for this reason. It's natural to be afraid of handling something that can potentially kill you, even if maybe the form your phobia takes is a little more literal than it needs to be ;). So most practices around disposal of the dead are strongly tied to rituals around purity and cleanliness that would have started as (if they are not still) very literal concerns about sanitation.

There are four (very general) classifications of "burial", based on the way in which the body is disposed of. Sometimes two or more types are used in combination.

• Earth burial
• Air burial
• Water burial
• Fire "burial"

Within (or between) these overall categories of burial, there are a whole lot of variations in the exact methods by which people deal with their dead. Here are a few:

• Traditional Western burial: in a coffin, in a cemetery (much of Europe and North America, and lots of other folks now. At the moment this is the most common form of burial)
• Plain 'ol "stick a body in the ground" burial. Usually with a shroud, or limited grave goods. (the simplest, and traditionally most common form of burial)
• Sky burial: Most forms of sky burial involve being laid out on a very high platform, and being consumed by birds. Sometimes the birds take everything, and sometimes the remaining bones are then buried or cremated (some Native American, some Buddhists, a few other folks)
• Cremation: There are a whole lot of ways to cremate people. The traditional simple way to cremate people involves laying the body out on a wood platform, and setting it on fire. Then frequently the ashes are scattered to the wind (which could also be considered a form of sky burial)
• Burial in barrows or mounds: instead of burying a body under the ground, a mound or small "hill' is built and the body is buried inside that. This kind of burial usually involves a lot of grave goods, as usually only very important people are buried in this fashion. A subset of this type of burial involves cairns, in which people are laid out inside a hollow barrow until they decompose, and then the bones are buried in the ground or totemized later. (ancient European, Native American mound builders, many others)
• Burial in a pot: This is a thing. Like in a giant pot (Southeast Asia)
• Partial to complete consumption of the dead: ritual cannibalism, to consume an enemy's power, or to consume the spirit of a loved one 
• Burial in towers or pyramids or other giant structures: We really love building massive structures for our dead. Like a lot.
• Mummification (mechanical or "natural"): Sometimes a body is buried in the sand and allowed to desiccate naturally. Several cultures have also used a variety of preservatives and organ removal to ensure this process works.
• Bog burial: Bodies disposed of in bogs leather-ize naturally. It's pretty impressive.
• Floating a corpse down the Ganges or another large river
• Burial at sea
• Viking ship burial (which is frequently 2 of the 3: earth, water, fire)
• De-fleshing, accompanied by burial or totemization/display of bones: Flesh is actively removed, and the bones are displayed
• Burial under the floor in your home (Catalhoyuk) 

• Deposit remains in a cave. Frequently the same cave is used repeatedly.

• Burial in spaaaaaace! this is totally a thing now. You too can be buried in space!