pbc Geographic Information Services

pbcGIS Are Geographic Information Systems Useful?

Data Resources Spatial Models in Decision Making Context
Data Management
Effective Cartography The practice of Geography encompasses a set of techniques for organizing and sharing
Spatial Analysis observations and references such that observations made by independent sources might be used
together to understand real and hypothetical situations. Geographic models may be useful for
Models for Research and Decision Support
developing and communicating an understanding of how things and conditions affect eachother.
Describe and Simulate Spatial Mechanisms
Ad-Hoc Select and Summarize Models This is the sort of information that designers and policy analysts often have to make. Geographical
models can be useful for conducting hypothetical (What-If?) experiments that explore plausible
Geoprocessing in ArcMap
ways that critical aspects of situations might be affected by change: either intentional or natural.
Vector Relational Databases
These essential aspects of the craft of geography have not changed for thousands of years.
Vector-Relational Procedures in ArcMap
Exploring Alternative Futures In the present day, our ability to collect and organize observations (data) and to combine and
Raster GIS Models transform data to generate new information, including maps and models, make Geographic
More Raster GIS Models Information Systems (GIS) an essential tool for designers and policy analysts. Each of these
3D City Modeling professions has a responsibility to assemble information to develop and communicate credible,
GeoWeb plausible, understanding and recommendations related to change, whether the change may be
deliberate or inevitable.
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The previous paragraphs paint an optimistic picture of how data and GIS can be useful in decision-
making situations. Yet, it is most important to understand that it is much easier and very common
to use data, software, maps, and models in ways that are NOT useful. Therefore, the use of GIS in
decision-making situations requires more than simple software skills, but also a mode of
communicating that reflects a clear understanding of the aspects of a situation that may be
represented with data and procedures. With a well defined question in hand, the fitness of data
and procedures for that particular modeling purpose may be evaluated. If an analysis does not
reflect this level of understanding, then the client or the general public may rightfully question
whether the designer or analyst adequately understands what he or she is talking about.

Demystifying GIS
People who do not understand GIS and geographic data well, often think of data and models in
magical terms. Either data and models are magically all-knowing and perfect, or they are
propaganda tyhat is not to be trusted. An educated analyst, on the other hand, understands that
data and tools can be evaluated in terms of their fitness with regard to a well-described question.
The key to understanding whether GIS is usefulor not pivots on our ability to formulate a question
that can be addressed using data and tools.

A Decision-Making Situation
In this course, we are interested in describing Decision-Making Situations Each project will
describe a real or hypothetical situation involving things and conditions that have some defined
spatial relationship. Within this situation, there is a question about a change that may take place -
- either as a deliberate intervention or natural process or some combination of the above. The
goal of each exercise is to describe how specific data-sets may be used to describe the things and
conditions, and GIS procedures can be used to illustrate or simulate the spatial relationships.
The reason for insisting on this specific type decision-making scenariop about the sorts GIS
applications we will make, is that there are plenty of ways to use GIS, for example, making art, or
mysterious info-graphics, which in the end can't be evaluated in terms of a practical purpose. This
course is all about learning how to describe situations that can be modeled with GIS and data, and
evaluating the results in terms of ouir pre-defined goals.

A Recipe for Designing and Evaluating a GIS Model

The diagram below provides an outline of the key elements of an analytical application of GIS. The
area witin the red box represents the Data Model which is the piece of the analysis that is carried
out using software to explore and transfrom data -- hopefully to understand critical aspects of the
relationships of things and conditions possibly interacting in a place. For many, this is computer-
based work is where the Magic of GIS happens. After one learns a little bit about what data and
GIS are, it becomes clear that the most important aspects of a practical GIS application are in
understanding data, developing answerable questions, and interpreting the results.
Flip through the slides below to get an idea of how terms are organized in the framework for
designing and evaluating GIS models in decision-making situations.
The Question and the Conceptual Model
No situation can be modeled or understood completely. Yet, it may be possible to discuss specific
things, conditions and relationships that may make a difference. Often, a diagram is a very useful
tool for describing a concern in terms of the way that particular things and conditions are related
in space. To begin making a map or constructing a more complicated data model without a
conceptual description of the decision-making situation is literally pointless. Each of the exercises
in this course will involve describing a hypothetical situation and a concern in terms of a
conceptual model. Lots of ideas about how to describe a conceptual model and a hypthetical
situation are provided on the page: Describing your Conceptual Model.
A simple conceptual model can be outlined as shown below:

1. Describe a set of things or a geographical condition

2. Describe another set of things or another geograhical condition
3. Describe a relationship between the 1. and 2. that includes a description of the physical
mechanism through which the first thing or condition affects the second.

Accessibility Example:

1. Libraries
2. Homes with Children
3. Children that live within a one kilometer walking distance of a library are more likely to
use the library

Exposure Example

1. Smokestacks emitting airborne particles

2. Homes of vulnerable residents
3. Homes that are down-wind form smokestacks are at greater risk for exposure

Landscape Conncectivity Example

1. Forest-dwwelling species
2. Tree canopy
3. Gaps in tree canopy diminish the viability of forest-dwelling species.

Understanding and Properly Attributing Data

It is very common to come across maps and policy or design presentations that use data as a
magical representation of things and conditions in the real world. This is often the first sign that
the analyst, unfortunately does not understand what he or she is dealing with. It is extremely
irresponsible to create or use analytical work that implies such assumptions. In reality, data are
collections of observations gathered through purpose-specific methodology at some time in the
past. There are about half a dozen critical aspects of data that ought to be part of the introductory
discussion before one gets down to the nitty gritty of using GIS. These are discussed in more
detail on the page: Discussing Geographical Data in Decision-Making Context.

Data-Driven Investigations
It is rare that an aanalyst has control over the scope and quality of data that is available.
Therefore, the framing of a question and conceptual model is conducted in tandem with exploring
and evaluating data. It may be that the first step involves the conceptualization of a system in
ideal terms, but it is not useful to spend too much time on this until you have a good idea of what
sorts of data are available for use in your data model. After understanding and evaluating
available data, the specification of the decision-making situation and conceptual model or
geographical area of interest may be shifted to focus on things, conditions and relationships that
may be representet, even if imperfectly, with data that you can actually get, understand and
describe. Advice for discovering data is provided on the page: Discovering Geographic Data.

Investigating Prior Work

It may not be necessary to do a deep literature review as part of each weekly exercise in this
course, but for term projects or other actual projects, it is wise to investigate the ways that others
have approached the sorts of modeling and decision-making situations that you are concerned
with. These investigations will hopefully give you a boost over predictable simplistic approaches
toward more interesting or effective approaches than you might arrive at by starting from scratch.
Consulting prior work may provide insights into the availability of data Your creidibility as an
analyst is improved if you cite one or two prior studies that have some bearing on the approach
that you decide to take.

The Data Model

Once a question has been defined in terms of things, conditions and relationships, and once data
has been acquired which represents the things and conditions, the analyst is ready to begin
working with GIS. The concepts outlined within the red box on our diagram describes the critical
tasks of creating models in GIS. These procedures wil be described in much more detail as the
course continues. In general, the GIS is used to to explore associations among the things and
conditions represented by the data. The result may be maps or logical what-if experiments.

Abstraction and New Information

So far we've discussed the top part of the diagram. It is useful to think of these activities and
ideas as being related to the purpose-specific digestion of situations into abstract data and
procedures. The result of all of this abstraction activity is New Data and New Maps, which
hopefully shed some light on how the situation may actually be affected by changes, or at least
would shed some light on our understanding of the challenges of creating a useful model with the
data and procedures that we have at our disposal.

Understanding
The new data and maps that we create must be discussed. If it is left to the client, member of the
public, or your instructor to figure out what the new map or data means, then the analyst has not
done his or her job! The only reason for creating a map oe any other data model is to improve
understanding. This is often the most difficult part for students, but we will not shy away form this
even in the very first assignment! In the bottom half of our diagram lays out a recipe for
describing your practical understanding of the data model and it's results.

Evaluating the Presentation

The value of a GIS analysis in any context rests in effective, credible communication. Is the
presentation concise or confising have sources and methods been properly regonized and
attributed in the text and in more formal citations? Has the analyst avoided common pitfals of
cartographic representation? Or does he or she appear to be confused, or implying a reliance on
the magical all knowing power of data by leaving these issues unexplained? In this course and the
real world, your clients, the public and your instructors are going to be asking these questions. So
you should try to stay one jump ahead bu addressing these concerns yourself. Sometimes at this
phase of the project, the analyst discovers that concepts and procedures that can not be
explained concisely can be adjusted in the model or maps to make the analysis more effectively
understood.

Critique of Data
One of the trickiest habits that data analysists must break is promoting a belief that data
represent a perfect view of things and conditionswith regard to the question at hand. This is
obviously foolish, but people do it all the time. Hopefully, everyone that has completed this course
(even the first exercise, will learn the simple way to explore and discuss useful hallmarks and
errors of data with special focus on the strenggths and weaknesses of our data with repect to
representing the things and conditions stipulated in our conceptual model. Many of these issues
and also advice for formatting necessary citations for data sourcs are discussed in more depth in
the page entitled Evaluating Data in Decision-Making Context.

Critique of Operations
As this course moves forward, we will go much deeper into the way that we can use the
associative and transforming procedures in GIS to model spatial relationships. These procedures
include the simple transformation of selected data into graphical symbols (cartography) and also
simulation of spatial effects that might be aggivated or mitigated by changes in the arrangement
of things and conditions. An easy way to approach this essential sspect of the critique of projects
amounts to thinking through the way that GIS procedures perform as simulations of real-world
spatial mechanisms that have been defined in the conceptual description of the analysis. Stay
tuned in later weeks for a deeper discussion of this aspect of GIS.

Summary Understanding
At the bottom of the blue box in our diagram we find the aspects of the study that boil down the
take-aways from the analytical activity. These are the pieces that get back to the question of
whether anything useful has been learned.

Don't Play at Data Analysis Theatre!

One common gaffe commited by students in introductory GIS courses is succumbing to the
tempting shortcut of pretending that the magical data and GIS have revealed the answer to the
question at hand. It is surprising to see how common this tactic is, even after students have been
warned not to do it. In the real world, pretending to be an analyst and pretending to use GIS to
develop pretend answers to questions is called fraud. We do not encourage this approach at all in
this course!

Degree of Confidence
This takes us to the three blocks of concepts at the bottom of the diagram. Since we have
stipulated that propjects are evaluated in terms of their utility in practical situations, we have to
end by assigning some degree of confidence in our findings. It goes without saying that data and
models are imperfect. A serious approach to using data in practical situations has to involve some
discussion of the likely magnitude and direction of the errors that are likely to result form our use
of imperfect data and procedures. In the end, we may find that the project is not worthwhile in
terms of predicting impacts of change or for making recommendations. This is often the case
when we are working on one-week projects.

Useful Knowledge
If one has time to experiment with data models and iteratively adjust the question and the real-
world or hypothetical scope of the question, a person can become skilled at designing questions
that may be productively be explored using data-sets and simulation procedures that are
 accessible. It is often the case, especially when working on weekly assignments, that one must
conclude that the data and procedures that one has on hand have shortcomings that impact the
data's fitness as a representation of the real world or hypothetical things and conditions that one
set out to understand. Rather than seeing this turn of events as a failure, it is not hard to describe
a couple of important recommendations for finding data and simulation tools that are better suited
to the problem at hand.

Thoughtful Discussion of Information Needs

Regardless of the degree of confidence that you may have developed regarding the problem-
solving powwer of a GIS application, it is always useful to try to boil down the experience to
recommsnd potential improvements or alternate avenues for analysts who may attempt to model
similar situations in the future. For example, any analysis can be attempted at different scales and
data having different geometric or categorical granularity. After working through a data analysis at
one levelof detail, a thouightful analyst might discuss the potential to explore the same sort of
situation at another geographic scope with data of greater or lesser precision.

Thoughtful Discussion of Simulation Challenges

Depending on the way you want to organize your discussion, this topic and the previous one may
be discussed in the context of your critiques of data and procedures. In any case, a thoughtful
analyst or critic should always think about the possibilities for trying simulation techniques that
may be more or less articulate. In the real world, spatial relationships are almost always more
complicated than what can be easily simulated with GIS One articulation that is often missing
regards intermediary conditions. For example: relationships of Accessibility or Exposure are often
modeled with circular or radial buffers, when in the real world, the actual mechanism of effect is
mediated by conditions including corridors, barriers and prevailing wind or slope. It is always
possible to make a model more articulate with more data and more complicated procedures. It is
always a good idea to speculate a little bit about alternate approaches to using procedures that
are more or less articulate. There may always be arguments made about whether simpler models
are good enough fro the purpose at hand, versus whether the costs of more laborate methods
would be worth the effort -- all with regard to the decision-making purpose stipulated at the
beginning.

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