Geographic Information Systems Essay Example for Free

Geographic Information Systems Essay The future prospects of geographic technologies such as GIS (Geographic Information Systems), satellite images, remote sensing, and more are increasingly discussed in literature (Matthews and Herbert 2005). Today, GIS software can be used in a highly efficient way. In 18 years, people are likely to be amazed by what is being done with it. This paper projects the possible impacts of the technologies for the public service and democratic society of Auckland in the year 2025. The capabilities of GIS will be analysed. In doing so, an overview of GIS is followed by an analysis of the relationship between this technology and democratic values and implications of this relationship for Auckland society. Future Horizons Hardware and software costs for both personal computers and workstations have been declining steadily during recent years. This trend, combined with the rapid increases in technology development, will dramatically benefit the GIS market. Geographic data are of great size and require several unique hardware and software adaptations for data entry, processing, and output (Donaldson 120). These adaptations include hardware equipment and digitizers, scanners, and plotters. With a healthy development of GIS market, these adaptations will become more sophisticated, easier to use, and less expensive. The GIS market also will supply a variety of hardware and software innovations from which to choose. Bottom-Up GIS In the year 2025, GIS will be cheaper, faster, easier to use, and supplied with more and better data. As large amounts of local data will become easily available in GIS format, the outlook for GIS in local area planning will look very bright. Besides using GIS to inform and analyze in the traditional sense, planners will consider using it as a cognitive tool. In this new approach, people learn to use GIS data to exchange their views concerning planning processes, neighborhood issues, and future wishes. This new view of how GIS can be used in planning emerged from recent concern that traditional use of GIS in planning is top-down, controlled, and technicist (Brown 246). Donaldson (2002) have noted that GIS that is merely technological in orientation will fail to address important issues. Therefore, it is likely that GIS will be used in local communities in a way that is not technicist in a fundamental way. One could predict that GIS will have a more democratic approach to planning in which the processes of communication and interaction are considered. As a result, GIS will be used in a bottom-up way that will let the citizens of Auckland characterize their local environment. As a way to ensure a more bottom-up approach to GIS, planners will focus on the inclusion of local knowledge in GIS. There are some examples in regard to planning. Some researchers (Craig Elwood 1998) studied how local knowledge was incorporated in the creation of GIS databases. Such information as how residents value their homes or their feelings about the concerns of a given area was incorporated. Because these approaches have an objective to provide local residents with greater access to GIS, they are integrated with other community-based uses of GIS (Matthews and Herbert 2005). New approaches will enable residents to use GIS to communicate how they perceive their neighborhood or the locality in which they live, via their description, evaluation, or propositions for their local environment. New approach will be both the tool used to explore an issue and the means of its expression. It will be using GIS as a spatial language tool to have access to local knowledge and communicating residents observations, rather than presenting only objective facts. With this new approach, the citizens of Auckland will be able to redefine the questions asked within GIS. For instance, â€Å"Where are roads most overcrowded? † becomes â€Å"What streets do I consider as inconvenient due to traffic jam? † â€Å"What is the location of parks relative to the location of children? † becomes â€Å"What parks are most frequently visited in my neighborhood and how many children use them? † (Craig Elwood 104) The answers of the residents to the first type of question create an entirely different image than the answers to the second type. The result is that the content of the analysis may be significantly improved. Using this new approach, analysis of residents observations that result through traditional visioning processes in answers such as â€Å"We need to have a better system of transporting† become answers such as â€Å"Here are places where we need to travel and where we prefer to travel,† and â€Å"Here is where we at present can and cannot travel† (Donaldson, 189).