Do you remember a few years ago when you first used mapquest or Google maps to get directions? And do you remember also getting completely lost using those directions? The technology that combines maps and the Internet has come a long way in a short time. In case you didn't know, this technology is known as GIS or geographic information system. According to wikipedia, GIS is any system that captures, stores, analyzes, manages, and presents data that are linked to location. It is one of the highest demand tech skills these days and much bigger than getting you directions. We were curious about this interesting technology so we decided to pull some GIS experts to the side and ask some questions...

 

Sarah Longhurst

Sarah Longhurst is currently digital product coordinator at woZZon.  Her background  is in GIS and system integration projects within many market sectors, analyzing, designing and delivering solutions to business and local government to make cash savings and improve efficiency. She is skilled in the use of many GIS software including ESRI ArcGIS, Cadcorp, SmallWorld, DataMap and MapRite. You can follow her on twitter here .

 

Timothy Hales

Timothy Hales is co-founder of The GIS Forum. He just completed a term as chairman of the Charlotte Metropolitan GIS User Group.  In his spare time he contributes technical articles and thoughts to GIS Pathway and GIS Pathway Blog. His specialties include analysis, ArcGIS, ArcObjects, cartography, and database development .You can follow his blog here.

 

Christine Newton Bush

Christine Newton Bush is currently GIS technician at Ohlone College. She is now focused on geospatial applications, geospatial data processing and digital mapping. She has completed the GIS Analyst Certificate program at Foothill College. Her many specialties include ArcGIS, ArcServer, Flash applications using AS 3.0, GeoServer, and Google SketchUp. You can view her linkedin profile here.

 

Damon Weiss

Damon Weiss is project engineer at Pennoni Associates. He has over eleven years of civil engineering experience. His specialties include data mining, databases, computer programming, and decision support. He has a real passion for computer science, artificial intelligence, sensor, robotics and other innovative technologies. Find his blog here .

 

Charles Schoeneberger

Charles Schoeneberger is blogger at Whatever-Weather.  You can find him at whatever-weather, which is a great site about meteorology and weather. Recently, he posted a blog entry on GIS and meteorology, find it here . His specialties include weather forecasting with emphasis in transportation products.

 

 

Harsh
Harsh works as a Senior GIS Consultant in the Washington DC Metro, and serves as the Vice-Chair of the Technology Division of the American Planning Association (APA). Follow his blog here and you can follow him on twitter here.


1. For our readers that don't know, could you define geographic information systems?

Sarah: In a nutshell it's the merging of cartographical and database technologies, but GIS goes beyond the stereotypical Ordnance Survey map, as a lot of people perceive GIS to be. GIS involves aerial photography and 3D modeling, it's not just macro level applications of GIS, it's also micro level, the awareness of how an individual interacts with their immediate surroundings and space, for example navigating a building like a shopping centre or airport and transport networks such as the tube.

Timothy: Geographic information systems is the technological system that manages data that is based on objects or events on the Earth's surface. Within this system, these objects and events can be stored, measured, analyzed, and visualized. This technology is also known as Geospatial Technology.

Christine: Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are desktop or web-based applications that combine maps with databases. By relating attribute data to geometry, you can ask a questions that entail a spatial answer or perform data mining on geospatial data.

Damon: You don't have to be an engineer to understand the basics of Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Even the least technical person knows where the nearest bus stop is to their place of work. They understand that there may be utility pipes buried directly under the roadway and that these pipes are physically connected to houses and buildings. They know that housing prices depend strongly on the neighborhood and are influenced by proximity to good schools, access to parks and recreation, average regional growth, and social aspects such as crime rates in the area. GIS is essentially a computerized tool to help people better discover, analyze, understand, and visualize these complex spatial relationships.

More importantly, however, GIS can be used to help answer more difficult questions using data that does not appear to be related, other than by proximity or spatial connection. For example, people intuitively know that they can get sick from living too close to an environmental hazard. GIS, however, takes this concept a step further. It can be used to identify specific regions in the U.S. with abnormally high cases of asthma among young children, and then evaluate if the schools in the area are located near any particular sources of air pollution, such as industrial plants or heavily-traveled highways. GIS then allows these complex spatial relationships to be visualized in an easy-to-comprehend map format, so that it can be better understood and shared with others.

Charles: I would define Geographic Information Systems as a virtual representation to reality. Each Point, Line/Polyline, Polygon, Grid Point, etc... all relate to the back end database to relate to reality. This representation is of course only as good as the data that goes into it.

Harsh: In short, GIS is a system of software, hardware, data and people focusing primarily on the spatial dimension. Some GIS applications in say, the microbiology sector, are so far removed from geography, that calling them SIS (Spatial Information System) seems more apt.
 
2 .Could you explain how GIS is important in today's business world?

Sarah: You'll find that very few businesses don't have some form of time and location based data, it's incredibly important to retrieve information with one click. Hard copies of documents and plans are inefficient to store and retrieve when a request is made, not to mention more expensive. From private to public sectors, GIS is becoming a fundamental tool to running an efficient service. Now clients and the public expect to access information online in real time not just by request via phone, email or snail mail.

A council can now store vast amounts of planning information within a GIS system and easily enter new plans and printout only if they need to. Shipping companies can keep track of their fleet be it by road, sea or air. Clever businesses like Nike have got the public involved by producing products that allow the user to map their own movements via GPS with a tag that sits inside the trainer and syncs with their iPhone or iPod while running.


Timothy: Every industry relies upon GIS. GIS is a behind the scenes technology that most people do not realize exists. Some forefront industries that use GIS include: Utilities, Transportation, Meteorology, Retail Businesses, Education, Environmental Management, and Real Estate. Everything that has a location on the Earth can be placed into GIS. In order to efficiently manage this information, a particular industry depends on GIS technology. The workings of a power grid, monitoring of a storm, transportation of food, and placement of a ATM could not be done without GIS.

Christine: GIS enables businesses to make better decisions at all levels, but it often most benefits operations personnel. Examples of GIS applications used by business include network analysis to develop more efficient delivery routes or automated mailing lists generated from geocoded data. Management can see where customers are located with greater precision using GIS. And they can help customers to find them by providing online maps connected to a backend GIS database.

Damon: In just about every sector of business that I can think of, GIS can be leveraged to make businesses more efficient, more intelligent, more profitable and more sustainable. After all, everything we do has some spatial component to it - delivery of goods and services follow specific routes or supply chains; sales territories are based on regional demographics; natural resources are located in hard-to-reach places throughout the earth; and the critical infrastructure needed to sustain our society are located, designed and maintained to serve the areas where people physically reside.

Among other things, GIS technology is used for facilities and asset management, resource management, integrated infrastructure management, archeology, environmental impact assessment, urban planning, cartography, criminology, geographic history, marketing, and logistics.

Charles: GIS can be applied to businesses in many different ways depending with very diverse applications depending on the mission and size of the business. Some company missions or project plans may have a need for more data capture and/or analysis with new or previous databases, others may have a need to make their data more accessible to clients and/or the general public. That is the beauty of GIS, the scalability. The power of data and analysis are both in low end Access Geodatabases and Shapefiles on the low end to large enterprise geodatabases running in Oracle or related enterprise databases.

Let me use a Meteorology example. The weather models that represent the atmosphere are gridded and compute thermodynamic equations to come out with solutions for future weather conditions. These solutions with current conditions and the analysis from a operational forecaster's experience and knowledge give the public and/or clients forecasts for the future. What you end up is a forecast for a specific location. With GIS you can choose to integrate other data sources with real world and near real-time representations to add targeted added value to a client or the general public. It can cover public safety, transportation, energy production, and many other industries.

Harsh: Helping businesses make better use of the geography of their customers and markets ("Where are the emerging markets? What grows in their neighborhoods? Where are the prime customers?" etc). Tidbit: The Obama campaign made good use of GIS to target independent/undecided voters. Also, look at Location Based Services (LBS)- an industry jargon often thrown around in the past, that is catching on these days.

3. How did you get started in geographic information systems? How would you recommend others get involved in GIS?

Sarah: I did a BSc Geography degree at The University of Manchester, they had a module on GIS and I thought that it would be important to not only do the "traditional" aspects of Geography but to also embrace the modern. We applied GIS to population movement, the depletion of peat bogs in the Peak District as well as mapping pollution and other human and environmental impacts. It was a well rounded course that opened a lot of doors when I graduated.

When I was at Uni there were very few courses specific to GIS, but now there are dedicated degree and masters programmes that teach you both the theory and application of GIS as well as courses for the developer, for people who actually want to programme and code for GIS systems. To get involved with GIS it is easier to have a qualification that has an element if GIS integrated, but most people will find that GIS systems will be part of a company's IT structure anyway. Look into how GIS is used in different sectors and how it can be used in the future, just think of how many times a week you reference a map!

Timothy: I did not learn about GIS until after I has graduated and started a job as a planning project manager. I knew nothing about GIS, but I got into the software and aggressively taught myself through trial and error. Once the technology grabbed my interest, I wanted to learn as much as I could. I took classes at Central Piedmont Community College in Charlotte, NC while working full-time. In about two years I had earned a AAS Degree in Geospatial Technology. I made my education an active learning experience. During this time, I created a website to share with other what I was leaning. I sought every opportunity to network with others in this industry whom I could learn from. In less than four years, I feel as though I have made a lot of progress. I feel very confident in this technology. Some of my success includes chairing my local GIS user group and winning the 2009 SkillsUSA Geospatial Technology National Competition.

If you want to get involved in GIS, you should search the internet for what is out there. Also take some time to visit local user groups and GIS day events. Beyond that, it all depends on the individual. You can either learn a little or learn a lot. If all you want to do is dabble in GIS, I would recommend getting a certificate in GIS from a community college. However if you desire to go further, I would tell you to put your heart into it. A passion for this technology will drive you to learn more and more each day.

Christine: I have a background in web design and live in Silicon Valley where those skills are quite saturated throughout the market. I finished a GIS Analyst Certificate program at Foothill College and have been combining my skills as a web developer with my interest in maps to create a new business niche. I recommend anyone interested in GIS take a course or two to get a feel for how the geographic concepts and the technology come together.

Damon: Most of my GIS knowledge and experience was obtained through intensive self-instruction and on-the-job training; although I also used GIS extensively throughout my graduate school studies at Carnegie Mellon University. To anyone who decides to go this self-taught route, instead of obtaining formal GIS training, I strongly recommend that you tap into your passion for life-long learning. You will need it to sustain you through the learning curve.  As a civil engineer, I think it's just natural that I love maps - topographical maps, geological maps, zoning maps, transportation network maps. For me, however, GIS was more than just about making maps - it was about layering these maps in new and interesting ways, relating them to useful external data, and performing computational analyzes that changed the way people perceived their environment.

Many people who get involved in GIS only take their learning experience to the "map-making" level - learning about projections, layer symbology, and layout. These people learn to make stunning maps- a useful skill, in itself. However, GIS is so much more than that. With just a little added knowledge about databases, CAD and 3D modeling, and computer programming, those interested in getting more deeply involved in GIS will be able to unlock the full potential of this powerful tool. These skills can be picked up at any local bookstore, online or at the nearby community college. That was my strategy, and it's paid off nicely.

Charles: I first became aware of GIS back in 1999 at the University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, after a undergraduate meteorology class. The Atmospheric Sciences and Geography Departments are both part of the same John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences. The Geographic Department had just finished up a session in the lobby of one of the aerospace buildings and they had demos of ArcView 3.1 and other GIS literature laying around I picked up and read. The Atmospheric Science department also runs the Regional Weather Information Center, and part of this academic division has a GIS/Meteorology research focus. I listened to the talk and how they were using it for highway transportation Meteorology applications.

It was during my time working at Meridian Environmental Technologies Inc, in Grand Forks, North Dakota I was thinking about what is future of disseminating information to the public and I thought about GIS. I researched different programs and I came across the Resource Analysis/GIS Program at St. Mary's University of Minnesota in Winona, MN. They allowed me to explore using the technology of the time, ArcView 3.x, ArcGIS 8.x, and Arc/Info 7.x, so I learned GIS by using command line applications which make you get extremely up close and personal to the data to get and insight with the data.

I would recommend that others first by first taking their passion in their chosen background and think about how they could apply GIS to it. Then read up on the basics on ESRI's website among others.

Harsh: GIS was the ideal fit. If someone is interested in web development and spatially-oriented, they should look at the GIS industry.  

Click here for Part 2 of the interview. 

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4. What are the best informational resources for learning about GIS?

Sarah: There are so many online resources these days, including forums, blogs, online magazines etc that books are not necessarily the best resource anymore, there has also been a large increase in meet up groups that attracts people from every sector sharing ideas and advice, Geovation and Geomob are quite popular in London.

Timothy: The best informational resources come mainly through networking. There are many GIS professionals on Twitter and you can learn a lot just by reading their tweets. Also, attending conferences and local user group provide great connections for learning. In addition, there are variety of resources on the internet such as thegisforum and gis.com. If you a really interesting in pursuing this industry, I would suggest taking a few GIS courses from your local college to get some hands on experience. You can find a list of colleges here.

Christine: There are a lot of great web sites out there. I maintain a list of the ones I find most useful on my blog at maps@greycat. There are so many different things one can choose to do with GIS that you have to spend some time exploring before you can decide how to make the best use of all that is available. I have a personal interest, for example, in historical mapping so of course I spend my spare time at DavidRumsey.com, the USGS and the Library of Congress who all have tremendous data sets.

Damon: Information and knowledge about GIS is all around us, available in form of training, books, and online resources. Books and training provide an excellent overview of the core concepts, but are obviously costly. The poor-man's approach, therefore, is to learn as much as you can online, and tie it all together with books and training, as needed. The trick is to develop a disciplined strategy that accomplishes your specific GIS goals. Assuming you have access to GIS software, the first step is to find a good source of data, local to your state or region. In Pennsylvania, for example, the Pennsylvania Spatial Data Access website is the official public access clearinghouse for state-wide geospatial information, and contains resources related to terrain, soils, demographics, infrastructure, plants and fauna, and the environment.

On a national level, Data.gov is a good resource in the United States. Use this data to create some maps that interest you and perform analyses on the data - don't be afraid to experiment! The next step is to do keyword searches on those specific GIS-related questions that you would like to answer. If your interest is emergency management, for example, you might search online for "GIS emergency management" or "GIS disaster response". This search will give you ideas of how others are using GIS within your domain, and you will often find detailed online tutorials that you can emulate using your own data. As you continue to build your skills, the big picture will become clearer. Last, but not least, subscribing to blogs are an excellent way to get up-to-date information about GIS and to continue your learning process. For starters, I recommend the James Fee GIS blog and the GIS Lounge. The ArcGIS Desktop Help website is also an extensive and very useful knowledge base with video tutorials, examples and other information that will help you learn the analytic capability of ArcGIS, if that is your tool of choice.

Charles: There are many diverse sources to learn about GIS. One is basic sales material like on ESRI's website. ESRI also has many high quality basic and advanced webcasts to learn more about the software. It also has a large library for developers to learn specific APIs for software development in and beyond GIS-specific programs.

Harsh: Internet.

5. As far as jobs are concerned, what are the best opportunities in GIS?

Sarah: There are the more traditional areas and early adopters of GIS that have always used mapping, for example in mining, environmental reporting, property development, planning, surveying, BGS etc but opportunities have flourished with the rise of Google maps, Bing maps and now mapping and sat nav on mobiles etc

Think of how many times a person will use mapping in a day to day situation. For example, mapping their own movements be it for fitness via the GPS on their mobile while running, using mobile apps to find restaurants or finding events near them on Google maps. Everyone is embracing GIS, it's not just for the scientists and developers anymore. If you have an interest in it and know how it can be used to improve a company and its services, employers will listen!

Timothy: There are a lot of opportunities in GIS.I believe that it is important to point out that GIS is moving more towards being a tool than a career.Sure you can be a GIS technician or analyst, but you will go further if you know how to apply GIS to a specific industry. Software and web development are a big contributor to GIS jobs; however, they require an extensive amount of programming knowledge. Other job areas that are promising are planning, cartography, healthcare, transportation, marketing, and research.

Christine: The economy is struggling, but GIS jobs are still out there because the technology and the demand for it continue to grow. But of course you need to get some experience first. Internships play an important role in the GIS field. There are also many non-profit, environmental and crisis related organizations that welcome volunteers who are interested in GIS.

If you're a programmer, there are even more opportunities using GIS since most applications have an API you can use to develop custom projects. Javascript, Python, C#, XML and SQL are all in demand for GIS application development. Database development is at the heart of GIS work. Leading geodatabase platforms are PostgreSQL/PostGIS, Oracle and SQL Server 2008.

Damon: Opportunity in GIS are literally everywhere. For those of you who are job-seekers, I did a quick scan of some online job boards. The organizations that appear to be hiring right now include local, state and federal governments, universities, private-sector companies in surveying, public health and utilities, and non-profit organizations. If you are already a GIS professional and your company is looking to market GIS services, the ERSI website has a comprehensive list of potential markets for GIS, which would be a good starting point for defining your service offerings. Personally, I see a huge market for facilities and infrastructure management, in the coming decade. Our civil infrastructure is the fabric of our society; however, maintaining and expanding it continues to be a challenge - both in terms of costs and data management. GIS is quickly becoming an essential tool for managing infrastructure, and our ability to better track and manage our scarce resources will undoubtedly be a key factor in achieving long-term sustainability.

Charles: The overall economy is down, GIS included, so jobs are not directly related to potential of the technology. Programming and scripting are becoming more of a focus with GIS and the two will continue to combine in the future. GIS will also continue to integrate with IT hardware infrastructure. Otherwise economic downturns are times to start fresh with new ideas and a entrepreneur spirit. Your next GIS job opportunity may be your next idea in your head.

Harsh: Startups mostly on the west coast, federal government mostly on the east coast etc. The mobile market is also heating up, just like the mashup market.

6. What role does Google play in the GIS world? Are there any other major players?

Sarah: Google is GIS in its simplest form and they are responsible for making GIS more accessible and mainstream, they stripped back the traditional Ordnance Survey map and allowed people to see only what was useful to them. Joe public on the streets of a big city doesn't care about contours, lat longs etc they just want to see some landmarks, transport networks like bus stops and the ability to see a way from point A to point B. But of course Google maps cannot compete with high level providers such as ESRI and Cadcorp.

Google made mapping open source, businesses and the public alike were allowed to use Google maps freely without worrying about license fees and know that other people were using the exact same maps and so this reduced confusion. They also took the concept of photo overlays to the next level, Street view opened the Pandora?s box of mapping, taking a line on a map that represents the street and then showing the street visually was inspired, until the privacy issues came along of course.

There are now other major players, open source mapping is a good idea! Now there is Bing Maps, Nokia Maps, Open Street Map to mention but a few and I can guarantee there will be more very soon.

Timothy: Google's technology is in the area of maps rely on the GIS technology. The directions Google Maps provides comes from routing software that uses GIS. Other features include finding a location when you enter a search, placing pinpoints a map, showing map related business information, and so much more.Google Street View also helps bring maps to life. Even the standalone program Google Earth sits on this same technology platform.All of the data that you see within the Google mapping software functions on GIS.

I personally believe that the major player in the GIS world is Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI). ESRI is one of the top GIS software companies in the world. The company is always pushing forward with better, more advance technology. It is hard to find someone in the GIS industry not familiar with ESRI.

Christine: Google Earth and Google Maps have really brought geospatial awareness to a lot of people and this has been a good thing for GIS across the board. This is because in the last five years the popularity of Google mapping products has simultaneously created demand for geospatial data while at the same time making it really easy and fun for people to create and interact with it.

There are certainly other major players, not the least of which are the USGS, US Census, NOAA, ESRI, Microsoft, Trimble, Garmin and a growing community of open source GIS users and products like PostGIS and the Open Street Map project. There is also an emerging class of consumer-priced desktop GIS which include Manifold.net, TatukGIS and MapDotNet. Amazon.com's cloud hosting recently announced that their customers can mount US Census and Tiger Data. And there are companies like SpatialKey offering online GIS solutions.

Damon: With some of their recent initiatives in location-based services (LBS) and their generally data-centric approach to business, Google is certainly poised to have a sustaining effect on the GIS world. Google Earth has already had a significant impact. While Google certainly did not invent GIS and Google Earth does not have the analytic capabilities of mature GIS programs, such as ArcGIS, Google did succeed where the GIS industry had arguably failed for decades. They helped make the "geospatial revolution" fashionable and created tools that made geospatial data both easily accessible and inexpensive to the general public.

Also, street view changed the game entirely and in ways that have not played out yet, to their entirety. Purists in the GIS industry may argue that Google has effectively "dumbed down" GIS, turning into a social media fad instead of a scientific tool. I think they've help fuel demand, actually, both in the short- and long-term. I imagine that, over time, Google Earth will become increasingly more powerful as an analytic tool and will eventually converge with mature GIS programs. Simultaneously, I can see that the mature GIS programs are evolving to become more like Google Earth and Google Maps. ArcGIS Online, for example, is a new and intriguing initiative by ERSI to make GIS mapping a publicly available web-based service, complete with a programming API and an map interface that can be embedded in custom web sites, very similar to Google Maps. With respect to other players in the GIS community, the open source solutions, such as GRASS, will always have a following. Other newcomers to the scene also have exciting potential - New York-based GeoWeb3D Inc, website. for example, mashes up ArcGIS, the web and a fast 3D rendering engine to create some pretty compelling and photo-realistic examples on their web site.

Charles: Google currently is a major player on the last stage of the data pipeline between the database to the user. They compete with Microsoft's Virtual Earth/Bing Maps and are ahead of Microsoft with their Google Earth Enterprise (host your own Google Earth on corporate servers without going through Google hardware and networks. Google's (and Microsoft's) technologies currently do not truly compete with ESRI applications (even though they do have competing products). ESRI is one of the largest GIS software and consulting companies which has its strength in the data capture and analysis software beyond what Google and Microsoft currently offer. These services would then be outputted to a ESRI, Google Earth/Maps, or Microsoft Virtual Earth/Bing Maps display either on the computer or your internet connected mobile device (e.g. Smartphones)..

Harsh: A disruptive role starting from 2004-05. Other bigshots include Microsoft, Yahoo and ESRI. On organizations, take a look at OGC.

7. Ten years from now, where do you see the state of GIS?

Sarah: For a start I think the term GIS will be a defunct, say GIS to most people they wouldn't have a clue, it's being absorbed into the ever expanding term "Digital". I think GIS will also be a heck of a lot more integrated, a network where data can be easily imported and exported into different systems to make business more efficient.

Not to sound too sci-fi but I feel that GIS will not be confined to a handheld device or PC, requesting a map on the move from thin air will be a reality, the development of AR (Augmented Reality) technology will make this possible, be it via hologram, AR eye wear or built into car wind screens etc Why not be part of the map rather than just staring at it?

Timothy: Ten years is a large time span, and it is hard to say where GIS will be then. It is definitely a progressive technology and will probably be beyond anyone's current imagination. Because GIS is so rapidly advancing, in order to stay at the top of this technology you must always be learning. Those who chose not to learn new things in GIS will be left behind in the outdated technology.

Christine: I have no doubt that GIS will be just as vital and practical a decade from now as it is today. However, there is a real concern regarding geo-literacy in the United States. We need to make geographic education a priority so that advances in GIS technologies will have meaning for the next generation. Right now, we're playing catch up.

Damon: As technology advances and becomes more ubiquitous in our lives, I am very excited about the future of GIS. First and foremost, I would love to eventually see the adoption of a "National GIS" PDF, where GIS resources for the entire country (perhaps even the world) are standardized, verified to be accurate, and compiled into a central geospatial repository. This National GIS would be easily accessed by the general public and used for the good of society, helping us to create long-term, technical jobs and better manage our resources. We are already working in this direction in some industries, but the overall efforts are patchwork, at best. Eventually, I also envision that GIS will someday converge with two other emerging technologies that I have been tracking for some time - the Semantic Web and smart dust, or motes. A full description of these technologies is beyond the scope of this Q&A; however, I will try to summarize them briefly. The Semantic Web is essentially a concept where real-world objects are represented on the web as machine-readable data, and can be accessed through web services for consumption by both humans and computer programs.

The semantic data structure defines the various attributes of these objects, as well as the relationships between these and other Semantic Web objects. Imagine now if we could also include geospatial data in the Semantic Web. Doing so would allow us to perform extremely complex semantic / geospatial queries on data that is distributed both throughout the web and the physical world. Smart dust, or motes, (Smart dust@Wiki) also has some interesting future implications for GIS. Imagine a sensor the size of a grain of sand, or a dust particle, but which has on-board sensing, computations, communications and power-harvesting capabilities.When networked together, these motes can form highly flexible, low-power sensor networks with applications that include energy consumption and environmental monitoring, hazardous material or germ detection, movement tracking, etc. - all in real-time over a distributed area. If the smart dust vision becomes reality in the future, tight integration with GIS will become an absolute necessity.The GIS of the future will be an ideal tool for consuming, analyzing and visualizing the complex data streams from hundreds or thousands of distributed, real-time sensors. It is a scary concept, in some ways, but the overall benefit to our society would be immeasurable.

Charles: GIS right now is in a broad, steady transition from a quick way to produce paper maps with desktop infrastructure into a near-real time web services enterprise infrastructure. It has been on the outside looking in most IT departments, the trend has been to integrate it more and more with IT departments in both the software/solutions and hardware infrastructure. Some of it is also integrating with the emerging Software as a Service (SaaS) (Google Maps iPhone/Android) and flexible data demand types of Cloud Computing (e.g. Microsoft Azure). The gap between virtual reality represented by GIS in a computing device and the real world itself will continue to narrow. These will expand with the future evolution of portable technology (e.g. smartphones, netbooks, iPad, etc...) and other technology products that have not been thought of yet.

Harsh: Better-looking maps, fancier mashups, more mobile apps, more sophisticated geoprocessing/geoanalysis.

Special thanks to our participates for their time as they have given us a great lesson in GIS. Perhaps some of you reading will find your way to a great career in this hot technology.


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