I went to a short lecture given by Tom Evans from the Department of Geography about GIS (Global Information System) and how it is linked to sustainability. While the lecture was enlightening, it was also very boring and it was informative, but offered no room for criticism.
GIS is used to map land resources, design and plan structures and gardens that reflect the landscape, infrastructure planning, and much more. When combined with GPS, it adds time to a space-based program and can track travel patterns, which can be used to map a person's route and use it in research, it can be used to map simulation models (such as the expansion of rubber plantations in Laos), track deforestation, have an early famine warning, drought warning, or predict food shortages and see where aid would be needed, and it can also be used by volunteers to track environmental changes like Sudden Oak Death. Lastly, it can be used to interface with cell phone network to make an alert system for victims of disasters, like the earthquake in Haiti.
Again, the lecture was purely informative, so there is not much to criticize or comment, except that it was horribly dull. One question I had was if these were being implemented now, and if they weren't, why?
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