GIS Geographic Information System

GIS stands for Geographic Information System, a set of computer tools to store, edit, manage, analyze and display both aspatial data and spatial data tied to a particular location on the earth. GIS has been widely used in landuse planning, housing analysis, sociological analysis and environmental planning. With more powerful data sharing tool, GIS currently serves as an useful aid for public participation in the process of urban planning.

Though the concept of manipulating space-related date can date back to the time when "early tribesmen who made sketches on hides or formed crude models of clay as aids" to food hunting and war making, modern GIS was actually inspired by computers in the mid 20th century. Dr. Roger Tomlinson, "Father of GIS", led his team to develop the Canada Geographic Information System (CGIS) in the mid-1960s. The breakthrough in GIS history was the establishment of the Environmental Systems Research Institute by Laura and Jack Dangermond in 1969, with the core idea of "linking spatial representation with attributes in a table", a powerful idea which enabled the relevant software Arc Info to capture 90% of today's market. (Price M. Mastering ArcGIS (5th ed). 2010) The newest version is Arc GIS 10, with a totally new interface different from the previous version Arc GIS 9.3. (for more information, you can go to http://www.esri.com/)

My experience working with GIS varies from quantitative analysis to 3-D displaying and animation making. From my point of view, similar to any other planning and design software, to master GIS only requires some practice. However, the myth underneath GIS is projection, the way to intepret the true three-dimendion location on the earth to a two-dimension coordinate system. The importance of projection is undebatable because of the chasm between the round shape of the earth and the planar feature of the map. Unfortunately, none projection method is undistorted; they distort either the shape/angle of a place, or the distance/area. For the American Continent, Universal Transverse Mercator Coordinate System and State Planne Coordinate System are the major two projected coordinate systems. Two GIS courses are offered at Taubman College, UP406 Introduction to GIS instructed by Prof. Lan Deng, and UP507 Intermediate GIS by Joe Grengs.

The GIS map from http://designandgeography.com/ shows housing price changes based on panel date from 1990-2010. To our disappointment, Michigan has been suffering a serious housing price decline in the last ten years, counteracting the rise from 1990-2000. This trend did go with the severe population loss revealed in Census 2010.