This video is the story of how GIS was used in the recovery of the space shuttle Columbia.
The Space Shuttle Columbia was the first spaceworthy space shuttle in NASA’s orbital fleet. Its first mission, STS-1, lasted from April 12 to April 14, 1981. On February 1, 2003, Columbia disintegrated during re-entry over Texas, on its 28th mission, killing all seven crew members. Within hours of the space shuttle Columbia’s disintegration over East Texas, geographic information system departments helped to pinpoint the location of shuttle debris. Their work aided to help investigators determine what went wrong. ESRI software plotted the data points on a digital map overlaid with information from existing databases about road locations and topographic features and enhanced by satellite photos.
Right around the corner is December 1st which is World AIDS Day. This day brings awareness and creates partnerships to combat the spread of the disease. This is a disease unlike any other. GIS provides leaders and public health professionals with a variety of tools and methods to track the spread of AIDS, determine populations at risk, develop programs, and monitor the success of targeted initiatives.
In addition to helping identify the need for intervention and education programs, GIS can also play a vital role in monitoring the effectiveness of programs. First, it can compare before and after conditions in relation to fund allocations, showing how a program has impacted a region or group. Second, mapping can help anticipate needs based on those changes and any changes in epidemiological information. Policy makers can use the results for evaluating redistribution of funds and/or programs.
What were you doing at 10:00 a.m. on November 13, 2008? Well, millions of people throughout Southern California participated in The Great Southern California ShakeOut Drill, the largest earthquake preparedness exercise in U.S. history. The drill simulated a 7.8 magnitude earthquake along the San Andreas Fault in Southern California.
The goal of the drill was to test and evaluate processes, equipment, technologies, and shared workflows. GIS technology was used to help build an accurate, continuously updated emergency information repository. It also aided in decision support and resource management as well enhanced multi-jurisdictional communication.
Those working with the technology were able to post pertinent information to provide situational awareness to the state emergency command center and affected communities as well as areas adjacent to the disaster.
Abu Dhabi Police are planning a geographic database to provide comprehensive, immediate data on crime, traffic accidents and demographics for use by the public and other government agencies. Government functions such as city planning, crisis control, critical infrastructure management and environmental research would benefit from geographic information systems (GIS). It is felt that GIS would be helpful in the analysis of crime patterns and provide critical information in emergencies because basically, GIS adds the concept of location on anything. If you want to find out what happened in a certain place, you need GIS. If you want to find out where the concentration of crime is, where the concentration of traffic accidents is and where the accidents are occurring at a specific time, you need GIS. The GIS adds a lot of information that helps plan and mitigate danger in a way that nothing else can do.
For more information, please read the full article here.
Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Corporate Strategies, Aubyn Hill, has urged more security firms and businesses to use Geographic Information Systems because the technology can be used more extensively to help counteract criminals and killers and in the process reduce the incidence of crime.
By getting GIS established in Jamaica, the GOJ has given a platform to private-sector companies, our universities, entrepreneurs and individuals which they can use as layers of geospatial data and information to existing relationship data in diverse locations. This is a technology that can really help developing countries like Jamaica.
For more information on this, please read the full article here.
Georgia state health officials outlined their plans for using GIS maps to determine which of Richmond County’s children are most at risk for lead poisoning, a potentially life-threatening condition. The issue surrounding lead poisoning is that a lot of physicians are under the impression that lead poisoning isn’t a problem anymore and this results in children who are most at risk not being tested for lead poisoning.
An analysis of GIS maps for central Atlanta found that by comparing databases with the ages of houses, house values, where children live and which children have been tested for lead poisoning, there is significance in terms of the how it affects these children. These children are at a high risk but nothing is being done. But with the help of GIS, a picture is being given to the problem is now allowing the point to get across. The GIS maps will assist in making Georgia’s children safer.
For more information on this story, please read the full article here.
This map shows the spatial distribution of a simulated epidemic of a flu-like illness in Buffalo shortly before it peaks. Circles represent families, triangles workplaces.
A new, computational method for simulating the spread of flu-like illnesses like SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) that is being developed by a UB geographer may provide policymakers and analysts with new ammunition for studying and predicting the pattern of public-health threats in urban communities.
The research uses the tools of geographic information science (GIS) and object-oriented computing to create a realistic picture of how an infectious, flu-like illness would spread throughout Buffalo. Since the spread of an infectious disease throughout a community is a spatial process, GIS is suited uniquely to demonstrate it.
For more information on the study, please read it here.
ESRI’s 2008 Health GIS Conference in Washington, D.C., explored advances in geographic information system (GIS) technology that meet critical needs to measure and analyze human health and programs on local to global scales.
More than 21 nations as well as 45 U.S. states attended the conference to discuss how they are using GIS in innovative ways, from spatial analysis used to measure health disparities to embedding GIS into organizational information technology.
For examples of the ways in which the attendees use GIS technology and more information on the conference, please visit www.esri.com/healthgis.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) continues its use of geographic information systems (GIS) as a core technology across its nationwide service. The ability to deploy unlimited ArcGIS software allows EPA employees to extend the agency’s existing applications and create new ones to support its mission of protecting human health and the environment.
For more information on this story, please read the full article here.
In Lucknow, India, tigers will now be monitored for every move that they make — in the dense of the forests or on the fringes. All the 28 tiger reserves will special GIS-based software for intensively monitoring source populations of tigers in the areas that have substantial number of wild cats and will help in designing a proper mechanism for saving the tigers inside and outside reserve areas.
For more information, please read the full article here.
GIS has given new meaning to public health professionals who need to utilize the technology as part of their daily research activities. With many available functions to view, understand, question, interpret, and visualize data , researchers can utilize for disease surveillance, data collection, and data visualization. With ehealthmap.com, we will go over how GIS is continually used in health research and promotion such as disease surveillance, community health projects, or other research projects which it has encountered. The potential and applicability will be discussed in the blogs.
URISA's GIS in Public Health keynote highlight key ideas valuable to the world of global infectious disease challenges http://tiny.cc/LCDOE4 months ago
Learn about Colorado residents attending the Community HIV/AIDS Education and Action Conference.
Read more: http://tiny.cc/VV5E15 months ago
Today's Article: Will removing two dams along the Millstone River help restore migratory fish to this important waterway? 5 months ago
Posted by sweetandharmonious 
Posted by sweetandharmonious 
Posted by sweetandharmonious 
