Geographic Information Systems: Mapping Tomorrow's Future

Written By: John Teems
Program Intern, World Affairs Council of Atlanta
Published: 7/20/2017

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is described by Esri, one of the world’s premier GIS providers, as a system that “lets us visualize, question, analyze, and interpret data to understand relationships, patterns, and trends.” Often, this involves the creation or manipulation of maps by collecting geographic data, such as longitude, latitude, and elevation, and non-geographic data, which could be anything from the type of disease a person has to the average GDP per capita in an area. Essentially, GIS is a tool used to manipulate, manage, and present geospatial data on a map. GIS is mostly utilized for city planning, natural resource development and conservation, and large-scale building projects. However, based on personal experience, it seems to be underutilized in day-to-day work in international development organizations. Here, I believe maps have the potential to enhance work in areas such as fundraising, project planning, and project evaluation.

When you examine many leading university programs, or look at job descriptions, you may notice a common theme: a gap exists between international development and GIS. After working and studying with countless development professionals, and attending meetups with members of the GIS community, I have rarely found someone possessing both skills. GIS academic programs rarely include development theory, and vice versa. On the non-profit side, most project workers have rarely, if ever, used GIS tools. Each side is specialized in its respective field, yet there’s the potential to increase productivity and impact through integration.

At a recent social event, I spoke with a GIS professional in Atlanta about his current project which maps local community gardens, including information on which produce is being grown at which garden. However, the idea stopped there. When I asked who this project is trying to reach and what methods he intends to use to reach this audience, I was met with silence. He admitted he hadn’t thought about this and planned on making the maps available only online, reaching a limited audience. I advised him to think about different mediums of communication in order to reach the Atlantans most in need of a community garden. Only after collaboration between both of us could this project not only be complete, but useful.

At a recent internship, I helped produce a report on trade in Asia. As with many reports, the purpose was to create knowledge and prove a point. Since the report contained hundreds of statistics on trade in different countries and sectors, the reader could easily get lost with the numbers alone. Explaining these facts and findings would require much more writing, but a map could do so instantly. Similarly, fundraising efforts would be more efficient if backed by simple maps correlating money raised by which donors and in what regions. Event planning becomes more effective when a map can show a location central to all attendees. Even something like a grant proposal is made more persuasive to the reader when a map is used to show the need for a specific program in a particular area, rather than the proposition merely being communicated through thousands of words. This isn’t a call for GIS tools to replace traditional methods of development work. This is merely a call to add something more to international development professional’s repertoire.