The GIS Glass is Half Full

Not much happened over the Christmas holidays in GIS but this holiday season many of you are experiencing some impact from the down economy or at least know some one who is. Add health care reform, cap and trade, the war, the growing deficit, and climate change, and things look pretty grim. Well, cheer up — things are not as bad as the media paints them.

We are luckier than most since the impact has been less severe on the GIS community. Much of that falls due to the non-cyclical nature of GIS work, and fortunately GIS is no longer a luxury but an integral part of government operations. I was surprised to see that according to the Bureau of Labor and Management, the unemployment level for college-educated workers is only slightly over 4 percent. I can only guess that it is the same or lower for GIS professionals.

We sometimes forget the blessings we have and how much better life is. The news media seem to gravitate toward pictures that are more dramatic and onerous than reality, but many times, reality is actually quite different from our first reaction. Here are some fun geographic examples that have been the subject of heated barroom discussions:

• What major U.S. city would you fly over if you flew due west from Rome, Italy? Answer: Boston.  It seems counter-intuitive because we think of Rome as being in a warm climate. It is, but its location in the Mediterranean results in a warmer climate than Boston.
• What course would you steer from Norfolk, Virginia to reach the Bahamas: south, southeast, or southwest?  Answer: south-southwest.  We think of the Bahamas as being east of Florida and they are, but few realize how far east the Virginia/North Carolina coast is compared to south Florida.
• If you were sailing from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean via the Panama Canal, what approximate course would you steer?  Answer: southeast. One thinks of the Pacific being west of the Gulf and it is, but the Isthmus of Panama forms an “S” at the canal location so the canal actually runs southeast heading to the Pacific; parts of it even run east-northeast.

My point? Things are not always as they seem. We in the GIS community have the tools to view the world scientifically as it is, not as one would guess. We have the ability to display complex data accurately and in visually compelling ways. We owe it to our citizens to be thorough from both sides and not just doom and gloom. As a senior citizen I’ve personally seen many changes for the better, not the apocalyptic vision of dystopian worlds such as 1984 or Soylent Green.

Two real-world environmental examples:

• The first Navy ship I served on had an overhaul at a Brooklyn shipyard right on the East River. In 1975 the East River was very simply an opaque brown open sewer. My sailors had impromptu contests, as they worked over the side, as to who could count the most condoms or the most t..ds floating past the ship. One day we even saw a face down body in a dark suit floating down the river. The police recovered the stiff, and the event didn’t even make the local news. Things have changed. Last year I was shocked to see the East River with enough clarity to actually see several feet into the water. It was not the same river.
• When I was a small boy living in 1950 Chicago, I saw my mother scrubbing the blackened collars of my Dad’s white shirts. “Ring around the collar” was a very significant problem due to the coal dust and soot in the air. Although before my time, I was told that it was even worse in the early 1900s. The air was so dirty that people who wore white dress shirts would have filthy cuffs by the time they arrived at work. To counter the problem they would fold back their cuffs and then unfold the cuff upon arrival at work revealing a clean cuff. I haven’t seen air that dirty in any U.S. city recently. Today the carry-over on many dress shirts is a sewn seam about ¾’ from the base of the cuff that facilitated the folding.

I know that these are only anecdotal observations, but they certainly highlight that things are better in many aspects of the environment. Now let’s consider a transportation-related unintended consequence.

Several years ago there was a bill before Congress to require mothers who travel with infants onboard aircraft to place them in car seats rather than in their lap. On first glance, it sounds like a good idea, but let’s consider the unintended consequence. A study was done to determine the impact of the proposed law. A college research team determined that the number of infants that would be saved with car-seat use would be minimal since most air crashes are catastrophic. However, requiring a mother to buy two tickets would “push a whole bunch of them out the bottom” since many couldn’t afford two seats. Putting those mothers behind the wheel of a car, a much more dangerous travel method, would result in significantly more baby deaths. So the impact of the law would be to kill more babies.

The strong capability of GIS is in data visualization of complex intended and unintended effects. GIS has shown the effects of global warming very clearly, and if we stick to faithfully analyzing and displaying the data, no one can fault our work. I do believe that we need to consider all scientific work in the arena of ideas. Some researchers  question the impact and/our ability to mitigate human effects. We also know that the implementation of draconian measures could be worse, having an extremely severe and devastating impact on the poor. It was very disappointing to hear of climate researchers fudging the data or trying to exclude conflicting research. This is too important an issue, and there is too much at stake to undermine the credibility of research on this issue. Winston Churchill once said “With integrity nothing else counts, and without integrity nothing else counts.”

So my wish for 2010 is for everyone to do good work and live by the GISP code of ethics, and for there to be more optimism.  History has shown that nature sides with the optimist. Life is good and getting better, so I choose the see the glass as half full.