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[MUSIC]
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Hello everyone, and
welcome to Fundamentals of GIS.
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In this lesson I'm going to give
you a brief introduction to GIS but
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not an overly technical one.
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We're going to focus, instead,
on why GIS is really exciting and
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why you might want to
learn how to work with it.
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In the next lesson will give you a more
concrete understanding of GIS, but for
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now I just want you to get excited.
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This lecture is safe to skip
if you're in a rush, but
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if you stick around to the end I hope I
can make you as excited about GIS as I am.
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To introduce GIS I'd like to
tell you how I came across it.
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When I was in school I was sort
of an amateur software developer.
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It wasn't my focus, but
something I did for fun.
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And I liked to solve problems by
automating them with software.
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For a class I read this paper, the details
of which are lost to me now, but
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it involves studying migratory birds.
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And they discussed breaking up the world
into a large grid of cells to track
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movement of them, or something like that.
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And here's where I got
this brilliant idea.
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What if I could make software
that made that easy?
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What if you could have a simple piece
of software that let you paint on your
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computer, sort of like Microsoft Paint,
but you'd have these layers and
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then you could run mathematical functions
comparing or combining the layers?
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Some software that let you understand
data in a geographic context.
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That would be so cool.

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I was thinking small at this point, but
still thought I had an idea that would be
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useful at least to a few
thousand people or something.
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I mentioned my roommate, and
he said, that sounds a lot like GIS.
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In a sort of matter of fact way like,
yeah, that's a good idea and
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they already have it.
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Looking it up, I discovered just how
important this software already was in
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shaping the modern world and
how many disciplines already rely on it.
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So much of what we interact with matters
in part because of where it is or
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what's around it.
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And people had been building
these types of tools for decades.
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That's what I want to show you right now.
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The many ways to understand the world and
your own work in it with GIS.
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Let's start with that ubiquitous


technology in many of your pockets,
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the smartphone.
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I'd argue that the GPS chip in those
phones is nearly as critical to their
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usefulness as the persistent
connection to the Internet.
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We're always using our devices
to understand what's around us.
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To find a nearby place to eat, or
a place to buy something we need.
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Or we might be touring and trying to find
things to do, and then we need to find out
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how to get there, so we'll use
the mapping feature on the phone.
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These are all core components of GIS.
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Where these places are,
how you're location relates to them, and
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then how to get there on
a complex transportation network.
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An extension of this technology that
takes it out of the smartphone navigation
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realm and into the desktop GIS realm,

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is to combine this information about our
road networks with population information.
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And use it to figure out where to
put resources, such as warehouses or
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storefronts for your business, so
that they're accessible by customers.
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GIS can also help us solve other
types of routing problems.
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A classic one in my line of work is,
where does the water go?
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We know water flows downhill, but
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we need data to tell us where
downhill is on a landscape scale.
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Once we have that information for
an area, we can figure out
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where rivers form by figuring out the
common locations that water runoff occurs.
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This can help in everything
from determining flood risk and
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choosing town locations, to figuring out
how much water is available for an area.
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A utility might take that information and
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combine it with current population


information and estimates for
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growth in a town and use it for
capacity planning of their infrastructure.
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They can then use GIS software to
determine what kinds of pipes they need
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and where they should run in order to
most efficiently deliver their water and
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enable proper maintenance.
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Other people who run that same town can
use GIS to help make sure it's the kind of
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town people want to live in by planning
out the communities and making sure that
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growth is directed to the areas that
the community wants it to be in.
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This is typically called land use
planning and it's a common GIS use case.
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Sometimes it's a town's urban planners who
use it to map out the zones in a town and
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where industry and commercial and
residential development should occur.
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And other times it's crowdsourced and
the planners invite the citizens in
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to use specialized GIS software to say

how they want to see their town grow.


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At the edges of these towns
are farmers who are using GIS and
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remote sensing to determine how to
maximize the yield of their crops.
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By monitoring soil conditions and
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capturing aerial images that
can help assess plant health,
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they can determine where they may need
to increase watering or scale it back.
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And whether or
not they may need to amend their soil.
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Meanwhile, a migratory bird uses that farm
as a temporary stop in its migration.
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A non-profit volunteer takes notes
of what birds are in the area, and
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enters it into a spacial database.
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The non-profit then builds maps that
show the range of the species, and
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these go in books and
online publications to help birders and
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members of the general public identify and
connect with the birds.

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In the county or state government,
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an economist may be interested in what
crops the farmer is are choosing to grow
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in order to accurately estimate
economic output across regions.
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They can use this to determine what kinds
of jobs and training are needed in a given
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area, understand how the value of that
land is changing when production changes,
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predict tax revenue, and
direct funds for infrastructure.
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That data's also passed off to members
of the emergency management agencies.
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They keep track of incidents of floods,
tornadoes, hurricanes and
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earthquakes, and this information
can help them estimate and
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prevent human and economic losses
from these types of disasters.
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Even with all these stories,
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we're still only scratching the surface
of what you can do with GIS.
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But what really excites me


is that it seems like so
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much of the world now understands
the importance of location.
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There's an old saying that you never
really understand something until you
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understand how it relates to
something you already know.
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This is the crux of spacial information,
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referencing our data to other
locations in the real world.
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To almost any important fact
we can add context by knowing
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where something occurred.
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Spacial information opens up a whole
world of possible new questions or
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interesting answers when added
to an organization's other data,
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and that's something that's
rapidly occurring right now.
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We're already witnessing a generation
of people who grow up with location
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information in their pockets.

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There are many directions that
information can take you.
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One direction is what you learn in this
class, which is to analyze location data.
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I do think that it will become so
important to be able to analyze
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location data that the next generation
will learn the basics of GIS
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the way that my generation
learned how to use spreadsheets.
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Again, I think all this
is really exciting and
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I hope it illustrates that
GIS isn't just one thing.
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It's a general set of technologies and
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a way to think about data that open
up exciting, new possibilities.
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I'm even more excited about GIS now
than I was when I thought I came
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up with idea many years ago.
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It's getting more interesting and
more powerful every year.
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I'm glad that you're here to learn how,


so let's go get started.

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