A reflection on Purdue GIS Day (2018)

A Reflection on Purdue GIS Day (2018)

by: Ian Willey

Presenter:Dr. Nicolas Picard
Purdue GIS Day 2018

Summery of GIS Day At Purdue, fall 2018

GIS Day was a gathering of professionals and intellectuals from different disciplines that utilize geographical information systems in one way or another as part of their respective work or projects. The event was design around the idea of sharing how GIS can be used to produce a product along with the how and why it is important.  Throughout the day, multiple presenters discussed GIS. From presentations to round-table discussions, GIS Day proved to be an engaging event that was open to anyone. The variety of topics attracted attendees from different backgrounds to all leave with a better understanding of possible applications.

A few concerns for the presentations from me are primarily that of the quality and structure of the slide shows.  For example, one speaker was barley audible. This made following what he was saying very difficult. To make things worse, the supplemental slides were flooded with words and took an excessive amount of time to read through. Trying to read so much information and follow the hard to hear speaker made assimilation of the presentation nearly impossible.

Key Presentations

Of the presentations that I was able to attend during GIS Day at Purdue, Dr. Sorin’s “Spatial Humanities: What is and What Can it Be” attracted the most attention from the eager onlookers, myself included. I have been exposed to interactive and video info-graphics before however, his display and research of spatial land use and how the network of roads could show city growth during the roman empire was captivating. The presentation highlighted how GIS technology with an analysis of historical data can illustrate a process graphically to a level that traditional tables or reports could just not do. An interactive website of this information can be found here. Dr. Matei presented the idea that roads and routes as a major determination for what areas within the Roman empire flourished. The interactive model was an engaging way to see how GIS can bue used to build ideas that make connections like roads of the empire.

Roman Road Map

Another interesting take away come in the very next presentation. The title was “Race and Spatial Humanities” but from my perspective and interest in the talk, a more appropriate title should have been “Ethics Hiding in the Data”. The idea being that each data point that was represented in the presentation of the Atlantic Slave trade is more than just a data point; it represents real-living people. The human element is so easily disguised by numbers and values, that when represented in pictures or animation, it is easy to forget about the human aspect. I do not think this is necessarily a problem,but should be remembered when attaching “scale” to a database.  That not only is there numbers and values, but also the value of a life.

Atlantic Slave Trade 

Relationship of Purdue: GIS Day and UAS

I think one key takeaway from the GIS Day was the relationship between data, or data collection and ethics. However, I feel it goes beyond just data collection methods with regards to UAS. That how your gather data as well as how it is being represented. Privacy comes to mind as a relatively unexplored question while using drones to collect data. While some strides have been made to regulate drones used commercially to prevent many privacy concerns, it is still an issue. This issues is left up to the moral compass of a UAS operator to consider while conducting data collection.  What may be seen as innocent, accidental collection of images of personal property or people to the drone operator, may not be seen the same way as the victim of the accidental collection.The picture on the

right illustrates this by showing that the data collection of a field is in close proximity to privet homes. Those homes have residents whose privacy must be part of the mission planning process.  To minimize this, the operator should take special care during the mission planning to keep the collection within the scope of target area. Privacy should be a concern whenever there is a possibility for violation someone’s rights for a degree of privacy.

One other take away from how GIS day relates to UAS was operational perspective. As a UAS operator, it is easy to put a aircraft in the air with a payload and collect data. As systems become cheaper and easier to use, the need for UAS pilots may decrease to the point where anyone can pick up a transmitter and conduct a flight. The idea to remember is, how can UAS support the GIS mission or product creation. Having exposure to varying aspects of how data is used to depict a message or idea is invaluable to create depth for the operators perspective. Thus allowing him/her to translate experience into more efficient data collection for a higher quality of product.