Lab 5: ArcGIS Tutorial

GIS, or geographic information systems, is an advanced computer mapping technology used by a wide variety of people for a wide variety of reasons. For example, GIS is used by city governments in order to map the locations of residents’ homes, it is used by 911 operators in order to accurately locate the destination of an emergency and it is used by students and scholar’s alike as a tool to enhance their research projects. As the GIS field continues to expand and technologically advance at increasing rates, mapping programs, such as ArcView, do tend to come with both technological benefits and pitfalls.

One of the main benefits of GIS is that it allows the user to accurately locate points on a map. By being exposed to the accurate location of places, users become more geographically aware of their surroundings, especially those within their mapping area. Another benefit of GIS technology is its ability to allow users to create personalized maps. Instead of having to conform to the standards and layout designs of USGS topological maps or other projections, GIS users can generate maps that are specific to their own preferences for scale, colors, fonts, legend designs, etc. With the ability to personalize maps, people may actually desire to use mapping technology more, for the personalizing of preferences will not only make maps more relatable to the user, but personalization may also aide in making cartography more interesting and entertaining to people other than cartographers.

Despite all of the benefits of mapping technology, GIS does still come with a few pitfalls. One of the main pitfalls is created due to the field’s ever expanding technological advancement. With so many new programs and upgrades entering the field on a regular basis, it may be hard for both experts and general users to keep their mapping skills up to date. These upgrades are many times very complicated and take a while to master, therefore making it difficult for many GIS-applicable fields to continually upgrade to the best program, for upgrading would require time a business may not have to spend for employee training on the upgraded programs. Another pitfall of GIS programming is found when considering that many users do not know how to create layers for mapping purposes. This discrepancy many times leads business or organizations using GIS to hire an expert in order generate the desired overlays. If GIS programs made it easier to create your own overlays, ordinary users would be able to generate almost every portion of their map, thus eliminating the need for an expert position.

The ArcView GIS program is both very interesting and very applicable to everyday life. I personally was very excited to be introduced to the program. I intern with the Santa Monica Community Forest Division and am constantly using ArcView in order to generate maps of trees in the city. It was nice to finally be able to learn the ins and outs of the program and I hope to be able to use the information I learned in the tutorial to increase the quality of the maps I create at my internship on a weekly basis.