Geographic Information Systems Specialists

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have grown up along with the rest of the computer industry in the past 25 to 30 years and have been pushed along particularly in the last 10 years by aggressive GIS software developers, extensive research and development, and widespread application of GIS in many different professional fields.

GIS is a huge field with applications ranging from health to business to managing utilities to tracking land ownership. Using spatial analysis, city officials could map the outbreak of an illness with the GIS helping to determine information like where the majority of cases are occurring and the demographics of the victims, such as their race, educational level, or other data.

Such systems also are a natural for environmental work, including environmental planning and natural resource management. To designate a site for a new recreational area of a specific size, a certain distance from the highway, and on government land, GIS can locate parcels of land owned by the government that match the size requirement, and show boundaries of the highway. By overlaying all the pieces, specialists can determine which site is the best.