GIS for intelligent cities of the future

GIS touches all our lives, everyday
During the last three decades, a powerful technology has quietly changed the way people view and live in their neighborhoods, towns, and cities. Most people remain unaware of GIS and its impact-an impact that is as far-ranging as it is useful-despite GIS having grown immensely in the last 15 years, despite hundreds of thousands of people now using the technology, and despite it affecting the daily lives of millions.



Let us take a look at our daily life and see how GIS helps us in ways that we never expected.

The clock radio rings at 6:00 a.m. You get up and turn on the lights: The lights are powered by electricity and GIS is the tool that is used to manage the complex power infrastructure consisting of tens of thousands of miles of transmission and distribution lines and hundreds of thousands of utility poles.

In the kitchen you pour some fresh fruit juice: These fruit trees are grown from the water supplied by the Irrigation department, which in turn uses GIS for irrigation and water resources management.

You take our daily shower in the bathroom: The water that we use to take bath is supplied through water mains running crisscross across the city and maintained by the Water Supply department, which again uses GIS for customer service, emergency response, water distribution, infrastructure maintenance, automated mapping, flow analysis, and other aspects of engineering, operations, administration, and finance.

You complete our daily chores: The wastewater so generated goes into the wastewater collection system consisting of hundreds of miles of sanitary sewers and storm drains, which uses GIS in tandem with its water delivery system.

You pick up the morning newspaper to browse the headlines: Wood from the trees is used to make these newspapers. Here again GIS is involved for sound forest management practices. The newspaper circulation department also uses GIS to understand the dynamics & demographics of carrier routes and study circulation, to improve its business: Business Geography.

You drive to work: The roads are safer because of GIS. The community uses GIS for managing its transportation infrastructure. GIS is used to support planning, inventory, design, construction, operations, and maintenance. Moreover more than 80 percent of the information used to manage road, rail, and port facilities have a spatial component.

You get phone calls from the clients in the office: GIS technology assists telecom companies in better tracking the location and characteristics of their infrastructure, improving access to information when engineering new projects, improving the ability to plan for additional capacity by forecasting future growth, optimizing coverage of their mobile networks etc.

You receive a package by courier: GIS solutions for transportation fleet and logistics management exist in the areas of routing, customer service, crew management, street and rail network management, and vehicle/depot management. Knowing where a vehicle, pickup, or delivery is at any given time leverages assets for optimum deployment and cost savings.

You leave office at noon, to go to the beach: GIS is used for the management of coastal resources including shoreline, aquatic, and terrestrial habitats and biological resources; the distribution of threatened and endangered species.