GIS Across the Curriculum

This past weekend my department chair Steve Matchak and I attended the GIS & Spatial Thinking in the Undergraduate Curriculum Conference at Bucknell University, in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. The conference brought together about 70+ people from 50 schools across the country to discuss ways of better integrating spatial applications and geospatial technology in undergraduate education. The event also served the purpose of fostering important networking opportunities.
While there were a number of schools, including Bucknell, that had well established GIS programs (in some form or another), there were equally as many who were there looking for ideas on how to get things started.  What struck me was how many of the attendees were not from Geography or GIS-centric programs.  More importantly, the most consistent message of the conference discussions was that GIS should not be  confined to Geography or GIS-specific programs.  Bucknell is an example of this philosophy in action.  Although it has had a robust Geography program for some time, and its Geographers have been strong advocates of GIS at the school, the rapid and sustained diffusion of GIS across the school has been spear-headed by Janine Glathar, a GIS Specialist, from their Library and IT department (and the organizer of the conference). She is academically non-aligned, and she says that this 'neutral' position has been important to her success in helping more departments integrate this technology into their research and curricula (note that this is the same model adopted by Harvard's Center for Geographic Analysis). In fact, quite a number of the attendees and presenters were from Library IT departments looking to develop the ideas and the capacity to bring in this technology to support faculty and students across their schools.
This expansive, trans-disciplinary perspective of GIS was really reinforced by the keynote speakers and a number of the presenters and attendees who emphasized qualitative applications of GIS, primarily in the humanities.
I think a lot of us were particularly struck by the keynote presentation "Geographic Imagination in the Digital Humanities" by Anne Knowles from Middlebury College. She talked about historical applications of GIS, and specifically, examples of work by her and her students to understand and represent the World War II Holocaust.  Her graphical representations were clever and beautiful and moving.  One might say "cartography at its best," except that a number of these representations were not 'cartographic' in the conventional sense, and they certainly did not use GIS.  The one that sticks with me is an image of a long, snaking line of black silhouettes,  clearly prisoners, on a forced march, against a blank, white background, the line of silhouettes diminishing as it winds its way into the distant horizon. This was probably the most subversive message of the conference: abandon the assumption that GIS -and even maps -  are the best or only ways to represent spatial phenomena. Heck, rethink your ideas of what constitutes "space".
The conference was engaging and well worth our time.  We had a lot of really great conversations and the whole experience really gave Steve and I a lot to think about regarding our own program.  We had expected to hear cheerleading for GIS and were prepared to take back strategies to bolster our existing GIS degree program.  We came away with questions about the wisdom of our technique-specific approach.  Maybe we need to think more about specific, topical foci to ground the GIS training.  Maybe we need to look at ways of engaging more of our colleagues in this technology - utilizing our own Digital Geography Laboratory as a GIS hub for the whole institution.
We're waiting for Bucknell to post presentations and materials from the conference.  As soon as they do, I'll post a link to those here as well.  In the meantime, here are some of the more interesting resources discussed at the conference:

• PLOTS Balloon Mapping Kit - A low-cost kit that you can purchase online to do a class-based aerial photography exercise using a balloon and a camera (remote sensing on the cheap!)
• NEATLINE is a geotemporal exhibit-builder that allows you to create beautiful, complex maps and narrative sequences from collections of archives and artifacts, and to connect your maps and narratives with timeline. 
• Worldmapper is a collection of world maps, where territories are re-sized on each map according to the subject of interest - otherwise known as cartograms.
• Floating Sheep - a site dedicated to mapping and analyzing user generated geocoded data. The results provide one glimpse of what internet users (in the aggregate) think about particular places. See the now (in)famous map of racist tweets following President Obama's reelection.  
• SPACIT - Education for spatial citizenship in Europe. 
• TeachGIS - because no one should have to face GIS alone.  A resource (coming soon) for GIS instructors. 
• i-Tree - Tools for assessing and managing community forests.
• The Stanford Spatial History Project - a place for a collaborative community of scholars to engage in creative visual analysis to further research in the field of history.

Unexpected Recognition

About a week ago, the Chair of our Department called me into his office with little warning. I don't know why, but I always feel nervous when he does this - like getting called to the Principal's office. The President's Office (of the school, not the country) had called to ask that I attend an awards ceremony at the Hawthorne Hotel in recognition of my help on mapping Salem Woods. This was something I had worked on with Alan Young in Biology and one of my graduate students - Jen Sumael - three years ago! I agreed, of course, and contacted Jen to make sure she attended as well.
On Tuesday, the Hawthorne Hotel honored Chris Burke of the Friends of Salem Woods, and Salem State College, for our work in preserving a place of historical significance - Salem Woods (you can read about the event itself on the Hawthorne Hotel's blog). Alan Young was not able to attend, so President Meservey attended in order to receive the award on his behalf. When she spoke at the event, she described how her office had received a call from the Hawthorne Hotel announcing their desire to recognize Salem State for work on the Salem Woods map and brochure. The funny thing was that no one seemed to know who exactly at the College had done this work. It took the President's office a little while to figure it out and track us down. In any case, it was a nice surprise.

This Blur's For You

Since 9/11, security has become the watchword of the nation, though the initial hysteria has begun to abate somewhat. However, one of the ongoing casualties of the crusade for hyper-security has been access to once-public information. Maps and mappable information have been primary targets. The blurred image comes from Google Maps, and is an apparent attempt to hide the Salem Power Plant, a coal-fired power plant in Salem, Massachusetts. This is not unusual. In fact, one Wikipedia entry has managed to create a lengthy list of sites throughout the world that appear to have been censored by Google Maps - blurred or conspicuously missing imagery (see "Satellite map images with missing or unclear data"). Google has been largely silent about this practice in the U.S., though some governments (e.g., India) have been very public about asking Google to blur images of sensitive sites. At least one local politician in New York is also calling on Google to blur aerial imagery of sensitive military and government sites. There is also evidence that Google may be altering aerial imagery of sensitive commercial sites, such as areas where genetically modified crops are grown (see "What Google Won't Map," Gridskipper).

It's difficult if not impossible to know what kinds of geographic data have been censored or even deemed censor-worthy, either by government or other institutions. In July 2006, the federal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released its National Infrastructure Protection Plan (NIPP),which provides the framework for how all levels of government and the private sector will manage the protection of the nation's critical infrastructure and key resources. An important part of this framework is the designation of what actually constitutes "critical infrastructure." In fact, it wasn't long before DHS came under withering criticism by its own Office of Inspector General, as well as Congress, for the NIPP's overly expansive definition of "critical infrastructure." As Senator Barbara Boxer of California put it, "I would love to provide protection for every activity in America, but the reality is that we need to set priorities" (see "DHS Officials Quarrel Over Internal Report," RCR Wireless News 07/24/2006).

The lack of a coherent national policy has not stopped government agencies from implementing their own ad hoc procedures. A recent report by NPR featured the struggle between a computer consultant and the state of Connecticut over access to GIS maps of water and sewer systems in the towns of Greenwich and Stamford (see "Security Officials Seek to Block Some Online Maps" NPR 10/8/ 2007). Connecticut's Freedom of Information Commission ruled that such data were too sensitive, and that the towns could only release maps without sewer and water systems, fire hydrants and man holes. Here in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the state's GIS dissemination agency MassGIS has implemented minimal security protocol around certain GIS data sets. Users wanting to download GIS data of large hazardous waste generators must first fill out a request, which includes detailed contact information, before being sent a link to enable download of the data.

MassGIS's approach is not too different from policies set in place by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) regarding Critical Energy Infrastructure Information (CEII), which FERC defines as "existing and proposed systems and assets, whether physical or virtual, the incapacity or destruction of which would negatively affect security, economic security, public health or safety, or any combination of those matters." That's about as specific as they get (see "FERC Tries to Strike a Fine Balance," Electric Utility Week 11/13/2006). Moreover, FERC allows utilities - whether private or publicly owned - to define for themselves what should be classified as CEII when those entities submit required documentation and information. This loose discretion, and the overzealous application of the CEII designation, actually worked against FERC and the energy industry in at least one case. California officials recently nixed a $700 million liquefied natural gas terminal proposed by Sound Energy Solutions (SES) because neither FERC nor SES were forthcoming with all of the information needed to complete the final Environmental Impact Report (see "Long Beach LNG terminal dead in water after officials end environmental review," Gas Market Report 01/26/2007).

It's worth remembering that there is social value, including safety and security, in public access to information about critical infrastructure and even hazardous or dangerous facilities. Some of the most important laws and traditions around public access in the U.S. were founded specifically on concerns about safety and security. In December 1984, a pesticide plant in Bhopal, India blew up, releasing a deadly cloud of methyl isocyanate gas that killed over 20,000 people in the surrounding community, and permanently maimed up to 100,000 others. It was (and still is) the worst industrial disaster in history. A host of factors were involved in the making of this catastrophe, but one of them was the complete ignorance of anyone outside of the plant about what was going on inside the plant (including local officials). A sister facility in Institute, West Virginia experienced a comparatively minor incident at about the same time (sending 134 people to the hospital), but the horror of Bhopal had already set the world on edge. In the U.S., the federal government and the public were still reeling from the drama at Love Canal and the discovery of previously uncounted and hidden sources of hazardous chemicals throughout the country. As a result, Congress passed the Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act (EPCRA) in 1986, which established requirements for emergency planning and reporting on hazardous and toxic chemicals. This legislation required facilities storing or handling potentially hazardous materials to report this information to State Emergency Response Commissions, Local Emergency Planning Committees, and local fire departments. In addition, it created a toxic release inventory (TRI) system that enabled the the tracking and monitoring of chemicals and facilities throughout the country. The TRI and other EPCRA provisions have been some of the most important tools for researchers as well as public health and safety officials. An enormous volume of environmental health and safety research and planning has relied on regular access to mappable TRI data. More importantly, this legislation recognized and institutionalized the right of communities and the public to have access to information about activities with health and safety implications.

On the 20th anniversary of the Bhopal tragedy in 2004, two EPA officials reflected on the evolution of incident prevention and response at chemical facilities over the last two decades. They argued that Bhopal and 9/11 were the transformative events, both of which highlighted the issue of safety and security, but with diametrically opposed results (see "The Post-Bhopal and Post-9/11 Transformations in Chemical Emergency Prevention and Response Policy in the United States"). It is an odd twist of circumstances that public disclosure, once touted as the mechanism to promote safety and security, could so quickly be relabeled as a threat to security.