GIS mapping

[hbelkins]

Had a meeting with my supervisor today and made known the fact that I am thinking about looking for a new job (it's all about the $$$). He said there might be a possibility that I could get into GIS mapping and there might be the possibility of a reclassification into a higher pay grade.

I've heard a lot about GIS but have no experience with it. I'm not exactly sure what all it entails or what you do with it. I know there are some people here who have GIS experience.

So what would you tell a GIS newbie before he starts looking for some training on the subject?

[Laura]

I took a class last semester in GIS for planners. We used the book "Getting to Know ArcGIS for Desktop", which included step by step instructions and a six month trial of ArcGIS 10.1. If you wanted to learn GIS on your own, you could easily learn the basics by going through each activity in the book. It was about $50.

If you want to play around with some real data, a lot of county government websites have free open source GIS data available for download. I know offhand that Baltimore City and County do, plus a few other Maryland counties.

The best advice I can give (since I've relatively new to GIS) is that the more you practice, the better you will get. I could tell by the end of the semester who really took the time to work through the book and the exercises the professor gave in class because their maps were generally more advanced.

[froggie]

In short, GIS is computerized mapping and spatial data analysis.  There's a lot of geodatabase (basically spatially-referenced data) maintenance involved as well.

All of the maps I've created and posted online over the past several years were created in ArcGIS, which is the giant in the industry.  There's also a freeware/open source GIS platform called QGIS, which I know both SPUI and yakra have used.

Though ESRI (makers of ArcGIS) is the giant, they do offer a "Home Use" license for non-professional/non-commercial use for $100 a year.  It's really a great value and allows one to keep up to date with the latest versions, plus ESRI offers 2 DVDs worth of data with purchase.  There's also a lot of free data out there as well as Laura mentioned.  US DOT has posted their National Transportation Atlas Database (NTAD) online for many years now, and several states (namely DOT and natural resources) and local jurisdictions offer free data as well.  DC (believe it or not) has been one of the best at this...virtually all city data is offered free of charge through http://data.dc.gov

If you get a chance, take a beginners course, but I'd also agree with Laura in suggesting getting a copy and playing around with it.

[Pete from Boston]

ArcMap is not hard to use, once you know the ins and outs.  It's evolved into a fairly straightforward, typical-of-Windows interface that makes complex tasks at least manageable.  Very, very powerful, even if it's not always straightforward how to get from A to B.  Having taken several classes using it, I'm very comfortable with it, but there is still a fair amount of trial-and-error involved for me. 

I realize there are a lot of qualifiers in the above, because the damn thing still infuriates me periodically but I nevertheless really enjoy tinkering around with it.

And the most knowledgeable person in it I know, who's been using every version for the past twenty years (under its various names) still isn't intimately familiar with the whole thing.  Its capabilities are pretty awesomely enormous.

Make sure you have lots of RAM.

[bandit957]

I've become acquainted with QGIS in recent months. There's also MapWindow GIS, but sometimes it poos.

[NE2]

Most of my experience is with creating new shapefiles rather than editing existing ones. For example: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Virginia_state_highways_by_date_of_addition.svg

[cpzilliacus]

ESRI's ArcGIS has (IMO) a de-facto monopoly on GIS software among all government agencies that I am familiar with. 

It is not especially hard to learn or work with, especially if you understand maps, other geographic features like political boundaries, highways and bodies of water.

I think you pass on the above.

[Bigmikelakers]

I went to school for GIS. Well I have a degree in Geography but my emphasis was GIS. The job market (at least in SoCal) sucks for these types of jobs. They want either years of experience or an engineering background which I don't have. Even the GIS internships want people with tons of experience. I was lucky to get a job for a mapping company but, others in my graduating are probably still looking for a job.

[Dr Frankenstein]

I've been using QGIS on and off lately and I find it pretty straightforward, although it does annoy me at times.

[hbelkins]

I don't know that I've gotten an answer to my stupid question: what exactly is GIS mapping and what's it used for? Is it merely creating maps using latitude and longitude coordinates, or is it something different?

[froggie]

"creating maps using latitude and longitude coordinates" is only one small part of GIS.  And a lot of it depends on what you're trying to do.  Are you trying to analyze point data?  Annotate over satellite imagery?  Work with large databases that are spatially aligned?  GIS can do all that and more.

[NE2]

GIS is essentially a way of digitizing maps and doing various cool and uncool things with the data. For example, you might have a shapefile with any of the following:
*state highways (lines)
*county seats (points)
*city limits (polygons)
*teabaggers (points)
Fields can be added to these, such as when the state highway was created or when the bagger was born. You can then do simple stuff like color-coding state highways by when they were created (note that I also included county seats) or finding the number of baggers within city limits, or more complicated stuff like finding a site for an elementary school that is within 1/4 mile of a minor two-lane state highway, inside city limits, and more than 1/2 mile from any bagger who regularly yells at clouds.

[cpzilliacus]

I don't know that I've gotten an answer to my stupid question: what exactly is GIS mapping and what's it used for? Is it merely creating maps using latitude and longitude coordinates, or is it something different?

Most governments in the U.S. seem to prefer to use state plane coordinate systems (small states have one, larger states can have two, three or more, depending on land area), which are quantified in feet, not hours, minutes, seconds and so on, like latitude and longitude.

[bandit957]

I signed up for an online course in GIS, but it won't be until spring.

[empirestate]

It's hard to find descriptions of systems like GIS that don't involve a lot of jargon and tech-speak. I think what's key to realize is that it's at least as much about building and managing databases as it is about cartography.

GIS (geographic information systems) is essentially databases of information. Much of that is geographic, like roads, cities, and water features, but it can also be socio-economic, demographic, environmental, basically anything that can be organized and analyzed according to its location.

GIS mapping, then, would be the branch of GIS (and certainly the most visible one) that deals with converting this data into cartographic products: y'know, maps. GIS data can certainly be displayed in things like tables and graphs instead of maps, but that wouldn't fall under the term "GIS mapping". Still, the database itself and the maps used to display it are generally thought of together as the essence of GIS.

There is very little emphasis placed on the visual or design aspects of GIS mapping, in my observation, which is why I consider it to be very much more a data-wrangling operation than a cartographic one. GIS software does deal with visual things like label placement and type style, color schemes, linestyles and all that, but more to the purpose of presenting data in a concise and digestible way than of creating a visually comprehensive map.

Good mapmakers, of course, start with GIS data, digest it into a presentable map-like output, then apply cartographic techniques to produce a high-quality, finished-looking map. I keep making this distinction because I would imagine that within your DOT, there is probably much less emphasis on this last stage than there is on the collection, management and presentation of data. But I could be wrong; some DOTs have certainly been known to create some of the best-looking maps around!