Original subtitles

So now let's talk a little bit about the data that you can put into a GIS,

whether it's a desktop GIS or online.

Okay, so what data can be used to map things?

How can we map things?

We can use longitude and latitude, that's probably the first one that comes to mind

for you I would think, is that if we have a set of coordinates for a given location,

we can reference those to the surface of the earth and

describe pretty much anything we want.

You may also think of street addresses.

So if you type a street address into a web browser or

a web mapping application, that will find a location for you as well.

So that one's pretty typical.

You can also use postal codes to map locations.

Or in the US, the equivalent would be zip codes.

So if you've ever been asked in a grocery store or some kind of retail location for

your postal code or zip code, you may think, why am I being asked for this?

What are they going to do with that information?

Well the fact is,

is that they can map your location based on something like that.

So the post office is using that to decide how to deliver mail, but

that data is often licensed or share, so

that other organizations can take that and use it to map locations.

So in the Canadian system, there is a six digit postal code.

The first three digits are known as the forward sortation area, or FSA.

So, that's another one of our TLAs or three letter acronyms.

And I've just shown a map here of some of them to give you a sense of the size.

So if you're in a grocery store, or something like that, and they ask you,

often they'll just ask for

the first three digits of a postal code instead of the full six digits.

They'll be able to map your location where you live, down to something this side.

So you'll notice that they vary in size because their based on the number of

people that live there, so the population density plays a part here.

And so you can see that there's different sizes.

But generally speaking, you can get down to a fairly specific neighborhood In

terms of just looking at the forward sortation area.

One time I was in my local grocery store,

and I was getting ready to check out, and I happened to look up,

and I saw this sign that was posted on the side of the cash register that said,

attention, customers, we'll be conducting a customer origin survey at the store.

Postal codes are collected to determine how far our customers live from the store

for market research purposes.

This information will help us serve you, the customer, better in the future.

So this was a while ago now.

But I took a photo of it and I started talking to the cashier about it.

There was nobody behind me in line, so I thought I'd take a minute to ask her.

Is this something that she gets a lot of resistance from?

Do people provide that information or not?

And she said that, many people do not provide their information.

That their kind of suspicious about the privacy implications of this.

Even though it might actually help them,

in terms of making better products available to their customers.

So as an example she said, one reason they collect these is they can compare

the location of where you live with what you bought.

So we can see like where did you come from to get to that location?

And if people from a certain area are all buying the same kind of thing.

Perhaps it's some kind of exotic fruit.

Then the company can stock more of that fruit and make it more available,

not only in that store.

But if they look at patterns of people that are similar in other locations,

they can make sure that those stores have that exotic fruit as well.

Anyway, not to digress too much, but sometimes there's data that's collected in

ways that you may not think of, that you kind of may have a vague idea,

well they're probably going to use this for something, but what?

And in this case, it's definitely being used to map your location, and

then try to associate that with other information.

So it could be things like census data, to associate that with a neighborhood.

It might be income level or languages spoken and so on,

to try and connect you as a consumer to information about you, and

be able to use that to basically to serve you better as a customer, and

of course to make money for the company.

If we go down to the full six digit postal code, so

the last three digits are the local delivery unit.

We have the first three digits which are the FSA,

the last three digits are the LDU.

And we can see some examples of them here,

these are around the university campus and for example we can find,

let's see, M5S3J6 would be a postal code with the full six digits.

And so if you gave somebody, say in a grocery store or whatever,

your full six digit postal code they would be able to map you down to a much

smaller area within a neighborhood, within part of the city block usually.

And again these are designed for postal delivery, but they get used for

other things as well.

United States of course uses ZIP codes.

So this is an example of how you'd be able to use those.

There some ones like, this is a rather famous one from an old TV show, 90210.

And you can see that if somebody had that zip code,

they would be able to map you to this particular part of a neighborhood.

Which I'm guessing is a fairly wealthy neighborhood, just from what the show was

about, not that I was a huge fan, but there you go, so that's zip codes.

Even area codes can be used to map locations.

Here we have an example of a bunch of them for

different locations, some of them are large, some of them are small.

But the idea is that, if you tell somebody the area code for

your phone number, they would be able to map you within that location.

So all of these are examples of geospatial data.

Ways of being able to put something on the map.

And so, when we think of what a GIS can do,

it can certainly map locations so that is the where is it.

You can also map or store attributes which is the what is it.

And it can store spacial relationships.

So what is near by?

What is adjacent?

Are some objects contained by others?

Are some lines connected to other lines?

So these are all forms of spacial relationships that can be stored inside

AGIS as well.

So we have the where is it, the what is it and

how are these things related to one another.

Here we can see how in RGS Online, we can store and access locations and attributes.

So for example, we can see the locations of

emergency shelters here, so that is the where is it.

And then we can see the attributes here, that will be the what is it.

If we select one of these records in the attribute table,

we can zoom in and see that location here in helo.

So we're connecting the location and attribute where you have two different

ways of referring to that information, either through a map or through a table.

If you click on that location, we can access that attribute information or

summary of that or some of it at least.

Through a pop up window, and

that will tell us information that's connected to a table as well.

So this is Hilo high school,

you can see that here, we have the address that addresses here.

So all this is really doing is taking the information from the attribute table,

and summarizing it in a way that someone can interactively click on it and

get access to that attribute information.

Relationships can be detected and stored in a lot of different ways.

A simple example would be,

if you wanted to measure the distance to existing features.

So we have, under the analysis tab here, we're using a tool called Create Buffers.

We're going to create them in relation to the emergency shelters.

We're specifying a distance here which is one mile,

and we're going to have an output here which is the buffer of emergency shelters.

And so when we run that, we actually create a new data set that has a buffer or

a distance of one mile from each of those emergency shelters.

So that might be really useful to know if one of the shelters is full, and

you want to be able to redirect people to another one that's close by.

You often hear the statement that 80% of all business data have

a spatial component.

No one actually knows if this is true, but

you hear it all the time at least if you're in the GIS industry.

This is something that comes up over and over again.

I read it in articles, I see it in adds,

is that people say that 80% of the data could be mapped.

So if no one knows if it's true,

and you hear it all the time, why do people keep saying it?

And the point really is, is that people want it to be true.

And what I mean by that is that, and it probably there's some vague relationship,

who knows.

Really what it gets down to,

is that they're trying to make the point that there's a lot of untapped potential

in the data that's being stored in a particular organization.

So, they want to be able to tell people, of all the data that you already have for

your business, for your company, for your government agency, for your non-profit,

whatever it is.

Think of what you could do if you could map that data.

And that is true, and I think it's good intentions.

Usually is that people want to get across the point that

look at the potential you have for mapping things, and if you could map it

then think of all the things you could do after that in terms of analysis, and

insight, and things you can do to help your organization.

So I'm not trying to perpetuate this probably apocryphal statement,

that nobody really knows whether it's true or not.

But the fact is, is that I really try to do a couple things,

one is that when you see that statement is to think about it critically like who's

ever done a survey of business data and all these different organizations and

tabulated that, it's really probably never been done.

But secondly, why do they keep saying it and there is some value in what

the underlying intent is I think, that they're trying to get across this idea

that wouldn't it be great if you could map all the data that you already have.

And what could you do with it, then?

So I think that's a fair point.