Innovative GIS technology transforms FIU instruction and research

By Susan Feinberg

Academic disciplines across FIU are using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technologies to better manage, develop and explore information and make it more accessible and visually appealing. These innovative technologies are transforming instruction and research at the university and increasing community engagement.

A GIS system integrates hardware, software and data for capturing, managing, analyzing and displaying all forms of geographically referenced information. It allows users to view, understand, question, interpret and visualize data in many ways that reveal patterns and trends in the form of maps, globes, reports and charts.

In many universities, a GIS lab is a property of an academic department, such as Geography, Geo-Informatics, or Geomatics departments. FIU is one of the few educational institutions in the nation that provides a centralized GIS facility, which is housed at the Green Library.

“GIS is a powerful and expansive research tool utilized by many academic disciplinary areas, so it makes perfect sense for there to be a centralized resource unit that is accessible to all academic departments,” said Jennifer Fu, founding director of the FIU’s GIS-RS Teaching Center and the founding chair of the Certificate Program in Geographic Information Systems at the university.

The GIS-RS Teaching Center is equipped with 25 high-end workstations; specialized software for GIS and statistical analysis; and staff to help with digital projects. It supports research and teaching in areas including geospatial data dissemination and visualization, geospatial metadata management and creation, and web interactive mapping. The Center also hosts all GIS and RS courses required for completion of both graduate and professional levels of the FIU’s GIS Certificate Program.

The Center works with academic departments across FIU, from engineering to international studies. When a professor from the English Department needed a series of world linguistic boundaries maps for her book, she turned to the GIS Center for help. The professor provided GIS staff printed paper maps with hand-drawn boundaries. The staff digitized these boundaries, created labels, and then placed them on a background of world base maps with rivers, mountains, country boundaries and cities.

One of the GIS Center’s areas of expertise is in the development of a Geospatial Web for data visualization and retrieval, which has become an increasingly important tool for disseminating information about the community and public engagement.

Using this technology, Fu and her team collaborated with the FIU Metropolitan Center on a project funded by the Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPO) from Miami Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties. They developed a web portal which allows users to select an area within the three counties and generate a demographic profile that includes information about income, age, ethnicity, educational attainment, transportation habits, and special needs populations. The web portal also provides community background reports at the municipality and neighborhood levels.

FIU is one of the few academic institutions in the nation with a capability for geospatial statistical analysis. With the ReCOVER project, which was funded by South Florida Water Management (SFWM), the GIS Center partnered with the Department of Biology and applied GIS, remote sensing and statistical analysis tools to determine the effectiveness of automated vegetation classification in the Everglades.

“GIS and geospatial tools and technologies help us to add another dimension to our analysis of data,” said FIU Dean of Libraries Laura Probst. “It’s a different way of looking at time and space, and gives us an additional perspective for understanding our world.”