GIS can be used in many different scenarios to help us understand today’s world better and accurately depict real-time information in localised areas to quantify population of people, objects, and risks. It can also help to visualise the activities or changes in data in regional areas. 

 

Mapping tools and systems are highly advantageous to organisations of any industry as they can enable you to have true insights that can impact key decisions. Let us dive deeper into 20 scenarios that GIS really helps with: 

• Environmental Analysis

 

The visual analytics in GIS tools are significant to understanding the impact that we are having as humans on our environment. Mapping tools can help to protect natural resources and understand our impact on protective wildlife and conservation areas. 

• Web maps 

 

Website mapping apps like Google and Apple Maps are great web-based GIS tools for navigating your way around new places or routes. There are even advanced mapping technologies that can give detailed maps that display views via assets such as electricity, water and other key resource assets. This is useful for councils, resource management companies and the government for regulating, analysing and managing key resources. 

• Transportation 

 

Mapping out routes for public transport such as bus routes, railways, trams and new roads is important for many reasons such as efficiency, cost and environmental challenges. GIS tools and data allows you to consider the issues such as noise and carbon pollution effects, logistical challenges and accessibility and for making key decisions. 

• Accident analysis

 

Like transportation, GIS analytics allows you to detect accident locations quickly and analyse road networks to put in place the right safety measures to ensure everyone is safe on the roads. View traffic incidents or accident-prone locations so you can take action to ensure we reduce road accidents overall. 

• Healthcare risks

 

GIS mapping data can be utilised in many ways to analyse risks. One of the ways this can be done is to analyse the risks associated with disease outbreaks (epidemics). Healthcare organisations can analyse disease clusters on maps to pre-empt the spread of viruses and pinpointing key areas. Mapping tools can also help to understand where certain health resources or tools are needed more (such as public defibrillators). 

• Event management 

 

Festivals and large events often have huge sites that have facilities such as food and drink stalls, stages, entertainment, toilets, entry points, emergency points and much more! This can make it a logistical nightmare with several challenges to be considered. GIS mapping tools can help event organisers to get a better picture of their site and make informed decisions based on data. 

• Tourism

 

Certain areas of countries and indeed regions can be tourist hotspots. GIS data can help the tourism industry and key entertainment sites such as theme parks to understand the movement of tourists. The ongoing collection of GIS data can also help to analyse any key behavioural trends of tourists. 

• Governments 

 

Governments often work together with public services such as healthcare, emergency and security services and education providers. There needs to be a collaborative approach to analysing map data to provide better services to all regional areas and pinpointing challenges, risks and opportunities with each local place. 

• Networking

 

Many organisations rely on network infrastructures and their delivery. GIS data enables IT teams to analyse the process and delivery of their telecoms setup to manage different location sites better and improve anything in their network design.  

 

10. Construction

 

GIS mapping tools provide the construction and property sector with the appropriate guidelines and knowledge to know which areas have potential for new building sites. There are lots of considerations for building applications and planning permission, so understanding land restrictions and identifying certain areas is important for successful projects. 

 

11. Agricultural 

 

Farming and agricultural organisations look to analyse real-time data of crops, soil, animals and many other things. GIS tools can help to create visual graphs and analytics that help them in the production to improve their yield. 

 

12. Flood risk analysis 

 

GIS tools enable organisations and governments to be able to map out areas according to their risk of flooding. This is extremely useful for future proofing projects and managing relief efforts. 

 

13. Sporting events

 

Sporting events like motor or yacht racing usually have courses that they need to map out and coordinate with support teams to manage their overall success of the event. Also, considering health and safety implications too. GIS can help with the planning but also to monitor and record individual racers to capture their times and real-time data. This is incredibly useful for sporting teams and the media. 

 

14. Plumbing & Electrical Pipe Network 

 

GIS can be helpful for detecting any issues with locating certain issues with leaks in underground pipe systems or issues in electrical cable networks. Locating issues quickly and efficiently is highly important to preventing any issues in supplies. 

 

15. Pest control 

 

Controlling pests in communities and especially in agriculture is important to production and everyday maintenance. GIS tools are vital in this scenario to monitoring infested areas and putting in place the right pest management actions. 

 

16. Asset management  

 

There are lots of key assets that organisations and local councils want to keep track on to ensure they are in the right place or meeting demands of public use. GIS can help allocate resources such as water or health supplies to certain regions that lack specific resources for their population size.  

 

17. Climate change  

 

Climate change is causing more and more natural disasters such as bushfires, floods, earthquakes, tornados, storms and unbearable heat. GIS maps can help not only with emergency services to identify best methods for rescue missions but also to help predict high risk areas to put in action safety plans before natural disasters. 

 

18. Banking  

 

Many things have changed in the 21st century and not least the way we bank. We might not rely on physical banks or cash as much as we used to but understanding customer behaviour and data is still just as important for banks. From knowing where to place ATMs, database management and identifying customer demand by location helps banks to fulfil services via location.  

 

19. Shopping 

 

Just like tourism, shopping centres and global shopping brands have the challenge of identifying key spots for building their shops or supermarkets. GIS plays a huge part in identifying population via areas and can help monitor traffic to calculate the demand and considerations for having a shop in a certain area. 

 

20. Security & military 

 

Often security and military services need to know their surrounding areas like the back of their hand to help with rescue missions, to prevent terrorism or security threats and for regular operations. From knowing everything about terrain, obstructions, the weather in the area can all be key information to carrying out the right action plan and have all the information they need. 

 

      Summary 

 

There are lots of different and effective ways to utilise GIS in today’s world. The data that GIS provides is significant to so many sectors and helping improve every local area in our lives. Without it, we would struggle to make the informed decisions that we do to save lives, improve our welfare, improve living conditions and increase accessibility of key resources. Want to learn how GIS can work for your organisation and how we can help you succeed? Book a FREE consultation with the expert team at Insight GIS, who can share customised solutions to our GIS platforms for your dedicated requirements.