Abingdonian 2020

10 The Abingdonian GIS Club A Geographic Information System (GIS) is the gathering, managing and examining of data around geographic locations. It utilises computers, specialist software and websites. GIS is used in lots of different industries, including urban planning, logging and many more. An example of a practical use of GIS is making a map that shows the distribution of pollution levels, geographic sources of pollution and what areas are sensitive to pollution. People can then use that information to work out the best place to build new houses. In GIS Club we often looked at recent and topical events and made maps on them to help understand them a little better. For example, during the bushfires in Australia in January we made some maps that showed where the fires were and their effect on the people living there. We also looked at how GIS can be used to help firefighters work out where and how best to fight the fires; what animals might have been affected by the fires; and when it was safe for people to move back into their homes. However, the most interesting part of the project was looking at how the media had produced lots of very misleading maps, such as maps that had no key or suggested things that weren’t true. As well as making lots of maps we worked on projects around the school. For one such project, we made a map looking at trees in the school. It showed the number and concentrations of trees, what species they are and also their estimated age. We then put the information into a map and estimated the amount of CO2 that the trees were offsetting each year. We also did an environmental survey of the school to work out which parts of the school were the most untidy and where new bins might be put in place. We also did the occasional session of GeoGuessr, where we had to guess where each map was from. During the weeks leading up to the closure of schools in England we made maps following how the coronavirus spread around the world and then throughout the UK. We first made maps of its spread through China and Asia. Then, two weeks later, we made maps showing the epicentres of the virus in the UK, using a heat mapping tool. I found this project one of the most interesting we did, as the data changed rapidly, so we could really see how much the virus had spread as we updated and made new maps each week. It showed how quickly the virus spread over the three weeks we worked on that project and how hard it is to keep up with something that is constantly changing. GIS is an extremely powerful tool that can be used to turn locations and data into fascinating maps which can be used to find out information to help you make smarter decisions. For crises such as natural disasters and global pandemics, it helps make data a lot easier to process, enabling people to more quickly make decisions on what to do. Leo Shipley, 2PCWM