GIS Day 2024 at Ball State University

GIS Day is an occasion to celebrate our work with geographic information systems and to inspire others.

The first GIS Day was celebrated in 1999 by Jack Dangermond (cofounder with his wife Laura of Environmental Systems Research Institute (Esri)), Dr. Roger Tomlinson (the father of GIS), and students at Murch Elementary School in Washington, D.C. GIS Day is now celebrated globally on the 3rd Wednesday in November during Geography Awareness Week.

People use Geographic Information Systems all the time. Every time you use an app to help you navigate to a destination, you are using an application powered by a GIS. When you see election results on the news, the visualizations are produced by a GIS. If you followed John Hopkins University as they tracked COVID-19, you were being informed with a GIS.

While there isn't one official definition for Geographic Information System (GIS), you can see that all definitions are very common:

• A Geographic Information System (GIS) is a computer system that analyzes and displays geographically referenced information. It uses data that is attached to a unique location. -USGS
• A Geographic Information System (GIS) is a computer system that analyzes and displays geographically referenced information from a variety of data sources to map and examine changes on Earth. GIS allows for the integration and collective analysis of geospatial data from multiple sources, including satellite imagery, GPS recordings, and textual attributes associated with a particular space. - NASA
• A geographic information system (GIS) is a computer system for capturing, storing, checking, and displaying data related to positions on Earth’s surface. - National Geographic
• GIS is a computer system that captures, stores, checks, and displays information related to positions on Earth’s surface. - NOAA
• A geographic information system (GIS) is a system that creates, manages, analyzes, and maps all types of data. -Esri

People across the globe, in most industries, are utilizing GIS in their work. From local governments to federal governments, from scientists to utility companies, from conservation nongovernmental organizations to Fortune-500 companies, GIS is being utilized to manage resources and inform decision makers.

GIS provides data management, mapping and visualizations (from creating cartographic products like maps and atlases to creating heatmaps), spatial analysis, and communication.  Using GIS allows patterns to become visible.  Using GIS provides insights into data that aren’t always apparent when reading a table or graph.  Using GIS allows people to communicate complex information with visualizations from maps, to charts and infographics.

For more information on what GIS is, click the button:

For over two decades, students at Ball State have had opportunities to learn GIS software and learn with GIS software. As GIS software continues to evolve and expanded its capabilities, the Ball State community continues to learn and utilize this powerful tool. Since Ball State University joined ArcGIS Online in 2013, there have been well over 3000 named users utilizing the software. These users include individuals that represent every college at Ball State University, as well as other offices from the Office of Immersive Learning to Intercollegiate Athletics, to Facilities Planning and Management. There are over 900 current students, from 112 different majors in 54 different departments, that have used ArcGIS Online at Ball State University. 428 people at Ball State University have utilized ArcGIS Online so far this fall semester. Many students are creating StoryMaps to share their work and are conducting analysis for projects, while other students are taking geography classes to learn GIS more in-depth.

Explore some of the work being completed at Ball State University by visiting our ArcGIS Online Homepage. The homepage includes galleries that showcase StoryMaps and Web Applications created at Ball State University, as well as Resources for exploring Ball State University.

If you would like to see your work included in these galleries, please have a faculty member contact the GIS Specialist at lorey.stinton@bsu.edu

For additional resources about GIS including videos, StoryMaps, Ebooks, and Articles, visit the GIS Day Resources Library Guide.

For additional examples of GIS work from around the world, visit the Esri Map Gallery.

Ball State University Libraries provides GIS resources to the Ball State community. The GIS Specialist is available to assist you with everything GIS from accessing software, obtaining data, troubleshooting software, customized classroom instruction, one-on-one training, and even brainstorming workflows.

Ball State University Libraries supports access to Esri's software ArcGIS Pro and ArcGIS Online as well as open-source software such as QGIS and GRASS. An important consideration when learning GIS software is that while open-source software can be an important tool, Esri's software is the industry standard. Most GIS oriented jobs will require knowledge of ArcGIS. Learning to use any GIS software requires an investment of time. Invest your time wisely!

While you are a part of the Ball State community, you have free access to ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS Online, ArcGIS applications such as Business Analyst, FieldMaps, ArcGIS StoryMaps, and Survey123, as well as a plethora of training resources.

In addition to the abundance of data available from Esri's ArcGIS Living Atlas (a resource of GIS data from around the world), the Ball State community has access to GIS data from local data to US Census datasets on the University Libraries' Data Server.

For over 20 years, Ball State University and Delaware County, IN have worked together to build local data. When Delaware County, IN started to utilize GIS, Ball State students were employed to help create several GIS datasets so that local maps could be made, and basic analysis could be performed. Once Delaware County, IN invested in authoritative data, they continued to share GIS data with Ball State knowing that we all benefit from having access to better information.

With the cooperation of Delaware County, IN, the University Libraries is able to provide an exceptional amount of local data to the Ball State community. Recent additions obtained over the last year are in bold and italicized. This data includes:

• Aerial imagery for the following years:
  • 1988 (black & white)
  • 1999 (black & white)
  • 2002 (infrared)
  • 2003 (color, full leaf)
  • 2004
  • 2005
  • 2008
  • 2010
  • 2013
  • 2015
  • 2017
  • 2019
  • 2021
  • 2023
• Scanned historic aerials have been obtained for the Ball State community’s use.  The historic aerials were scanned and saved as pdfs by Delaware County, IN.  Although this imagery will require more processing for use within a GIS, they still provide reference material for those looking at change through time.  The scanned historic aerials are for the following years:
  • 1961
  • 1967
  • 1979
• Geodatabases The Ball State community has access to all of Delaware County, IN's GIS data layers from historic datasets to current planimetric datasets.
  • Delaware County's complete geodatabase for 2023
  • Updated planimetric datasets for 2024 including: building footprints, parks, parking lots, and pavement edge

Access to this data, especially the aerials, provides the opportunity for local research at a more granular level when analyzing development patterns.

The following aerial images illustrate the change that can be observed by comparing aerial imagery. The aerial images also provide comparison of what is visible during different seasons. The 1999 and 2023 aerial imagery are "leaf off", allowing the observer to see more of the ground below trees. The 2003 aerial imagery is "leaf on", which blocks the ground from observation but provides a more attractive view which was useful for promotional materials.

Keep in mind that if you can't find the data you need, please reach out to the GIS Specialist! The GIS Specialist will track down available data to aid in your research or projects.

Learning and utilizing Geographic Information Systems builds valuable hard skills. With ArcGIS as the industry standard, students that use this software can learn vital skills for jobs that use GIS.

Using GIS also teaches valuable soft skills that are transferable and help people excel in any workplace.

Test your knowledge of GIS, campus, and GIS at Ball State University with these trivia questions.

Answers to the trivia questions are provided at the end of the StoryMap.

With over 2,000 geoprocessing tools, ArcGIS Pro organizes these tools into 40 toolboxes.

By solving this puzzle, you will uncover the many functions that you can accomplish with this GIS software.  The only toolbox in ArcGIS Pro that is not included in this puzzle is the 3D Analyst toolbox. *Keep in mind that Toolboxes include toolsets. The answers to the crosswords will not include toolsets.

Trivia Answers: 1-D, 2-C, 3-T, 4-B, 5-T, 6-A, 7-D, 8-C, 9-D, 10-A