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Want to know the most interesting use cases of ArcGIS?In this answer, I will tell you 1000 GIS Applications & their Uses.So keep reading till the end because you are going to get a lot of information from it.One year in the making, these are some of your favorite GIS applications you haven’t heard of yet:GIS student project ideas, GIS case studies, GIS projects, GIS uses – From over 50 industries, this jam-packed guide of 1000 GIS applications will open your mind to our amazing planet and its inter-connectivity.1 Agriculture GIS Applications1. Precision Farming – Harvesting more bushels per acre while spending less on fertilizer using precision farming and software. (How to win the farm using GIS)2. Disease Control – Combating the spread of pests through by identifying critical intervention areas and efficient targeting control interventions.3. Swiss Alps Farming – Cultivating south-facing slopes in the Swiss Alps using aspect data because it shelters from cold and dry winds which is critical to successful crop growth.4. 3D Scanners for Biomass – Measuring with laser accuracy 3D biomass using the FARO scanner.5. Real-time Crop Yields – Shifting to real-time crop monitoring and targeted, automated responses with drones and precision watering sensors.6. Current Food Security – Safeguarding food insecure populations by establishing underlying causes through satellite, mobile-collected and GIS data storage.7. Agri-tourism – Navigating through crop mazes with GPS receivers in the developing field of agri-tourism.8. Plant Hardiness – Defining distinct boundaries in which plants are capable of growing as defined by climatic conditions.9. Machine Performance – Logging geographic coordinates of agricultural machinery in a farm field to better understand the spatially variability cost of field operation and machinery performance.10. Future Food Demand – Diagnosing the future food demand and planning how to fulfill the needs of a growing and increasingly affluent population.11. Crop Assimilation Model – Simulating soil, water and crop processes to better understand crop productivity and monitoring using the Crop Assimilation Model tool in GRASS GIS.12. Water Stress – Balancing the ratio of local withdrawal (demand) over the available water (supply).13. Historical Agricultural Land – Plotting the historical and future farming trends served.14. Hunger Map – Raising awareness about global hunger and places that are in need.15. Agromap – Breaking down primary food crops by sub-national administrative districts and aggregating by crop production, area harvested and crop yields.16. Crop Resilience to Climate Change – Adapting to climate change and shifting weather patterns by promote the continued health of your fields.17. Crop Productivity – Calibrating crop productivity using indices like Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) to estimate global crop productivity. (Satellite Image Corporation AgroWatch Green Vegetation Index)18. Erosion-Productivity Impact Calculator (EPIC) – Prioritizing cropland conservation program implementations through “Model Simulation of Soil Loss, Nutrient Loss, and Change in Soil Organic Carbon Associated with Crop Production”.19. Agriculture Capability – Classifying the varying potential for agricultural production using the Canadian Land Inventory.20. Ranch Pasture Management – Collecting soils types, fence lines, roads and other data for better management for more meaningful reports and maps.21. Agricultural Pollution – Quantifying the impacts on climate and the environment from agricultural pollution.22. Agriculture Revenue – Determining the Effective Opportunity Cost relating to deforestation and potential agricultural revenue with IDRISI GeOSIRIS for REDD.23. Irrigation – Capturing irrigation infrastructure for land management decisions more than two-thirds of the world’s freshwater withdrawals are for irrigating crops.24. Farm Preservation – Establishing farm priority zones by analyzing the local farming landscape and constructing criteria for high-quality farming areas.25. Versatile Soil Moisture Budget – Simulating soil moisture conditions of cropland areas taking into account evapotranspiration, rainfall, runoff and other factors.26. Drought – Minimizing the impact of drought by analyzing the spatial distribution of rainfall and real-time sensors like SMAP, SMOS and synthetic aperture radar.27. CropScape – Estimating acreage of crop types and spatial distribution using satellite imagery with National Agricultural Statistics Services. (USDA NASS CropScape)28. Crop Forecasting – Predicting crop yields using NDVI, weather, soil moisture, soil types and other parameters.29. Organic Farming – Managing various sources of data for organic farming permits including tillage history, field inputs, crop rotations, and pest management measures on a field-by-field basis.30. Agricultural Non-Point Source (AGNPS) Model – Predicting the effects of agriculture on water quality using Agricultural Non-Point Source pollution model in MapWindow31. Drainage Ditches – Tracing farm field drainage lines using stereo imagery in MicroImages TNTMips. (TNT Stereo Viewing Tools)32. Length of Growing Period – Meeting the full evapotranspiration demands of crops when average temperatures are greater or equal to 5°C and precipitation plus moisture store in the soil exceed half the potential evapotranspiration.2 Astronomy/Planetary GIS Applications33. Asteroids – Gazing the sky and tracking asteroids with NASA’s bolide events map. (NASA’s Bolide Events)34. Mapping Mars with MOLA – Start mapping a whole entire new planet using NASA’s MOLA. (USGS Planetary GIS Web Server – PIGWAD)35. Mars Terrain – Going for a spin on the rugged terrain of Mars using data captured by the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) instrument on the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS). (Mars Terrain)36. Mars Rover Landing – Examining how to landing the Mars Rover safely with operations criteria including latitude for solar power, soil softness, slopes using laser altimetry, dustiness, rockiness and a landing footprint.37. Water Flow on Mars – Hillshading the Mars Digital Elevation Model to augment legibility and understand where rivers may have flowed and oceans flourished. (Mars Water Flow)38. Satellite Orbits – Gazing the sky for satellites and even programming satellites for image acquisition. (Satellite Map)39. Magnetic Fields – Investigating magnetic field lines in 3D with international geomagnetic field maps.40. Astrogeology – Delivering planetary mapping to the international science community in public domain – from planetary topology to lunar geology. (Astrogeology Science Centre)41. UFO Sightings – Speculating UFO sightings with proportional symbols with over 90,000 reports dating back to 1905. m42. Light Pollution – Recognizing the artificial light introduced by humans in the night sky and how it interferes with the observation of stars. (NOAA’s VIIRS data) / Light Pollution Map)43. Mars in Google Earth – Searching for Martian landmarks with Google Earth’s “Live from Mars” layer.44. International Space Station – Tracking the real-time location of the International Space Station (ISS) in ArcGIS Online Data.45. Venus – Mapping the altimetry, shaded relief and geology of Venus. (Venus Map)46. Magnetic Declination – Positioning with the magnetic declination, a varying angle from a true geographic north using NOAA National Geophysical Data Center 2015 data and the Magnetic Declination QGIS Plugin.47. Gravity Anomaly – Understanding our Earth’s gravity by mapping the unusual concentrations of mass in a different regions on Earth. (The Geoid)48. NASA Visible Earth – Cataloging images and animations of our home planet in the electromagnetic spectrum from various sensors. (NASA Visible Earth)49. Tycho – Mapping Tycho, the youngest moon crater.50. Milky Way – Surveying the inner part of the Milky Way Galaxy with GLIMPSE (Galactic Legacy Infrared Midplane Extraordinaire)3 Archaeology GIS Applications51. Lost Cities – Revealing lost cities in the ground and their forgotten past using ground penetrating radar and infrared sensors. (LiDAR uncovers lost cities)52. Archaeological Survey – Tackling a huge problem archaeologists face every day – collecting physical locations of their excavation findings from a wealth of sites.53. Middle Eastern Geodatabase for Antiquities – Recording, monitoring, and protecting archaeological sites to avoid impacting, factor cost for site mitigation – developed by the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI) and the World Monuments Fund (WMF). (MEGA Geodatabase)54. Geographic Text Analysis – Incorporating a semi-automated exploration of large written texts combining Natural Language Processing techniques, Corpus Linguistics and GIS.55. QGIS Archaeology Tools – Computerizing the archaeological community with their record keeping with the pyArchInit QGIS plugin.56. Mediterranean Landscape Dynamics – Modeling surface process change and landscape evolution to better understand the long-term interactions of humans and landscapes in the Mediterranean using GRASS GIS. (Mediterranean Landscape Dynamics)57. Preliminary Site Investigation – Searching ancient maps for buildings, cemeteries, roads and fences as these sites present important clues to archaeological sites.58. Stone Tools – Characterizing geographic features suitable for making stone tools and clay pottery such as lithic materials, water resources, stream hydrology with geologic controls like bedrock outcrops and drainage basin floodplains.59. Viewshed – Scoping out a site by determining what is within eyesight considering all prehistoric conditions associated to that viewshed.60. Archaeological Site Prediction – Connecting favorable slope, aspect, geology, hydrology and distance to water using the Multiple Criteria Evaluation (MCE) to predict archaeological sites.61. Cultural Heritage Inventory – Customizing and deploying the collection of cultural heritage field observations with open source geospatial software Arches. (Arches Heritage Inventory & Management System)62. 3D Archaeology – Rendering accurate and efficient 3D recordings of archaeological heritage sites, in particular archaeological excavations with aerial imagery and 3D environments.63. Shovel Test Pits – Logging transects, shovel test pits and other recordings when they visit potential locations to conduct field investigations.64. Predicting Dinosaur Tracks – Getting the inside track on understanding exactly where dinosaurs once roamed the Earth with vegetation coverage, slope, aspect and proximity to landslides.4 Architecture GIS Applications65. Line of Sight – Planning high-rise buildings so they don’t obstruct the view of the mountains in Portland using line of sight.66. Exposure to Noise – Orchestrating urban mobility plans with special consideration for the impact environmental noise using OrbisGIS. (Urban Noise)67. Development Planning – Making citizens happy through smart development planning and understanding the bigger picture.68. Crowd Simulation – Mastering the collective dynamics of interacting objects in urban phenomena at the scale of individual households, people, and units of real estate and at time-scales approaching “real time”. (Crowd Simulation)69. Solar Exposure – Harvesting light to assess the suitability of installing solar (photovoltaic) panels on roofs using 3D city models and geometric information such as the tilt, orientation and area of the roof.70. City Engine – Assessing feasibility and plan implementation using Esri’s City Engine improving urban planning, architecture, and overall design.71. Pedestrian Behavior – Discerning the movements of pedestrians and urban behavior throughout through a plaza in Copenhagen.72. Shadow Analysis – Diagnosing how much shadow will be casted in the pre-construction phase onto its surrounding using Bentley Map.73. Parking Availability – Orchestrating a parking available by collecting the percent of spaces occupied versus search time.74. Integration of GIS and BIM – Operating a facility with BIM (building information modeling) because of its ability to analyze information and integrate data from different systems.75. Tangible Landscape – Experimenting with the potential impact of different building configurations with an easy-to-use 3D sketching tool. (Tangible Landscape)76. Geodesign – Conceptualizing building plans with focus on stakeholder participation and collaboration to closely follow natural systems.77. Propagation of Noise in Urban Environments – Modelling 3D data to answer how urban citizens are harmed by noise pollution, and how to mitigate it with noise barriers.78. Space Utilization – Augmenting NASA’s Langley Research Center by applying optimization algorithms to space utilization. (Space Utilization)79. Ordnance Survey Geovation – Pioneering location innovation in the United Kingdom through Geovation – the collaboration, exchange of ideas and inspiring innovation. (Ordnance Survey Geovation)5 Arctic / Antarctica GIS Applications80. Quantarctica – Familiarizing yourself with Antarctic with the free, open-source source collection of geographical datasets. (Quantarctica)81. Exclusive Economic Zones – Carving out boundaries in the Arctic – Canada, Norway, Russia, Denmark (via Greenland) and the United States are limited to their economic adjacent to their coasts while all waters beyond is considered international water.82. Shipping Route Shortcuts – Transporting goods through the Arctic passage because of melting ice in the North Pole.83. Sea Ice Motion – Maintaining an inventory of sea ice extents snapshots from NOAA’s National Snow and Ice Data Center. (Sea Ice Motion)84. Aspect – Using aspect and incoming solar radiation data to understand how glaciers accumulate on the poleward side.85. Subglacial Lakes – Mapping lakes under glaciers – isolated from the outside world for up to 35 million years, and may be final refuges for life, the like of which exists nowhere else on Earth. (Subglacial Lakes)86. Antarctic Digital Magnetic Anomaly Project (ADMAP) – Uncovering the tectonic evolution using near-surface magnetic anomaly data. (Antarctic Magnetic Anomaly)87. Wildlife Tracking – Logging the species richness of marine mammals like whales, seals, walruses and narwhals and seabirds or waterfowl in the Arctic.88. Sea Ice Index – Bringing together data on Antarctica’s ice sheet surface, thickness and boundary using passive remote sensing. (Sea NSIDC Ice Index)89. Fish – Showing the probability of occurrence and observations for fish species – from Atlantic cod to Walleye Pollock. (Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources)90. Arctic Research Projects – Displaying research projects, showing available data and exploring possible collaborations. (Arctic Research Projects)91. Arctic Ocean Floor – Sculpting the Arctic Ocean with the sonic depth finder and discovering dynamic with trenches, ridges and abyssal plains.92. Arctic’s Geology – Interpreting the geology of the Arctic using enhanced magnetic data, Landsat imagery and topographic data. (Arctic Geology)93. COMNAP Facilities – Mapping out the COMNAP facilities in Antarctica that currently supports a range of scientific research. (COMNAP Facilities)94. Polar Bear – Keeping counts of the most vulnerable populations of polar bear (due to climate change) by comparing two satellite images over time.95. Search and Rescue – Lunging into search and rescue operations using the Safety and Operability Index which calculates risk based on factors such as sea ice, visibility, temperature, distance from SAR resources.96. Environmental Risk – Assessing the environmental vulnerability of marine resources with respect to oil spill as external stressor. (Arctic Environmental Risk)97. Polar Ice Melt – Monitoring the polar ice melt using satellites like GOCE and GRACE that measures how much mass is on Earth. (GOCE and GRACE Satellites)6 Aquatics GIS Applications98. Stream Order – Defining stream size based on a hierarchy of tributaries the Strahler Index (or Horton-Strahler Index) – an important indicator of fisheries and aquatic habitat.99. Fish Habitat Models – Connecting fish species with their habitat using habitat suitability indexes.100. Whale Tracking – Stalking pigmy killer, sperm, beaked and false killer whales in the Pacific Ocean with online mapping applications. (Whale Tracking)101. Global Shark Tracker – Monitoring sharks recovery rates with acoustic tags allowing detection in multiple dimensions. (OCEARCH)102. Fish Eradication – Eradicating Northern pike which negatively affect local trout fishery and the economy by tracking their movements with GPS. (Northern Pike Eradication)103. Spawning Sites – Drawing spawning site boundaries for migratory fish that are known to release eggs.104. Hydro-Acoustics – Listening to echoes with hydro-acoustics for the Crean Lake Hydro-Acoustics project – capturing lake depth, fish class, fish stock numbers, habitat preference related to temperature. (Crean Lake Hydro-Acoustics)105. Mercury in Stream – Grasping the origin of mercury – which are contaminants to fish tissue – by studying the landscape such as soils and humus.106. Fish Habitat Conservation Areas – Fine-tuning fish habitat conservation areas by knowing the big picture of fish distribution.107. Overfishing – Maintaining sustainable fish population levels with satellite monitoring of sea surface temperature and ocean colors (because they are indicative of specific fish species).108. Stress Monitoring – Correlating fish stresses from the local environment such as heat stress from the removal of trees along a stream.109. SCIMAP – Identifying locations of diffuse pollution risk for polluted water and aquatic habitat using SCIMAP. (Diffuse Pollution Risk Mapping)7 Aviation GIS Applications110. Live Air Traffic – Turning your computer into air traffic control center using Flight Radar 24. (Flight Radar 24)111. Airplane Identification – Pointing your phone to the sky and identifying airplanes above you using Flight Radar 24.112. World’s Busiest Airports – Surfing the world’s top 25 busiest airports with the Esri Global Crossroads Story Map. (World’s Busiest Airports)113. Voronoi Diagram – Discovering that Mataveri Airport in Easter Island is the most remote airport in the world with the Voronoi airport proximity map. (Voronoi Diagram)114. Obstruction Evaluation – Securing safe take-offs and landings with the Federal Aviation Agency’s (FAA) vertical obstruction database115. Flight Path – Simulating flight paths integrated with elevation data, imagery and other spatial data using Falcon View.116. Search for Flight MH370 – Crowd-sourcing the search for flight MH370 with satellite imagery provided by DigitalGlobe.117. Airspace Builder – Visualizing the air available to aircraft to fly in with 3D volumes using NASA’s World Wind. (NASA World Wind)118. Air Traffic Control – Fine-tuning air traffic control with a common operational picture for security vulnerability and land use permitting.119. Drone No-fly Zones – Delineating drone no-fly zones where it’s illegal to fly such as near airports and military bases.120. Aeronautical Charts – Scouting out best routes, safe altitudes and navigation aids in the sky with aeronautical charts.121. Runway Approach Zone Encroachment – Pinpointing obstructions in the approach zone of a runway using detailed elevation data to ensure no collisions FAA Safety Analysis.122. Airport Sound Exposure – Assessing the relationship between aircraft-generated noise levels and land uses, noise receptors, and demographics in the airport environs.123. Fly Through – Cruising the high altitudes with interactive 3D viewing and fly-throughs with Landserf. (Landserf)124. Flight Simulator – Becoming a pilot in the cockpit with three-dimensional perspective views of an area by combined with elevation and imagery. (Online Flight Simulator)125. Air Space Review – Automating the dissemination and portrayal of Special Activity Airspace information via OGC Web Services. (Envitia Special Air Space)8 Automobile Integration GIS Applications126. Toyota Vehicle Crowd Sourcing – Piecing together hyper-precise and up-to-date maps using Toyota vehicle’s GPS and camera.127. In-Vehicle Usage – Monitoring driving habits like speed, sudden acceleration and pushing hard on the brakes for insurance underwriting.128. GeoFencing – Immobilizing cross border travel with geofencing (virtual barriers) – perfect for car sharing and rental programs. (To Geofence or not)129. Self-Driving Vehicles – Sitting back and relaxing while Google’s autonomous car does all the work equipped with LiDAR, GPS, an inertial unit and sophisticated software. (Google’s Self-Driving Car)130. GPS Receivers – Nurturing mapping technology as it’s almost standard to have a GPS receiver and a monitor with all the latest maps.131. Waze Real-Time Driving – Saving time and money on your commute as drivers share real-time traffic information and road alerts with each other with Waze. (Waze Live Map)132. Estimated Travel Time – Locking in your destination and getting live updates for estimated travel time.133. Morgan Freeman’s Voice – Enjoying the calm, soothing voice of Morgan Freeman as he delivers directions from your GPS navigation system. (Morgan Freeman GPS)9 Banking GIS Applications134. Market Share – Examining branch locations, competitor locations and demographic characteristics to identify areas worthy of expansion or determine market share in Maptitude. (Market Share)135. ATM Machine – Filling in market and service gaps by understanding where customers, facilities, and competitors are with address locating, database management and query tools.136. World Bank Economic Statistics – Slicing and dicing raw financial data from the World Bank. (World Bank Data)137. Merger and Acquisitions – Profiling and finding opportunities to gain and build where customers are with market profiling138. Supply and Demand – Identifying under-served areas and analyzing your competitor’s market.139. Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) – Fulfilling the obligations to loan in areas with particular attention to low- and moderate-income households – using GIS to understand spatial demographics. (Bank of America uses MapInfo for CRA)140. Mobile Banking – Capturing locations where existing mobile transaction occur and assisting in mobile security infrastructure.10 Business & Commerce GIS Applications141. Fleet Management – Staying in route and solving scheduling problems with fleet management.142. Augmented Reality – Augmenting reality with commercial use in mind – such as advertising and restaurant reviews. (Google Glass)143. Direct Marketing – Revitalizing selling strategies by reaching out to customers directly with locational intelligence.144. Drive-Time Analysis – Determining a trade area based on how long a customer must drive to get to the store – factoring in street speed limits, traffic volumes, and other impedance.145. Internet of Things – Improving efficiency, accuracy and economic benefit through a network of physical objects such as devices, vehicles, buildings and other items—embedded with electronics, software, sensors, and network connectivity that enables these objects to collect and exchange information with one another.146. Market Share Analysis – Optimizing the locations of facilities so the allocated demand is maximized in the presence of competitors using tools like location-allocation in ArcGIS. (Location-Allocation Tool)147. Nearest Location – Resolving the nearest gas station, restaurants or coffee shop using GPS-based positioning and geocoded business data.148. Property Appraisal – Appraising residential properties using Census data and finding your property online through interactive property assessment viewers.149. Internet Geocoding – Mapping and analyzing user generated geocoded data to get a glimpse of what internet users (in the aggregate) think about particular places.150. Geocoding Businesses – Pinpointing anything to everything from restaurants, banks and donut shops with a list of addresses.151. Reverse Geocoding – Geocoding in reverse; taking locations from a map and listing their addresses.152. Daytime Population – Marketing products effectively with detailed daytime population demographics for an area reflecting who works in that area as opposed to residential demographics.153. Local Advertising – Advertising through social, local and mobile mediums through location and making presence more known.154. Tax Havens – Sheltering tax through tax havens then putting it all on a map. (Open Corporates)155. GeoBranding – Increasing credibility and increasing sales with prospective clients, vendors and media by conveying complex data to increase sales.156. Desire Lines – Plotting desire lines showing stores that serves customers. (Origin and Destination – QGIS Oursins Plugin)157. Commercial Establishments – Updating commercial establishment using gvSIG Mobile and a local databases. (Commercial Establishment Database)158. Supply Chain – Finding which supply chains are vulnerable to better plan for interruptions (Boundless Supply Chain)159. Integrated Freight Network Model – Integrating highly detailed information about shipping costs, transfer costs, traffic volumes and network interconnectivity properties in a GIS-based platform. (Integrated Freight Network Model)160. Capital Projects – Listing all the capital projects with different stages of completion.161. Gravity Models – Determining the likelihood of customers patronizing a particular store based on the store’s proximity, competition, and other factors.162. Employee Travel Times – Modelling travel times in urban networks for employee travel times.163. Store Openings – Historicizing a company’s store openings. (IKEA Store Openings)164. Foursquare – Recommending 50 million users search for restaurants, recommend bars, and check-in around the world with a Mapbox custom branded map. (Foursquare)165. Infrastructure Expansion – Comparing historical data to current conditions with satellite data from Astro Digital.11 Consumer Science and Behavior GIS Applications166. Data Analytics – Analyzing location-based information to reveal relationship between individuals, families, and communities, and the environment in which they live.167. Huff Model – Calculating sales potential based on the Huff Model – an interaction model measuring the probabilities of consumers at each origin location patronizing a new store instead of other stores.168. Consumer Profiling – Optimizing consumer profiling with location-based information on age, ethnicity, education, housing and more.169. Retail Customer Segmentation – Segmenting markets by customer prototypes to improve the effectiveness of campaigns.170. Buying Behavior – Correlating unthinkable variables like weather and location with buying behaviors to find sales opportunities.171. Retail Store Movement – Detailing how customers move through retail stores, what they bought, rejected and looked at.172. Real-Time Gas Prices – Crowdsourcing gas price updates at various gas stations on or along a route. (Waze Crowdsourced Gas Prices)173. Store Placement – Guiding the placement of new stores by studying disposable income, population, or other variables to best serve the population.12 Climate Change GIS Applications174. NASA Earth Observatory – Exploring the causes and effects of climate change of our atmosphere, oceans, land and life through the use of satellite data. (NASA Earth Observatory)175. Climate Change Skeptics – Turning skeptics into believers. Maps make climate change findings easier for skeptics to understand and accept. (Climate Viewer)176. Earth Interactions – Modelling vegetation, atmospheric, rainfall and ecosystems to study their interactions simultaneously177. Sea Level Rise – Collecting data to study sea level rise and climate change from Jason-3 satellite. (Climate Central)178. County Climate – See for yourself how average maximum temperature rises/falls in each county in the United States. (County Climate)179. Desertification – Understanding the underlying causes of desertification such as inappropriate agriculture practices, deforestation and drought.180. Land Surface Temperature Change – Using map algebra to see how land surface temperature changes year-by-year. (Land Surface Temperature)181. Piecing Together the Climate Change Puzzle – Combining various climate change data sets from various sources – for example relating land practices with atmosphere aerosols. (ArcGIS Online)182. Pollution Modelling – Mapping air pollution sources and impacts on environment and people.183. Google Planetary Engine – Seeing with your own two eyes the alarming changes of our planet. (Google Planetary Engine)184. Bird Risk and Richness – Studying the effects of shrinking habitats on bird populations in the world. (Audubon)185. Carbon Sequestration – Deferring global warming through carbon sequestration through location-based carbon management systems.186. Köppen-Geiger Climate Classification – Modelling observed and projected climate change scenarios with variables such as population growth, economic development and varying energy use and technological innovations.187. Smog – Squinting your eyes to see through all of that smog. (Mapbox Smog from Space)188. Temperature Change – Measuring the effects of greenhouse gases being the main culprit of temperature change by mapping temperature at levels above the Earth’s surface.189. Climate Change Design – Redesigning to accommodate climate change and pinpointing those locations needed most.190. Land Change Modeller – Simplifying innovative land planning and decision support with IDRISI’s Land Change Modeler. It includes special tools for the assessment of REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation) climate change mitigation strategies.191. Vegetation Indices – Using remote sensing vegetation indices like NDVI, CTVI, NRVI and PVI to monitor vegetation change throughout time.13 Crime GIS Applications192. Crime Patterns – Responding to crimes with a data-driven approach and deliver tailored responses through rapid deployment of personnel and resources. (Spillman CompStat)193. Incident Map – Keeping the community safer by streaming visual mediums for arson, assault, burglary, homicide, prostitution, robbery, theft, and vandalism in a city.194. Auto Theft and Recovery – Tracking auto theft with GPS-enabled vehicles.195. Sex Offenders – Tracking past criminal offenders with GPS movement patterns in relationship to schools and other entities.196. Emergency Calls and Dispatch – An emergency call starts and ends at a location. GIS can manage both 911 calls and dispatching units to precise locations. (Zetron Computer-Aided Dispatch)197. Law Enforcement Operations – Allocating and dispatching police officers where it’s needed most by studying crime activities.198. Unlawful Landlords – Capturing thermal signatures of illegal tenants in sheds because renting out sheds is illegal in London, England. (Pitney Bowes Crime Solution)199. Predictive Policing – Patrolling Mapping clusters of burglaries or other crimes assigning more police in those locations using heat maps or Getis-Ord General G and point patterns.200. Missing Body Search – Narrowing down the search of a missing by finding subtle terrain anomalies in the ground using LiDAR.201. Megan’s Law – Obeying the requirement for local law enforcement agencies to notify residents about the presence of certain sex offenders in their area by only contacting a buffered area of the offender’s residence.202. Forensic GIS – Applying science and geographic information for the investigating of a crime – such as using GPS-recorded information in vehicles to prove the location at the scene of a crime. (Forensic GIS – The Role of Geospatial Technologies for Investigating Crime and Providing Evidence)203. GeoEvent Notification – Avoiding high-crime areas with geofencing when delivering high-valued goods.204. Extra Penalties – Dishing out extra penalties to criminals if convicted of selling drugs within a specified distance of a school property.205. Illegal Smuggling – Monitoring cross-border smuggling activity by placing a GPS on a vehicle with a warrant to do so.206. Fear of Crime – Interviewing individuals for fear of crime using GPS-enabled mobile computing.207. Geographic Profiling – Using a connected series of crimes to determine the most probabilistic location of a criminal offender or offense – useful for finding serial criminals.208. Stalking – Abusing GPS technology by stalking with a GPS receiver. A GPS jammer prevents positional monitoring.209. First Response – Getting to a crime scene quicker with all the critical information needed in the field. (Adashi Incident Command Software)210. Traffic Violations – Collecting and mapping traffic incident to assess if units should be spread out or concentrated in certain locations.211. Open Air Drug Markets – Uncovering relationship between crimes and the location of open air drug markets based on analogous crimes throughout other communities212. Ankle Monitor – Homing in on those under house arrest or parole. GPS bracelets only have value if you know where they are going.14 Defense/Military GIS Applications213. Augmented Reality Sandtable (ARES) – Improving battlespace visualization with projected GIS data on a sandtable. (Augmented Reality)214. Terrorism Search – Finding Osama Bin Laden using remote sensing imagery with biogeographic theory (distance-decay theory and island biogeography theory). (Finding Osama Bin Laden)215. Anti-aircraft – Answering anti-aircraft gun reach using 3D dome layers to avoid dangerous airspace (Anti-aircraft)216. Safe Landings– Parachuting from the skies safely by evaluation the underlying surroundings of the area.217. Intelligence Data Integration – Overlaying accurate geographic data for battlefield application and make life saving decisions218. Combat Flight Planning Software (CFPS) – Previewing combat routes, weapon delivery and air drop planning in Falcon View. (Falcon View)219. Reconnaissance Satellites – Spying on enemies with satellites – from Corona in 1959 to the tiny CubeSat’s being used today.220. Base Construction Planning – Constructing a base site without it being visible from nearby major roads using the 3D skyline tool.221. GEOINT – Revealing human activity through the use of geospatial investigation and ultraviolet to microwave imagery.222. Military Simulation – Simulating ground vehicle in a highly realistic virtual world.223. US Army Corps of Engineers – Delivering vital public and military engineering services keeping geospatial information in mind. (US Army Corps of Engineers)224. Pigeon Mapping – Spying on enemies in World War II with the Bavarian Pigeon Corps – a flock of pigeons equipped with cameras.225. Chokepoint – Safeguarding chokepoints like bridges or dams where critical infrastructure converge – explosions here would cause multiple effects.226. Bird Strike – Flying safely through the Bird Avoidance Model (BAM) – a temporal raster grids equal to the sum of the mean bird mass for all species present.227. Uranium Depletion – Mapping depleted uranium and preventing it from getting into the wrong hands.228. President Assassination – Preventing assassinations by understanding the logistics of a past one. (Assassination Prevention)229. Mobile Command Modeling – Setting up shop by finding the most optimal mobile command location.230. Common Operating Picture – Getting everyone on the same page with a Common Operating Picture.231. Military Mission Planning – Increasing operational awareness to helicopter pilots through 3D for conducting ingress and egress movement.232. Locational Intelligence – Creating safety and danger areas for ground-to-ground weapons (Surface Danger Zones) and air-to-ground Weapon Danger Zone. (Range Management Toolkit (RMTK))233. United Nations Peacekeeping – Peacekeeping by means of having the geographic necessary for humanitarian aid, developing peace in war-torn countries and providing the necessary support.234. Critical Features – Identifying threats to homeland security by collecting knowledge of the built and cultural environments.235. Tactical Planning – Deploying troops and military equipment to combat zones intelligently by searching compressed and quick-loading reconnaissance imagery.236. Motion Video – Capturing georeferenced video to assess anything such as operational status of an industrial plant, bomb damage on a target or length of a runway. (GeoMedia Motion Video Analyst)237. Homeland Security – Addressing vulnerabilities and formulating preparedness measures in case of terrorism and emergency situations.238. Virtual Reality – Simulating military and training in a 3D environment using GIS data.239. Attack Modelling – Modeling a potential attack to legitimize the needs and have policy makers truly understand the consequences of an attack with preparedness expenditures.240. Helicopter Landing – Inventorying potential landing zones to helicopters unseen, unheard and on flat terrain.241. Guard Posting – Posting armed guards in optimal locations to eliminate chokepoints.242. 3D Fences – Building security fences with post interval and number of wires/boards with heights in a 3D GIS environment.243. War Maps – Familiarizing oneself with the enemy defenses and territory by mapping strategic attacks.244. World Trade Center – Responding to terrorist attacks including real-time data delivery, victim tracking, facility and resource vulnerability, data availability, implementation, environmental exposure and air monitoring (World Trade Center GIS Response)245. Georeferenced Video – Cataloging and retrieving full motion video using the ArcGIS Full Motion Video Add-In or Hexagon Geospatial GeoMedia Motion GeoVideo Analyst.246. Detecting IED – Monitoring disturbed surfaces one day to next to find Improvised Explosive Devices247. Logistics – Responding to military and security decisions with timely logistics and support.248. Camouflage Detection – Carrying out early reconnaissance missions during war using near-infrared.249. Military Grid Reference System – Locating points on the Earth with from three parts – grid zone designator, square identifier and numerical location.15 Disaster GIS Applications250. Richter Scale – Depicting earthquakes on a 3D globe like spikes on a porcupine for each reading on the Richter scale. (3D Richter Scale Map)251. Shared Operations – Responding to disasters with quickness and reliability using a Common Operating Picture and cloud services (Cloud GIS for Disaster Monitoring)252. Chernobyl Exclusion Zone – Buffering a radius of 18.6 miles (30 km) which is now known as the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.253. Landslide Vulnerability – Dodging landslides with relief maps and 3D analysis.254. Hurricane Response – Sidestepping the threat of hurricanes by tracking historical hurricane paths and through better disaster response/assistance.255. Earthquake Prediction – Obtaining earthquake signatures measuring subduction events with GRACE satellite and the geoid. (Earthquake Prediction)256. Coastal Surges – Estimating risk in three steps using HAZUS software by FEMA.257. Citizen Alert – Guaranteeing protection of citizens by delivering geo-targeted alerts on mobile. (FME Server Real-Time Earthquake Reporting)258. What-if Scenarios – Determining higher likelihood events based on historical data and spatial analysis.259. Evacuation – Evaluating evacuation capabilities neighborhoods may face and generating effective design.260. Oil Spill – Degreasing oil spills by identifying current direction and rate of oil movement.261. Tornado Warning Siren – Safeguarding residents with effective siren coverage in tornado alley. (Tornado Warning Siren Modelling)262. Fire Severity – Prioritizing prevention and planning efforts during forest fires.263. Flood Forecasting – Simulating with stream discharge hydrographs with variations of water over time.264. Tornado Alley – Finding patterns of historical tornadoes in Tornado Alley.265. Avalanche Modeling – Uncovering areas prone to avalanches by assessing high slopes with sparse vegetation for residential planning, ski resorts and highway safety planning.266. Tsunami Damage – Identifying high risk areas for tsunami damage267. Emergency Shelter – Allocating emergency shelter at time of disaster268. Consequences Assessment Tool Set (CATS) – Analyzing damage to the environment, the exposed population, and provides real-time resource allocation information to mitigate the consequences. (Leidos Consequences Assessment Tool Set)269. Vulnerability to Natural Hazards – Deselecting hazard-prone land for more resilient communities through smart land planning.270. Search and Rescue – Rescuing missing persons drones using small, highly maneuverable unmanned aerial vehicles (drones).271. Volcanic Ash – Rendering volcanic ash clouds in 3D for their dispersion of spillages underwater.272. Earthquake Epicenter/Hypocenter – Establishing the epicenter, hypocenters, faults and lineaments, radius and frequency of earthquakes.273. Volcano Activity – Monitoring thermal emission from the volcano’s summit in Iceland using Landsat’s Thermal Infrared.274. Disaster Warning – Alerting citizens before a large-scale earthquake happens with a new generation of inter-operable early warning systems for multiple hazards. (DEWS – Distant Early Warning System for Tsunamis – uDig)275. Earthquake Assistance – Assisting in the aftermath of the massive Ecuador earthquake by listing “Safe Place” locations from government listings. (Waze Community Assistance)276. Disaster Debris – Estimating debris amounts to better prepare and respond to a major debris generating event.277. Earthquake-Landslide Susceptibility – Mapping the susceptibility of earthquake induced landslides using an artificial neural networks and factors such as slope, aspect, curvature and distance from drainage. (Earthquake-Landslide Susceptibility Using Neural Networks)16 Ecology GIS Applications278. Telemetry – Collecting GPS locations from collared mammals for the purpose of storing, displaying and analyzing their coordinates.279. Habitat Suitability – Factoring in all the variables to understand the habitat that animals select and avoid using linear regression.280. Land Facet Corridor Analysis – Identifying linkages between wildlife and landscapes. (Land Facet Corridor Analysis)281. Landscape Fragmentation Tools (LFT) – Classifying land cover types into forest fragmentation categories – patch, edge, perforated, and core. (Landscape Fragmentation Tools LFT)282. Migration Patterns – Simulating the East African wildebeest migration patterns for the Serengeti–Mara ecosystem in East Africa.283. Path Metrics – Calculates turn angles, step lengths, bearings, time intervals for a point time series dataset using GME. (Geospatial Modelling Environment – GME)284. DNA Traits – Mapping the richness, distribution and diversity of organisms on the landscape based on molecular marker (DNA).285. Surui Tribe – Equipping the Surui tribe with geo-tagging equipment to put an end to the deforestation and cultural devastation in their section of the Brazilian rain forest. (Surui Tribe)286. Species Biodiversity – Gauging over time a decrease in biodiversity or an abundance of species (invasive or disturbance-increasing) using temporal GIS. (Refractions Biodiversity BC)287. Honey Bees – Stimulating spatial thinking processes by analyzing relationships between environmental characteristics and honey bee health and abundance (GIS Honey Bee Research)288. Elk Ranges – Estimating an average home range for an entire herd of mammals using the Minimum Convex Polygon in Hawth’s Tools.289. Anthropogenic Disturbances – Understanding the effects of transmission line construction by monitoring mammals with helicopter surveys. Get to the choppa!290. Migratory Birds – Cross-referencing telemetry GPS migratory (Osprey) bird locations with Langley Air Force Base flying operations in an effort to reduce an aircraft strike. (NASA Langley Research – Bird/Wildlife Aircraft Strike Hazard)291. Shannon’s H Diversity Index – Measuring mathematically species diversity and richness in a community.292. Microclimates – Analyzing exposure to sunlight with aspect data as an indication of microclimates and species occurrence.293. Topographic Ruggedness Index – Estimating terrain heterogeneity which is useful for predicting which habitats are used by species294. De-Extinction – Bringing extinct species back to life and marking their previous habitats – like the passenger pigeon from 5 billion birds to zero in a couple of decades.295. Sky View – Maximizing the portion of visible sky and understanding potential forest habitat.296. FragStats – Computing a wide variety of landscape metrics for categorical map patterns. (FragStats)297. Topographic Position Index – Classifying the landscape into slope position and land-form category298. Global Ecology Land Units – Characterizing distinct physical environments and associated land cover of global ecosystems (USGS). (Global Ecology Land Units)299. Biogeography – Studying ecosystems in geographic space and through (geological) time along geographic gradients of latitude, elevation, isolation and habitat area.300. Species Modelling – Running the Maximum Entropy Model (MAXENT). (QGIS Species Distribution Modelling (QSDM) plugin)301. Flocking Birds – Mimicking flocking birds in a system of interactive parts using Agent Based Modeling. (NetLogo Flocking Birds)302. Risk of Extinction – Describing existing conditions of habitat and predicting risk of extinctions, chance of recovery and mitigation measures – such as prohibiting hunting.303. Habitat Priority Planner – Prioritizing conservation, restoration, and planning through NOAA’s Habitat Priority Planner. (Habitat Priority Planner)304. DNA Barcoding – Attaching a specific location when barcoding life. Smithsonian Institution national Museum of Natural History – (DNA Barcoding – Natural History)305. Society for Conservation GIS (SCGIS) – Assisting conservationists worldwide through community involvement and for the conservation of natural resources and cultural heritage. (SCGIS)306. Sanctuary Ecologically Significant Areas – Delineating remarkable, representative and/or sensitive marine habitats, communities and ecological processes as SESAs. (Sanctuary Ecological Significant Areas)307. Mammal Magnetic Alignment – Discovering how deer can sense magnetism through satellite image analysis and field observations of body alignments of deer beds in snow. (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 2008)308. Sustainable Populations Counts – Counting polar bears and their geographic distribution analyzing two satellite images over time.309. Crocodile Eggs – Monitoring in real-time factors like temperature and humidity for crocodile eggs. (Crocodile Eggs Real-Time Monitoring)310. Into the Okavango – Trekking the Okavango in a journal style map – the world’s last great wetland wildernesses and UNESCO World Heritage Site. (Into the Okavango)311. World Animal Protection – Becoming more resilient from future disasters. (World Animal Protection)312. Linear Directional Mean – Determining the trend for the movement of elk and moose in a stream valley could calculate the directional trend of migration routes for the two species.313. Wa-Tor Predator-Prey Simulation – Simulating ecological predator-prey populations with randomness and rule-based responses.314. Golden Eagle Tracking – Tracking Golden eagle populations using a Biodiversity Tracking System in Manifold GIS.315. Earth Trends Modeler – Assessing long term climate trends, measuring seasonal trends in phenology, and decomposing image time series to seek recurrent patterns in space and time in IDRISI TerraSet.316. Ecological Barrier – Marking physically isolated barriers between species.317. Geotagging Photos – Specifying wildlife photo locations through geotagging and streamlining the importing process with ArcPhoto.17 Economics GIS Applications318. Spatial Econometrics – Intersecting spatial analysis with economics. (GeoDa)319. World Economic Outlook – Projecting the future economy and key macroeconomic indicators with the World Economic Outlook – IMF (World Economic Outlook)320. Goods Flow – Illustrating the flow of people or goods from point to point based on values with desire lines. (Maptitude Flow Lines)321. Globalization – Measuring the degree and extent of economic globalization using international trade data through time.322. The Thünen Model – Distributing the production themselves in space incorporating costs of transport and factor mobility.323. Economic Freedom – Mapping economic freedom throughout the world – an annual guide published by The Wall Street Journal and The Heritage Foundation (Economic Freedom Heat Map)324. Geographic Portfolio – Diversifying your stock portfolio geographically for different countries and stock markets of the world.325. Global Trade – Exporting goods start at a location and ends up in another.326. Geographic Innovation Index – Investigating the relations between geographic proximity to innovation resources and stock returns. (Geographic Innovation Index)327. Economic Base Indicator – Viewing economic indicators for business, industry and demography based on radial, drive and proximity.328. Thematic Mapping – Portraying economic data like unemployment and labor information in time-series thematic maps because maps speak to people329. Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) – Carving out boundaries for sovereign rights regarding the exploration of marine resources below the surface of the sea330. Gross Domestic Product – Creating continuous area cartograms. (Cartogram QGIS Plugin)331. Global Transition to a New Economy – Prioritizing human well-being through a crowd-sourced sustainable projects map. (Global Transition to a New Economy)332. Trade Area – Delineating the geographic area where a certain percentage of a store’s customers live.333. Economic Costs of Pollution – Assessing greener growth options and the costs of pollution in India by understanding the current state of environment degradation.18 Education GIS Applications334. Campus Navigation – Navigate through a university campus with online mapping applications.335. Neogeography – Opening the floodgates for individuals to create their own maps, on their own terms and by combining elements of an existing toolset336. Projection Art – Investigating our Earth by understanding map projections. (National Geographic – Projection Art)337. Macroscope – Seeing through the macroscope – our earth as a whole rather than be taken apart In their constituents. (Macroscope)338. Bus Services – Assessing which addresses in proximity to a school are eligible for busing.339. Safe Routes to School Mapping Toolkit – Deciding the safest route to school.340. Geospatial Revolution – Captivating audiences with the Penn State Geospatial Revolution341. Cartographic Modelling – Using map algebra to depict the relationships of transportation and geography on access to adult literacy centers in Philadelphia.19 Energy GIS Applications342. Nuclear Power Risk – Conceptualizing nuclear power plant radioactive release with evacuation time and population exposed.343. Marine Renewable Energy – Seeing the ocean of information with wave heights and wind for electric dam selection.344. Concession – Putting concession licenses that give a company the right to drill for oil or gas and exploratory drilling boreholes on a map.345. World Power Types – Seeing how much of the world is being powered by fossil fuels, nuclear and renewable sources. (What Powers the World?)346. Nuclear Waste Site Selection – Safeguarding people with proper nuclear waste disposal347. Water Yields and Scarcity – Estimating water yields and scarcity at a sub-watershed level to calculate hydroelectric potential to the year 2100. Water Scarcity with Ecosystem Services Modeler IDRISI – The Ecosystem Services Modeler (ESM)348. Access Limitation – Calculating access limitations for building like slope being a major factor for getting wagons up the hill to the site.349. Coal Stockpiles – Capturing satellite imagery of frequent shots of open pit mines and resource stockpiles to better understand how much coal has been mined each month. (Coal Stockpiles)350. Shale Gas Plays – Depicting current and prospective shale gas resource areas in shale basins from the Energy Information Association.351. Dam Sites Selection – Comparing hypothetical dam sites by potential water storage to understand how land use/land cover is impacted.352. Energy Consumption – Drawing out energy capacity and consumption on a map. (World Energy Consumption Map)353. Wind Farm Site Selection – Selecting suitable wind farm by understanding wind power, transmission capacity, road access and developable land.354. Turbine Visibility – Discerning visibility of wind for potential changes on a landscape, such as the effect of adding wind farms, or the addition of a new building to an urban area.355. Radar Interference – Calculating potential radar interference and conflicts between turbines and airport approach/landing surfaces with 3D analysis.20 Engineering GIS Applications356. Asset Management – Managing infrastructure data maintenance along with their lifecycle (GeoMedia Asset Management)357. Building Permits – Helping the user determine whether or not a requested permit is in an historic district, an aquifer protection district, wetland, or floodplain.358. CAD Interoperability – Integrating CAD data (DWG, DXF) into GIS and vice versa.359. Construction Environmental Management Plan – Mitigating the potential negative impacts of engineering projects by identifying environmentally sensitive sites and mitigation measures.360. COGO – Constructing points, spirals, curves and arcs with coordinate geometry.361. Real-time Sensors – Monitoring carbon monoxide in real-time with GeoEvent Extension with set thresholds and alerts (Valarm Monitoring Company)362. Augmented Reality – Pulling up engineering diagrams and real-time sensor networks to view water pressure or amperage. (Augmented Reality)363. Cut & Fill – Carving out 3D cut and fills for major civil engineering projects such as major road constructions.364. Department of Interior – Constructing dams, power plants, and canals for protecting water and water-related resources in the United States. (Bureau of Reclamation)365. Facility Management – Optimizing energy efficiency with building automation services for a more comprehensive view of a building.366. Artificial Dam – Damming a site artificially by raising the elevations along a dam site using a Euclidean distance grid and map algebra.367. Development Area – Getting the big picture by tapping into GIS data like gentle slopes, and closeness to roads.21 Environment GIS Applications368. Environmental Impact Assessment – Measuring anticipated effects on the environment of a proposed development project369. Site Remediation – Removing contamination from a plot of land detailing risk exposure and an overview with maps.370. Fire Growth Simulation – Extinguishing fires faster by understand how they grow in discrete steps bringing together wind, weather and fuel for the fire. (FireScience BehavePlus)371. Surface Water Flow – Characterizing water flow to be identified as high consequence for oil spill mitigation.372. Dead Zones – Mapping out dead zones where marine life is unable to be supported.373. Canadian Land Inventory – Charting out land capability to sustain agriculture, forestry and recreation.374. Non-point Source Pollution – Modelling non-point source pollution like soil erosion and sedimentation which are often controlled by variables such as land use/cover, topography, soils and rainfall.375. Wetland Inventory – Delineating wetlands by types and function. (National Wetlands Inventory)376. Invasive Species Modular Dispersal – Modelling the spread of a species’ population distribution through time occupancy maps (GRASS GIS Species Dispersal)377. Storm Water Runoff – Conserving nearby resources such as water and flora by better managing runoff.378. Brownfield and Greenfield Sites – Digging up the background information (Phase 1) and conducting the necessary geo-technical analyses to explore economic opportunities at brownfield and greenfield sites.379. Ozone – Motivating the world to do their part by mapping the spatial distribution of ozone concentrations.380. SWAT Model – Testing the effectiveness of agriculture and environmental policies for pollution control systems in a given watershed like the mwSWAT Plugin in MapWindow381. Karst – Identifying known cave and karst resources into a sinkhole digitization database for best interstate alignment selection. (Karst Database)382. Permafrost – Interpreting permafrost probability in the Yukon. (Yukon Permafrost Probability Map)383. Traffic Sign Deterioration – Assessing the effects of air pollutants on traffic sign deterioration. (Traffic Sign Deterioration)384. Impoundment Index Tool for Wetlands – Unearthing wetlands with Impoundment Index Tool to site potential wetland restoration projects, monitor wetland drainage and model beaver habitat. (Whitebox GAT Impoundment Index Tool)22 Forestry GIS Applications385. Forest Inventory – Prioritizing timber harvesting units by referring to age class and forest type to better measure timber acreage and average estimates.386. Forest Fires – Plotting out forest fires with MODIS. (University of Maryland Forest Fires)387. Deforestation – Gauging deforestation using land cover change in time.388. Reforestation – Recharging forests through tree planting planning on a map.389. Forest Heights – Measuring tree heights with altimetry and noticing how trees generally differ 20m with taller ones at the equator. (GLAS Satellite)390. Vertical Point Profile – Viewing vertical profile of 3D LiDAR points to better understand tree structure and height. (TNT LiDAR)391. Cut Lines – Finding cut lines in ortho imagery to find easy access.392. Tree Lines – Drawing tree lines in the Canadian Arctic.393. Illegal Logging – Identify potential illegal activity with satellite data. (Global Forest Watch)394. Forest Carbon Reserves – Sequestering carbon through forest reserves and carbon observed in atmosphere.395. Agent-Based Simulation – Simulating the spread of an agent (like a fire) triggered by random events (such as lightning) on a raster landscape in discrete time. (GME Cellular Automata Model)396. Global Forest Watch – Putting all the pieces together with an integrated forest watch online platform.397. Drones for Indonesia Indigenous – Promoting sustainable forests using drones in Setulang village, Indonesia. (Drones for Indonesia)398. Wildfire Rescue – Saving lives through real-time wildfire satellite monitoring.399. Vegetation Potential – Analyzing tree growth & distribution of vegetation with west/east-facing and aspect data.400. Leaf Area Index – Summing the total area of leaves per ground unit.401. Amazon Rain Forest – Maximizing satellite potential viewing soil erosion, watershed destabilization, climate degradation, and species extinction in Brazil.402. Remnant Rain Forest – Studying aspect data to find how remnants of rainforest are almost always found on east-facing slopes (with aspect) which are protected from dry westerly wind.403. 4D GIS – Getting to know the XYZ’s with time of timber harvesting and subsequent vegetation growth.404. Age of Trees – Inventorying the XY position and rings of trees in a database to understand its age.405. Forest Disease – Mapping the impact of how forest infestations like the mountain pine beetle has on forests and the economy. (Google Fusion Tables – Disease Map)406. Wildfire Simulation – Automating the spread of wildfire in time using the 3D virtual workspace of Capaware.23 Gaming GIS Applications407. Oculus Rift – Building realistic 3D environments with Esri CityEngine because virtual reality is all about location and a sense of place. (Esri CityEngine and Oculus Rift)408. Building Virtual Environments – Designing future buildings, roads, cities, and parks with video game contributions. (GIS and Gaming – Matt Artz)409. Geoguessr – Embarking on an educational journey that takes you all over the world (Geoguessr)410. Mercator Projection Game – Learning about shape, size, and conformity of the Earth with map projections.411. Spatial Data Integration – Intersecting the gaming world with rich, real-world, spatial data integration.412. Planet Hunters – Finding undiscovered planets with crowd-source style online games. (Planet Hunters)24 Gardening GIS Applications413. Living Plant Collection – Managing garden collections and plant records with the ArcGIS Public Garden Data Model like the UC Davis Arboretum, Arnold Arboretum at Harvard University and Smithsonian Garden. (Public Gardens GIS)414. Gardening Microclimates – Studying microclimates (temperature from large bodies of water, topography, urban areas trapping heat) to carefully choose and position their plants and make them thrive.415. Information Delivery – Inspire and educate your visitors with intelligent web maps of your park or garden.416. Weeds – Storing weeds and herbicide dosage in a database to manage effectiveness and control measures.417. Roof Gardening – Assessing average temperatures by zoning, water availability and position sheltering to identify buildings with the greatest potential for rooftop gardens.418. Garden Reporting – Creating data-driven reports and mapbooks on collections of plants about conditions and hazards.25 Geology GIS Applications419. Drill Hole Planner – Drilling with 3D planning tools including depth, azimuth and positions.420. Aquifer Recharge – Determining potential aquifer recharge using steepness of slope and soil permeability421. Well & Volumetric Data Visualization – Creating powerful, fast, customized 3D models with a fusion of geologic data, GIS data, well/borehole data, and point cloud data. (Voxler Golden Software)422. Plate Wizard Project – Reconstructing converging and diverging plates through geologic time.423. Geological Interpretation – Digitizing surficial geology (surface sediments, their morphology and properties) with air photo interpretation and field validation.424. qgSurf – Interpreting geomorphological analyses based on their surface and orientation.425. Marine Geology – Inventorying marine geology. (NOAA Marine Geology)426. Geomorphology Features – Studying the nature and origin of landforms, including relationships to underlying structures and processes of formation.427. Dip and Strike – Plotting dip and strike readings and their geological orientation with rotational symbols.428. Digital Rock Engineering – Tunneling underground with attention to existing topography and its surrounding which includes above-ground and underground structures429. Aeromagnetic Anomalies – Correlating aeromagnetic anomalies with surface geology in tectonically active region.430. Continental Drift – Measuring tectonics plate movement with GPS431. EnterVol Geology – Creating full 3D, volumetric models of geology direct from collected data integrating lithology data with surfaces. (EnterVol Geology)432. Subsurface Mapping – Mapping the subsurface through well-log data by drillers with standard lithological terms and classification system433. Landform Classification – Classifying landforms with qualitative analysis of the surface like summits, passes, convex/concave break lines, crests and more with gvSIG geomorphology tools.434. Geologic Structure – Using photogrammetry in inaccessible regions in 2D and 3D cross-sections for geologic structure mapping. (Hexagon Geospatial Photogrammetry)26 Geostatistics435. Spatial Autocorrelation – Testing whether the observed value of a variable at one locality is independent of the values of the variable at neighboring localities. (GeoDa Spatial Autocorrelation)436. Data Mining – Automating the search for hidden patterns in large databases437. Spatial Regression – Building spatial regression to models for estimating the relationship between spatial variables. (GeoDa Spatial Regression)438. Zonal Statistics – Summing, averaging or finding the range, minimum or maximum in a given range.439. Hexagon Tesselation – Defining sampling locations, helping to ensure that all regions within the study area are represented by the sampling results. (Hexagon Tesselation)440. First Law of Geography – Using Tobbler’s First Law of Geography in analysis- “Everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things.”441. Semi-variogram – Graphing the variance in measure with distance between sampled paired locations.442. Space-Time Cube – Binning data (netCDF) into a cube input and running statistics, trends and hot spot analyses over time. (ArcGIS Space-Time Cube)443. Map-ematics – Making math operations in maps like adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing, exponentiation, root, log, cosine and differentiation (Map-ematics – Joseph Berry)444. Kriging – Interpolating unknown measurements using kriging and other techniques.445. Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) – Combining input layers and a table with a number of factors comparing their comparative weights to calculate a new layer as a linear combination of the input layers.446. Ordered Weighted Average (OWA) – Calculating the weighted average of a group of layers based on the order of values. (OWA – gvSIG)447. Fishnet – Creating a fishnet to correlate coefficient between boating accidents and dams using a fishnet.448. Geospatial Modelling Environment – Leveraging open source software R as the statistical engine to drive powerful analysis tools in ArcGIS.449. Principal Components Analysis – Reducing dimensions with Principal Components Analysis. (Principal Component Analysis)450. Data Visualization in R – Writing each line of code to programmatically create maps (R Data Visualization – Robin Lovelace)451. Fuzzy Logic – Applying fuzzy logic with degrees of truth because often do not have clearly defined boundaries.452. Pivot Tables – Generate dynamic pivot tables in QGIS. (QGIS Group Stats Plugin)453. Monte Carlo Simulation – Modeling spatial phenomena in with simulation models.454. Minkowski Generalization – Determining how complicated object are with Minkowski fractal dimension (Minkowski–Bouligand dimension QGIS plugin)455. Map Algebra – Applying local, focal and zonal functions techniques. (“GIS and Cartographic Modeling” by Dana Tomlin)27 Groundwater GIS Applications456. Darcy Flow – Examining the movement of groundwater flow through coarse materials like sand.457. MODFLOW – Modelling groundwater demand and predicting impact of groundwater demand in basins. (Aquaveo Water Modeling)458. Groundwater Availability – Analyzing land use practices with water availability and quality.459. Aquifer Recharge – Measuring permeability recharge and quantifying growth over time.460. Groundwater Plume – Delineating groundwater contamination and its change.461. Hydrostratigraphy – Identifying mappable units on the basis of aquifer hydraulic properties.462. DRASTIC – Evaluating the vulnerability of pollution of groundwater resources based on hydrogeological parameters.463. 3D Borehole – Symbolizing sub-surface data like bore holes magnitude with inverted depths.464. Groundwater Volume – Determining to drill a new well by examining existing groundwater and surface water.465. Stratigraphy – Plotting boreholes, cross section and well logs. (Golden Software Strata)466. Contamination – Evaluating the risk of impact for the construction and situating industrial plants, landfills, agricultural activities and other potential groundwater contamination sources467. Porous Puff – Calculating mass per volume of a solute at a discrete point into a vertically mixed aquifer with the ArcGIS Groundwater Tools.468. Shallow Slope Stability (SHALSTAB) – Computing grid cells that are critical shallow groundwater recharge values.28 Healthy Mapping Applications469. HealthMap – Delivering real-time, global disease monitoring (HealthMap)470. Centre for Disease Control (CDC) – Serving county-level maps of heart disease and stroke by race/ethnicity, gender, and age group, along with maps of social and economic factors and health services for the entire United States or for a chosen state or territory. (Interactive Atlas of Heart and Stroke)471. Leukemia Research – Investigating leukemia clusters with proximity to transmission lines.472. John Snow – Forging a whole new field of study (epidemiology) by studying the spatial distribution of cholera cases and identifying the source of the outbreak as the public water pump on Broad Street.473. Ebola – Mapping the change of confirmed and probable cases of Ebola over time. (World Health Organization)474. Distance to Health Care – Finding the closest doctor is a spatial problem475. Vital Records – Recording of events, such as births and deaths that are maintained by public health agencies.476. Lead Concentrations – Correlating how children with lead poisoning were found to be closer to an old lead refinery.477. Cluster Analysis – Identifying built environmental patterns using cluster analysis and GIS: relationships with walking, cycling and body mass index. (Cluster Analysis)478. Euclidean Distance – Finding the distance to disposal sites during an avian flu outbreak.479. Disease Surveillance – Monitoring West Nile Virus with GIS on handheld devices.480. Asthma – Connecting the dots of asthma and air pollution.481. Epidemiology – Tracking disease and epidemiological information in a spatial database. (CDC Epi-Info)482. UV Exposure – Exposing the risks of harmful UV rays with birth rates.483. Mobile Flu Shots – Determining an optimal site location for mobile flu shot vehicles to service where demand is needed most with location-allocation.484. Geomedicine –Tracking patient’s location history to determine if environmental and industrial hazards put them at risk for certain types of diseases485. Madrid’s Air – Visualization Madrid´s air (gases, particles, pollen, diseases, etc) with the aim to make visible the microscopic and invisible agents. (Madrid’s Air Map)486. Ambulance Response – Responding to emergencies faster with the quickest geographic route.487. Infant Mortality – Track child immunizations with mortality rates.488. Food Trust – Overlapping factors like poverty and obesity, fresh supermarkets, diet-related disease – space to target for policy-makers489. Public Health Informatics – Ensuring patients get the care they need with public health care informatics.490. Walgreens Prescription Mapping – Mapping and analyzing influenza based on the prescriptions customers are making to respond to the need of users more efficiently. (Walgreens Weekly Flu Index Webmap)491. Disease Spread Patterns – Plotting ellipses for a disease outbreak over time to model its spread.492. Walkability – Piecing together walkable neighborhoods with health diseases like heart disease, hypertension, obesity and even breast cancer.493. Anti-Smoking Campaigns – Targeting Anti-smoking campaigns where it’s needed most and most visible to target audience.494. Cancer Research – Researching cancer from the sky with the Landsat satellite. (Landsat Cancer Research)495. Mosquitoes-borne Illness – Identifying areas with high indices of mosquito infestation and interpreting the spatial relationship of these areas with potential larval development sites such as garbage piles and large pools of standing water.496. HIV AIDS Database – Making the distribution of HIV/AIDS to manage treatment.497. Tele-medicine – Quantifying populations and health care availability when distance separates patients and health care providers.29 History GIS Applications498. Shipwrecks – Documenting the remains of shipwrecks, aircraft, hulks, lost anchors and any other objects on the seabed through the SHIPS Project. (SHIPS Project – Shipwrecks Mapping)499. American Museum of Natural History – Apply biodiversity information to collect, organize and analyze biological and environmental data with the aim to provide new insights in conservation, ecology and evolution.500. Topoview Slider Publishing maps with a slider style map to see how an area looked before development and how it changes over time. (USGS Topoview)501. Micronesian Navigational Chart – Navigating by canoe using stick charts as ocean swell patterns.502. Historical Photos – Geo-locating historical photos in augmented reality. (WhatWasThere application)503. Babylonians – Etching the lay of the land on clay.504. Old Weather – Tracking past ship movements and telling the stories of the people on board by studying weather patterns. (Old Weather)505. Pilgrimages – Setting foot on a pilgrimage and mapping the distances traveled.506. Boundary Changes – Carving out how boundaries change in time such as after World War II.507. Spy Glass – Time-travelling back to 1836 in New York powered by Esri. (Smithsonian Institution)508. Industrial Revolution Radioactivity – Putting radioactivity on the map since the industrial revolution.509. 3D Historical Fly-through – Soaring through historical imagery with ArcScene.510. Smoke Signals – Using viewsheds to put yourself in Native Americans shoes when smoke signals were used.511. Ancestry – Surveying through ancestry with geophylogeny – the evolution and geographic spread of common ancestry and geographic connectedness.512. ArcGIS Online Historical Maps – Exploring the old USGS historic maps. (USGS Historic Maps)513. Manhattan Immigration Patterns – Showing how immigrants in Manhattan varied not only through space, but also time. (Past Time, Past Place: GIS For History)514. Aztec vs Mexican Last Names – Aligning current place-names to historical place-names to understand the ancient geography of Aztec culture. (Aztec and Mexican Last Names)515. Witchcraft Accusers – Gathering the geographic location of the accusers and accused during the Salem witch trials to show inter-family feuds were a strong case for the trials instead of hysteria among young girls.516. Cultural Preservation – Preserving historic properties whose documentation must still be located and entered into this GIS.517. Pangea – Drawing the different stages of the continental evolution from Pangea to the Earth we see today.518. Napolean’s March to Moscow in 3D – Visualizing troop movement, cities, basemaps, temperature in time slices using Esri’s CityEngine Napolean’s March to Moscow. (Napolean March in 3D)519. Georeferencing Historical Imagery – Straightening historical imagery using georeferencing.520. Human Activity Patterns – Engraving activity on maps showing human movement patterns with time-enabled GIS.521. Land Bridges – Agreeing on an acceptable term for “land bridge” – which was an area available due to the water tied up in ice sheets.522. Lewis and Clark – Charting out the Lewis and Clark expedition.30 Hydrology GIS Applications523. Braided Rivers – Managing braided rivers with their complex geometry and state in flux.524. Sedimentation Rate – Characterizing erosion and sedimentation with the Sediment Transport Index.525. Catchment Areas – Delineating watershed catchment areas, where rainfall flows into a river. (Mapping Watersheds in Whitebox GAT)526. Topographic Wetness Index – Combining slope and upstream area to give you relative measure of wetness as the first places where the ground saturates, begins to pool, and generates runoff.527. Flow Direction – Coding the direction of flow with eight valid directions. (Flo 2D)528. Flow Estimator – Estimating flow rates with a series of spatially-located gauging stations.529. Height Above River – Generating predictive surfaces for plant species distribution modeling using high resolution DEM data. (LiDAR Height Above River)530. Sinuosity – Measuring the degree of channelization and meandering for a given watercourse.531. Stream Feature Extractor – Extracting stream features (wells, sinks, confluences etc.) from a stream network. (Stream Feature Extractor QGIS Plugin)532. Hydrologic Volume – Measuring volumes for the Hydrologic Budget Equation and amount of precipitation in a given watershed.533. HEC-HMS – Simulating the complete hydrologic processes of dendritic watershed systems with the HEC-HMS GIS-based methodology.534. Flow Accumulation – Answering the question “where did water come from” by picking a point (a single cell in the DEM) and tracing backwards showing all the contributing cells. (TauDEM)535. Scalgo – Understanding Earth’s hydrology as a function of topography using the SRTM DEM. (SCALGO)536. GHydraulics – Analyzing water supply networks using EPANET. (Ghydraulics QGIS Plugin)537. Aqueduct – Mining, Modeling and analyzing water risk with the current and future stresses. (Aqueduct Atlas)538. Contour Lines – Delineating contour lines because floods follow contour lines.539. Flood Extents – Digitizing flood extents worth satellite data like synthetic aperture radar.540. BASINS (Better Assessment Science Integrating point & Non-point Source) – Running water quality assessments with land use, point source discharges, and water supply withdrawals.541. Crayfish QGIS Plugin – Animating flood model outputs and flood propagation. (TUFLOW)542. ArcHydro – Operating ArcHydro in ArcMap to delineate and characterize watersheds.543. Drainage Channel Builder – Cutting a simple, trapezoidal channel in a DEM and calculate cut volumes. (Drainage Channel Builder QGIS Plugin)544. HEC-RAS Flow Model – Predicting where the water will go (flooding) to prevent inundated roads and inaccessibility. (RiverGIS QGIS Plugin)545. Horton Statistics – Calculating the number of streams, the average stream length, the average area of catchments for Strahler stream orders (ILWIS)546. Flow Stations – Marking flow stations on a map.547. Water Shortage – Modelling water shortage California548. Upstream/Downstream – Finding the origin of water from a specific point. (Hydro Hierarchy)549. MIKE21 – Simulating physical, chemical or biological processes in coastal or marine areas. (MIKE21)550. Oxbows – Mapping the evolving process of how rivers change in time and become oxbows31 Humanitarian GIS Applications551. Election Violence – Reporting issues like outbreaks of violence, intimidation, or vote fraud during Tanzania’s election. (Restless Development – What3Words)552. Ushahidi Haiti Project – Plotting out crisis reports during the Haiti earthquake for humanitarian/tech workers aid with crowdsourcing. (Ushahidi Haiti Project)553. Humanitarian OpenStreetMap – Responding to humanitarian issues and economic development through open data sharing. (Humanitarian OpenStreetMap)554. Community Engagement – Harnessing human potential by leveraging open data and civic technology. (Kathmandu’s Living Labs)555. Kibera Slum – Mapping sites of rape and crime by the people themselves to solve where a police station should be located (and more). (Kibera Slum)556. Crisis Mapping – Using drones to aid Nepalese in a time of crisis.557. Food Security – Delivering assistance with expected outputs to those in need most.558. Humanitarian Assistance – Plotting the spatial distribution of humanitarian assistance for planning purposes.559. Food Insecurity Drivers – Pinpointing the underlying drivers to food insecurity such as farming practices, climate change and changing demographics.32 Insurance GIS Applications560. Insurance Risk – Charging higher insurance premiums in flood-prone areas using radar561. Monitoring Driving Habits – Fastening seat belts and monitoring people’s usage to charge car insurance.562. Insurance Fraud – Doing the detective work for fraudulent crop insurance claims563. Floodplain – Minimizing losses by flooding through FEMA flood maps.564. Real-time Hazard – Using location intelligence to Identify areas of hazard in real-time.565. Climate Change Risk – Adjusting to climate change with better future risk prediction.566. Social Media Integrating – Finding all Flickr posts within 100 meters of a property during incidents.567. Sinkholes – Preventing risk by understanding landscape characteristics – such as resulting depressions in a karst landscape.568. Underwriting – Accelerating underwriting by sharing enterprise geographic data with risk factors, customer interaction and economic conditions.569. Swimming Pools – Crowd sourcing the search for swimming pools from sponsored campaigns who compile public and private sector data for a variety of markets including education, public safety, and insurance.33 Internet GIS Applications570. Geoblocking – Limiting your access to the internet, based on your geographic location.571. Hyperlinking – Embedding hyperlinks with access actual photos, video, audio, text and data associated with map locations.572. Mapzen Search – Searching geographically with a spatial search engine for places based entirely on open-source tools and powered by entirely open data. (Mapzen Search)573. Geosocial Tools – Searching twitter geographically for tweets with the gvSIG Geosocial Toolbox.574. GIS-Based Search Engine – Correlating products and services to a GIS database record that corresponds to a unique geographic location – to geographically target advertising over the Internet (GIS-Based Search Engine)34 Land Use Planning575. Urban Model Development Feasibility – Evaluating multiple land use scenarios; testing and refining transportation plans; producing small-area concept plans, and modeling complex regional issues with Envision Tomorrow (Envision Tomorrow)576. Land-use Conflict Identification (LUCIS) Model – Making smart land-use decisions with a model-builder framework land-use conflict identification strategy. (Smart Land-Use Analysis: The LUCIS Model)577. Beijing Building Footprints – Crowd-sourcing digital mapping of Beijing building footprints.578. Food Deserts – Accessing grocery stores in low income areas by incorporating information such as sidewalks, bicycle lanes, and public transit.579. Service Areas – Measuring how far paramedics and firefighters can service an area.580. Agent-Based Models – Exploring cities using Agent-Based Models and GIS. (GIS Agents)581. Cloud Computing-Based Land Base Mapping – Bringing land use planning to the cloud for Smart Cities like the City of Portland. (Cloud Computing)582. OpenStreetMap – Harnessing the power of the OpenStreetMap by download the physical data for free (OSM Download)583. Landfill Site Selection – Analyzing and eliminating sites within a buffer distance of sensitive populations (elderly, schools, hospitals, etc) and other overlay information like groundwater, transportation networks and surface water.584. TerraClip – Clipping data like you’ve never clipped before – extracting land cover, climate and agriculture data easily to the extent of your chosen country. (TerraClip)585. Green Roofs – Greening roofs in metropolitan areas with a focus on lighting and shadow analysis.586. Stamen Maps – Orienting yourself with Stamen’s terrain maps with hill shading and natural vegetation colors.587. Cellular Automata – Stimulating urban growth expansion simulation. (IDRISI Cellular Automata)588. Tax Parcel Viewer – Assembling tax parcels, zoning information with color schemes on a web viewer.589. Economic Viability – Making decisions of parcels of prime agricultural land using Analytic Hierarchy Process.590. Water Distribution – Tracking flow, pressure and chemical concentrations for nodes, valves, pipes and tanks in a water distribution modelling software. (EPANET)591. Commercial Space Availability – Checking zoning data for any city such as commercial space availability.592. Land Use Policy – Reproducing individual behavior with agent-based modeling to simulate their behaviors and outcomes having a direct impact of the surrounding landscape. (Agent-Based Modeling)593. City Heating – Addressing the GIS requirements of municipal hot water heating networks in Tatuk GIS (Tatuk GIS- City Heating)594. Commuter Shed – Finding where the commuter sheds are.595. Recycling Centres/Drop-offs – Allocating recycling drop-offs centers with data integration and quantification and assigning alternatives for vehicle routing.596. Walkshed – Calculating walking times using Tobbler’s hiking function based on slope (QGIS Walking Time Plugin) Walkshed Web GIS597. 3D Viewshed – Showing what is visible with distance, direction and pitch with viewable areas in green and hidden areas in red. (3D Viewshed – Geomedia 3D)598. Anaglyph 3D – Viewing anaglyph 3D images with the SAGA GIS Anaglyph Tool.599. Land Use Change – Summarizing statistics, graphs and tables in spatial units600. Tax Collection – Increasing tax revenue by updated land and building property records, new construction records, and integrated departmental data into a single cadastral information system using Bentley Map.601. COAST COastal Adaptation to Sea level Rise Tool – Adapting to climate change decisions (building sea walls, proactive building ordinance, levees, zoning change, relocation with COAST. (COAST – Global Mapper)602. Space Syntax Models – Gaining a better understanding of human behavior and connectivity through graphic representation of space configuration in urban structures.603. Philadelphia Redevelopment – Developing urban planning scenarios using a 3D swipe view. (Philadelphia CityEngine)604. Future Development Patterns – Locating future growth and evaluating scenarios such as loss of prime agricultural land. (Tale of Two Cities)605. Land Use – Generating polygons and classification with the multi-resolution segmentation algorithm. (Trimble ECognition)606. Building Constraints – Prohibiting construction where the overall stability of a bluff using aspect to understand how- south-facing slopes undergo more extensive freeze/thaw cycles.35 Mail Services GIS Applications607. National Addressing – Delivering parcels to a specific address, all speed in a single national database.608. Natural Area Coding System – Unifying the representations of geographic coordinates, area codes, street addresses, postal codes, map grids and property identifiers of every location or area in the world.609. Shared Mailboxes – Spreading mailboxes out to address demand and existing population with algorithms like location-allocation.610. Amazon Mail Delivery Drone – Shipping parcels in style using drone technology.611. Non-Address Delivery – Generating addresses for businesses and people without one using a 3×3 meter global grid system.612. Zip Code Maps – Splicing the nation with geo-located zip/postal codes and Mapping them out.613. Daily Routing Efficiency – Balancing postal routes based on time and optimizing routes, number of routes or volume with sequenced stops. (ArcGIS RouteSmart)614. FedEx Package Tracking – Meeting timelines and managing routes for special types of deliveries.36 Media GIS Applications615. Targeting Advertising – Positioning advertisements for target demographics using census data and the right location.616. Communicating Stories – Storytelling in news events with maps such as oil spills, crime scenes and weather damage.617. Social Media Mapping – Monitoring social media by location.618. Movie Maps – Creating ultra-realistic 3D cities for big box office movies. (Esri Goes to Hollywood)619. Bigfoot Field Researchers Network – Finding Bigfoot in a spatial sightings database. (Bigfoot Research)37 Municipality/Urban GIS Applications620. Potholes – Reporting potholes or automatically detecting them with LiDAR for infrastructure management.621. Asset Management – Reporting infrastructure defects with photos and geo-locations. (City of Portland PDX Reporter App)622. Smart Cities – Integrating urban development visions with GIS such as smart urban planning, smart utilities, smart transportation, smart public works and citizen engagement.623. London in Maps – Charting life in London, England like never before with 100 maps and graphics. r624. 3D Printing Oslo – Printing off 3D models of the City of Oslo with data preparation in FME. (3D Printing of Oslo)625. Water Main Breaks – Knowing exactly where water lines and shut-off valves are located, prior to work.626. Lightscape – Lighting up bridges picking out the illuminated details and obscured areas.627. Curb Cuts – Finding curb cuts that give access to people with disabilities628. Utility Poles – Inventorying utility poles with important attributes like overhead/underground, number of lines and date of construction.629. Waste Collection – Defining areas of waste collection, finding suitable rounds of service when given a waste or transfer station. (Waste Collection – uDig)630. Fire Hydrants – Locating hydrants in a municipality marking its general condition, date for greasing the caps and exercising the valve.631. Spatial Data Infrastructure – Connecting multiple users in separate departments for managing data, metadata, users and tools.632. Insect Control – Spraying pesticides to eliminate mosquitoes and other pests with knowing no-spray zones and status of previous spray.633. Homeless Shelters – Analyzing urban inequalities and homelessness with the aim of allocating homeless shelters appropriately.634. CityScan – Managing city assets (road conditions, utilities, billboards and sign inventories) with mobile LiDAR to inventory and ensure safety standards.635. Sewer Network – Design sewer systems and their networks with right-of-way considerations and using the flow by gravity.636. Advisories – Alerting citizens for boil water advisories by taking an area on a map, and connecting to a central database of phone numbers and automated message alerts.637. Street Cleaning – Plowing geographic zones of a city.638. Speed Limits – Defining speed limits in a road network with proper signage.639. Road Closures – Advising citizens of road closures visually on a map.640. Emergency Water Supply – Preparing emergency water supply when contaminated. (Ordnance Survey – Geomedia)641. Cemetery Mapping – Implemented a system to map cemeteries using unmanned aerial vehicles UAVs) and storing graves in a spatial database.642. Open Information – Reducing need of telephone operators by having data displayed in a map.643. Participatory GIS – Gearing towards decision-making from citizen input and geo-spatial technologies.644. Land for Development – Finding available serviced and unserviced land available for development.645. Toponymy – Giving each place, park, river and feature of interest a name.646. Lift Stations – Move the flow from a lower to a higher elevation for sewer utility.647. Stormwater Pollution – Measuring stormwater pollution by estimating runoff and sources648. Seismic Slope Stability – Modelling stability of slopes using geology and digital elevation models to understand potential of seismically-induced landslide hazards.649. Water Wells – Developing constraints for water wells such as quality, quantity, stressed aquifers and contamination for drinking.650. Real-time Snow Plows – Seeing the grid of snow plows in real-time in a municipal network and GPS.651. Solid Waste – Picking up after ourselves with geo-referenced garbage collection routes.38 Mining GIS Applications652. Subsurface Volume Calculation – Calculating depth values to determine the volume of material between the surfaces or between a subsurface layer and the ground level with Global Mapper.653. Quarries – Capturing volumes of fill removal and forecasting future volumes extracted to understand quarry lifespans.654. Kriging – Using statistical approaches for mining valuation with the geostatistical technique kriging from Daniel Krige.655. Natural Resources – Mapping out natural resources like uranium, metals, stones and gemstones. (United States Natural Industrial Resources Map)656. Mining Operations – Track mining assets in the field with mobile GIS.657. Coal Exploration – Identifying new opportunities and areas for coal exploration by assessing geological data and setting out exploration targets. (Coal Exploration in GIS)658. Mine Rehabilitation – Restoring mines back to their original state using GIS tools like 3D profiling flooding of mine because almost all working mines require pumps to remove water.659. Hazards Assessments – Characterizing infrastructure, risk areas, and disaster zones, planning and implementation of hazards reductions measures to assist planners in selecting mitigation measures and emergency preparedness.660. Hyperspectral Imagery – Discovering new minerals from the existing 4000 types of compositions using airborne and satellite data. (AVIRIS and AISA Hyperspectral)661. Mineral Titles – Administering mining titles for exploration and acquisition available in web map.662. Diamonds – Searching for diamonds in Nairobi in fluvial diamond placer deposits.663. Acid Runoff – Controlling acid waste runoff from mines by capturing terrain topography, mine age and type and stream proximity.39 Nautical GIS Applications664. Anchor Search – Searching for a lost anchor in a restricted area with electrical cables and gas pipelines using sonar and bathymetry. (Anchor Search – Golden Software Surfer)665. Open Sea Map – Sailing the big blue watery road with Open Sea Map.666. Christopher Columbus – Tracing Christopher Columbus footsteps on his voyages and discovery America.667. Shipping Routes – Stitching together shipping routes using the Satellite-based Automatic Identification Systems.668. International Waters – Aligning the boundaries of international waters in a georeferenced system.669. Submarine Routes – Routing twenty thousand leagues under the sea for submarine routes using 3D modelling.670. Live Marine Traffic – Turning your computer into a marine traffic monitoring station giving perspective of nearby ships on the ocean. (Live Marine Traffic)671. Trajectories and Magnitude – Using vectors (U and V) to depict nautical wind speed and direction.672. Global Trading Ports – Climbing buoys as if you’re at giant marine trading ports – the arteries of our global economy. (Global Trading Ports)673. Nautical Charts – Plotting out seamless, collarless, and dynamic mosaic of some 2,100 NOAA raster nautical charts at varying scales. (NOAA Nautical Charts Viewer)40 Ocean / Marine GIS Applications674. Pacific Ocean – Opening Google Earth and realizing how the Pacific Ocean covers one side of the Earth in a global view.675. Underwater Grasses – Diving into the ocean with satellite imagery and delineating their extents.676. Coastal Hazards – Minimizing loss by identifying potential hazards such as algal blooms, eutrophication and tsunamis (Coastal Hazards)677. Ocean Use Planning – Outlining sustainable oceans through careful planning of ocean activity such as energy production, fishing and shipping. (Planning Ocean Uses – Cindy Fowler)678. Marine Pollution – Pinpointing the source of marine pollutants such as industrial, agricultural and residential waste.679. Algae Blooms – Monitoring algal blooms through multiple images over time. (Algae Blooms)680. Wave Reduction – Curtailing wave energy by mapping and building up coral reefs and other coastal habitats as a nature-based solution.681. Deepsea Dawn Wright – Understanding the relationship and patterns of how oceans affect dry land and more. (Ocean Solutions, Earth Solutions)682. Marine Tools Plugin – Geoprocessing with marine data to better understand research, conservation and spatial planning problems. (MGET)683. Whale Tracker – Studying the movement and migration patterns of whales around the Hawaiian Islands. (Whale Tracker)684. Underwater Street View – Submarining as if you’re underwater in Google Earth’s underwater street view.685. Build-Out Design – Developing and designing a build-out project in Grenada.686. Bathymetry – Exploring ocean bathymetry in an exaggerated 3D global perspective. (Ocean Bathymetry)687. Rising Sea Levels – Identifying areas of risk as sea levels gradually rise from climate change. (National Geographic)688. Aquaculture – Farming fish in a sustainable manner by understanding where inland fisheries are located. (GISFish)689. Coastal Management – Adapting to climate change through better flood and erosion defense.690. Coral Reef Conservation – Understanding the present state of coral reefs through mapping to better understand future deterioration.691. Energy Budgets – Simulating Earth’s energy budgets for anthropogenic and natural changes with anomalies of surface temperature and sea-level pressure. (Energy Budgets)692. Coastal and Marine Ecological Classification Standard (CMECS) – Combining water columns, geoform, substrate and biotic components that are collectively used to define marine ecosystems. (CMECS)693. Wave Heights – Replicating ocean waves by factoring size, choppiness and wind. (Wave Heights)694. Sea the Animals – Tracking turtles, seals, porpoises and turtles in time-animated webmaps. (CartoDB Sea the Animals)695. Marine Bioregional Plans – Protecting the marine resources by dividing the coasts of Australia in four geographical pieces.696. General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans (GEBCO) – Charting out elevation paths along the ocean with GEBCO. (GEBCO)697. Ocean Salinity – Measuring sea surface salinity from space with Aquarius. (Ocean Salinity)698. National Marine Sanctuaries – Designating 12 areas of the marine environment as special significance to better understand marine ecosystems and their spatial, temporal, and functional relationships among creatures, environments, and human perturbations. (National Marine Sanctuaries)699. Ocean Tourism – Getting out your towels and soaking some sun with tourist maps of the ocean.700. Coastline Fractals – Modelling complex natural shapes along coastline’s fractal-like (jagged recurring pattern) properties.41 Oil, Gas and Petroleum GIS Applications701. Directional Drilling – Logging depth, inclination and azimuth (dependent on true and magnetic north) for directional drilling.702. Active Licenses – Exploring active, operations and exploration wells all locations on a map.703. Oil Exploration – Planning and exploring of drilling operations using 3D GIS to analyse the data and visually inspect the results.704. Offshore Production – Mapping oil activity offshore including pipeline, significant oil and gas discoveries and restricted zones.705. Pipeline Rupture – Responding to pipeline ruptures to better understand surrounds and impact zones such as privately-owned parcels and critical fume areas.706. Oil Search – Magnifying the search for resources and extend beyond the core elements (Oil Search – Boundless)707. Pipeline Route Selection – Optimizing route selection by taking a heuristic approach and multiple layers such as the environment, geo-hazards and engineering.708. Geomagnetic Referencing – Using the Earth’s magnetic field obtained by the USGS to more accurately drill direction and position. (Geomagnetic Referencing)709. Oil Reserves – Measuring how much shadow is being casted of a floating roof’s oil tanks using geometry and high spatial resolution imagery.710. Undersea Environmental Impacts – Assessing potential impacts of the undersea environment as oil and gas activity increases.711. Oil Reserves Map – Laying out the top 20 oil producing countries, with reserves in billions of barrels of oil. (Manifold)712. Environmental Impact Assessment – Gauging multiple layer including existing infrastructure, river crossings, soils and vegetation, groundwater and elevation/ slope to determine pipeline impact.713. gvSIG Viewport – Panning along a linear pipeline corridor in 3D with an overview viewport to know location in public consultation.714. Pipeline Infrastructure – Surveying footprints and inventorying pipeline infrastructure like pump stations, tank terminals and pipelines.715. Gulf Basin Depositional Synthesis – Providing context for exploration in the Gulf of Mexico and reducing overall risk oil and gas companies by understanding the depositional history of drill.42 Parks GIS Applications716. Trail Planning – Valuing cells to pave out a path that accumulates the least ‘cost’ from a source to a destination.717. GPS Tracking – Applying tracking technologies on humans in an effort to understand how their movements affect ecosystems in national parks.718. Fuzzy Logic – Identifying suitable locations for the construction of parks with relevant experts to determine significance and weighted of criteria.719. Biodiversity – Managing biodiversity in parks with smart phones.720. Noise Map – Mapping sound levels in parks to show how visitors and wildlife interact with each other and park resources (Noise Map – National Park Service)43 Politics/Government GIS Applications721. Redistricting – Encouraging citizen involvement through web-based applications for the redistricting process (Redistricting QGIS Plugin)722. Voting Patterns – Reviewing how electoral districts voted at the polls.723. Bosnia-Herzegovina – Dividing a road to peace of the former Yugoslavia at the valley bottom using terrain data to support diplomatic negotiation. (Geospatial Revolution Episode 3)724. Stewardship of Land – Supporting Native American decision-making through GIS implementation. (Tribal GIS Book – Joseph Kerski)725. Gerrymandering – Manipulating the geographic boundaries of an electoral constituency to favor one party.726. Open Data – Opening up government (tax-payer) data through geospatial open data portals and data sharing strategies.727. Enabling Governments – Saving money by investing in GIS-based system for decision making.728. Parcel Fabric – Editing zoning, dissemination areas and land designation boundaries.729. Breakaway/Disputed Areas – Delineating international and maritime boundary dispute areas from Kashmir to the Elemi Triangle, Northern Cyprus to Western Sahara (Natural Earth Data)730. Tax Evaders – Catching tax evaders by recognizing areas of wealth such as swimming pools.731. Dissolving Political Boundaries – Grouping separated countries into one like West and East Germany as well as North and South Vietnam.732. International Joint Commission – Solving international watershed issues through international collaboration. (Transboundary Watersheds)733. National Geospatial Data Asset Management – Managing geospatial data as a capital asset for effective sharing, collaboration to support efficient and effective decision-making. (FGDC National Geospatial Data Asset Management Plan)734. Border Safety – Increasing safety at international borders often stretching miles.44 Real Estate GIS Applications735. Buffer Zone Search – Buffering a search area for a query when house hunting.736. Market Analysis – Expanding businesses through customer profiling, estimating sales potential and finding available lots.737. Home Evaluation – Getting a big picture to understand home value including proximity to schools or panoramic view.738. Parcel Dimensioning – Analyzing a property parcel shape to determine the area and dimensions of each identified parcel.739. Viewshed – Prospecting viewsheds through observation points remotely when setting property prices.740. Property Appraisals – Supporting accurate property appraisals741. Foreclosures – Scoping out the effects of recessions on real estate markets by mapping out foreclosures by neighborhood.742. Geocoded Real Estate – Fetching geocoded real estate in Germany through a JSON and R.743. Housing with Mortgages – Charting out occupied houses that have a mortgage or loan. (Housing with Mortgages)744. Wendy’s Restaurant – Prospecting optimal locations for a Wendy’s restaurants. (Real Estate Prospecting)745. Domino’s Pizza – Streamlining the planning of Domino franchise territories (Domino Pizza – Pitney Bowes)746. Retail Site Selection – Inspecting space usage for available commercial space.747. Comparative Real Estate Analysis – Comparing value per square meter in map-form to see how much the price is for similar properties on the block. (Real Estate Comparative)748. Wind Farm Noise – Assessing the population and number of affected buildings affected by the noise of a wind farm.749. High Rise Valuation – Characterizing commercial real estate by its unique age, size, location, and proximity to ensure that the property values are consistent between an assessed value and the sales price with Geomedia 3D visualization.750. Construction – Considering slopes for construction and livability as 15 degrees or less are considered buildable.751. Home Sharing – Scoping out shared homes and surroundings.752. Real Estate Metrics – Choosing the right house to buy or build based on distance to schools, parks, transit stops and other geospatial metrics.753. Google Cardboard – Visiting properties in Google Cardboard’s virtual reality experience.754. Walkability – Understanding health factors like active transportation, bike paths and walking paths in a neighborhood.45 Reporting/News GIS Applications755. Hurricane Andrew – Comparing geographically which homes fared better from Hurricane Andrew’s destruction because of changes in building code from Steve Doig’s piece that earned him a Pulitzer Prize.756. North Korea – Mapping how far North Korea’s missile projectiles threaten other nations – previously a buffer – now corrected. (North Korea Missile Extent)757. GeoJournalism – Assisting journalisms dive into a world of data visualization using geographic data.758. Geotagged Tweets – Spreading the word to make world headlines from local Missouri and eventually the whole world. (CartoDB Geotagged Tweets)759. Mapping Conflict – Putting any crisis, destruction or terror attack on the map.760. Google News Lab – Storytelling around the globe with Google Maps and Fusion Tables (Google News Lab)761. Super GIS – Estimating the number of protestors at a Hong Kong rally by obtaining the average density of the crowd and estimating the number of protesters through aerial photo interpretation. (Protestor Estimate – Super GIS)762. Highway Accidents – Reporting the location of highway accidents on a map763. Demographics Research – Delving into census information for a deep research news story764. Ballot Counts – Depicting the spatial Distribution of states, districts, and parties that won an election765. The Financial Times – Utilizing tools like Mapbox to create elegant basemaps with all the right details. (Financial Times – Mapbox Studio Classic)46 Society Applications – Built & Environment766. Thematic Mapping – Thematic mapping poverty with equal-intervals, quantiles, natural breaks and unique schemes. (“Making Maps Third Edition by John Krygier”)767. Socio-Economic Data and Application Center (SEDAC) – Serving socioeconomic and Earth science data as an information gateway between the Earth and social sciences focuses on human interactions in the environment. (SEDAC)768. World Languages – Mapping the world’s languages through social media and micro-blogging platforms. (World Languages)769. Poverty – Sizing up poverty with the FAO GeoNetwork socio-economic indicators. (FAO GeoNetwork)770. Hunting Zones – Tracing out hunting zones for cultures around the world.771. Citizen Engagement – Empowering populations who have little voice in the public arena to change geographic involvement and awareness on a local level. (Ushahidi Public Participation Geographic Information Systems (PPGIS))772. Needs of Services – Allocating the proper needs and inclusion of marginalized populations.773. Census – Utilizing decennial TIGER data to support and improve selected demographic and economic studies.774. World Religions – Mapping the intricate details of religions internationally.775. Space-time GIS – Comparing scientific practice in the US and in China (Space-Time GIS – Michael F. Goodchild)776. Center of Population – Centering in on population drift watching its shift in dasymetric mapping. (Population Drift – Joseph Kerski)777. Earthworks – Downloading data from Stanford including labor supply, sex ratio and society data. (Earthworks)778. Gender Inequality – Showing the history of how women are working in the GIS field.779. Demography – Projecting populations worldwide with a dot density style map.780. Chart Symbology – Taking advantage of pie charts, line graphs and bar charts to display socio-economic data by area.781. Indigenous People – Keeping record of traditional land use of indigenous people.782. Public Transportation Availability – Reviewing public transit availability in societies.783. Population Disaggregation – Estimating per-building population through disaggregation of census blocks784. Distance Decay – Observing distance-decay between locations of ethnic groups- the further apart they are, the less likely it is that they will interact very much.785. Refugee Camps – Capturing the movement patterns of refugees through time. (Refugee Patterns)786. Traditional Knowledge – Preserving cultural beliefs and its associated location in a spatial database.787. Tapestry Segmentation – Dividing U.S. residential areas into 67 distinctive segments based on their socioeconomic and demographic composition—then further classifies the segments into LifeMode and Urbanization Groups. (Tapestry Segmentation)788. Migrant Rescue – Improving Humane operations and rescuing migrants through the deployment of emergency water stations on routes known to be used by migrants coming north through our desert. (Migrant Rescue)789. Prism Maps – Drawing each boundary object as a raised prism, where the height of the prism is relative to the associated data value. (Golden Software Map Viewer)790. Group Decision Making – Mediating interests and getting valued-concerns in community and society through PGIS.791. Maori Tribe – Recording, organizing, and making available information of traditional values from Maori elders. (Maori Tribe Elders)792. Human Mobility – Measuring of human mobility using mobile phone records enhanced with GIS data.793. Graffiti – Studying clusters of graffiti with other factors such as proximity to city constructs such as crossing guards, phone boxes and electricity boxes.794. Storytelling with Maps – Harnessing the power of story maps such as understanding the gap between minimum wage and high income earners. (Income Earning in Maps)795. Illiteracy in Myanmar – Building literacy in Myanmar and evaluating literacy programs in a GIS database with indicators such as budgeted funds, dropout levels and available training.796. Gender Studies – Exploring how transportation infrastructure support mobility access to basic services vital to achieving poverty reduction, gender equality, and sustainable development objectives in Ghana.797. Child Abuse – Allocating family service facilities to sites where child abuse is more prevalent.47 Soils GIS Applications798. Soil Types – Modelling soil types through Jenny’s model involving climate, organisms, topography, material and time.799. Soil Grid – Helping agriculture decision-making with ISRIC’s 1km scale soil property and class maps of the world. (SoilsGrid)800. Texture Classification – Digging up the dirt on soil texture through the USDA soil texture classification801. Soil Moisture – Estimating soil moisture from space with the SMAP and SMOS satellites802. Soil Survey Geographic Database (SSURGO) – Making sense of soil parameters like conductivity in the United States. (USDA SSURGO Database)803. Water Retention Capacity – Determining water retention capacity for different type of soils and topographic characteristics.804. Erosion Reduction Strategy – Identifying erosion hot spots through topography, soil and land-use characteristics. (Erosion and Sediment Control)805. Slope Parameters – Developing slope profiles such as convex and concave using 3D profile graphs.806. Soil Loss Equation – Measuring the average annual soil loss caused by rainfall and associated overland flow as defined by the United States Department of Agriculture.807. Lead Concentration in Soils – Collecting soil samples and mapping the lead geochemical landscape. (Mapping Lead Concentrations)808. LS Factor – Calculating slope length (LS) factor as part of the Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE) based on slope and specific catchment area.809. Angle of Repose – Computing the steepest angle (depending on the material) of a surface at which loose material such as soil will remain in place rather than sliding or crumbling.810. Salinity – Inspecting salinity with electromagnetic surveys to find the electrical conductivity in soils and interpolating the results to find unknowns.811. Peaks and Summits – Detecting peaks and summits on a landscape to help model salinity with elevation such as depression areas have higher salinity. (Landserf)812. Vegetation Erosion – Finding the dominant vegetation types dependent on aspect and enhancing erosion modelling using aspect and vegetation to see how slopes will erode over time along with precipitation, temperature and growing periods.813. Stereoscopy Tools – Creating stereo pairs from two aerial photographs with anaglyph and virtual-z mode. (PurVIEW)814. Normalized Difference Soil Index (NDSI) – Gauging soil water content from space using shortwave infrared, near infrared wavelength and NDSI.48 Sports & Recreation GIS Applications815. Strava Heat Map – Heating up the road with over 375 billion data points showing you exactly which routes other cyclists are taking. (Strava Bicycle Routes)816. Fitbit – Plugging in your Fitbit to map your runs.817. Tennis Analytics – Dominating your tennis opponent with in-depth spatial analytics. (Tennis Analytics)818. Ski Hill – Creating vicious triple black diamond ski runs using steepest path.819. Hiking Trail – Incorporating factors in trail development like gentle slopes for an accumulated least cost path.820. Optimal Road Trip – Planning a road trip of the century across the United States using the shortest route for all major landmarks.821. Golf Course Water Systems – Planning a golf course’s underground water system and sprinkler system in 3D.822. Rollercoaster – Creating realistic a fly-through from interpolated paths using 3D animation capability in ArcGIS Pro. (Rollercoaster Animation)823. Heli-skiing – Assessing the impacts of heli-skiing on mountain animal behavior using GPS trackers and frequently skiing areas.824. Stadium Security – Getting the big picture by giving police and emergency responders to track activities on a web-based geospatial platform.825. Mountaineering – Climbing steep slopes in Google Street View.826. Surf Breaks – Sizing up wave heights from satellite radar altimeters in orbit. (GlobWave Project)827. Marathon Routing – Planning the route of a marathon using elevation and base maps.828. 3D Ski Maps – Touring a mountain virtually in realistic 3D virtual tours. (3D Ski Maps in Golden Software)829. Football Stadiums – Turn maps into straight line journeys with FME’s ShortestPathFinder transformer. (Football Stadiums Journeys)830. Google Earth Elevation Transect – Pulling out steep slopes using the elevation transect tool in Google Earth for any given cycling and jogging route.831. Geocaching – Hunting for treasures and even survey monuments through geocaching.832. Swisstopo – Sculpting beautiful topography maps in 3D. (SwissTopo)833. Fishing Maps – Creating 3D bathymetric maps in real-time with Sonar (Navionics)834. Ride Sharing – Providing optimal and dynamic ride sharing in urban areas.835. Mapbox Outdoors – Powering your fitness and outdoor applications with terrain maps that highlight thousands of biking, hiking and running trails as well as ascents through topography lines. (Mapbox Outdoors)836. Sports Stadiums – Viewing complex geometries like sports stadiums in 3D. (Vizitown QGIS 3D Plugin)49 Surveying/Geodesy GIS Applications837. Coordinate Calculator – Converting coordinate conversion tool of choice for GIS. (Geography Calculator – Global Mapper)838. Fibre Optic Cable Design – Extracting LiDAR ground points to assist in fibre optic cable design at water crossings.839. Tissot Circles – Characterizing distortion from map projections (Indicatrix Mapper QGIS Plugin)840. Global Positioning Systems – Locating the position of anything and anywhere on Earth.841. Ordnance Survey – Drafting out maps as one of the largest producers of maps in the World. (Ordnance Survey)842. Equator Bulge – Measuring the bulge of Earth at the equator843. Bearings – Importing bearings and distances from a survey for parcel mapping and transcribing it on a map.844. Triangulation – Using trigonometry to measure the angles in a triangle formed by three survey control points845. Shuttle Radar Topographic Mission (SRTM) – Obtaining a global digital elevation model from inSAR. (SRTM)846. Geodetic National Adjustment – Adjusting datum positions with the Geodetic National Adjustment.50 Telecommunications GIS Applications847. Radio-Wave Propagation – Estimating the propagation of radio-waves for network with complex reflections and diffraction and line-of-sight.848. Locating Cell Towers – Locating cell tower placements in urban areas using 3D building structures.849. Network Management – Managing a network of telecommunication cables and towers in a network data set.850. Fresnel Zones – Finding the region of space between wireless transmitter and receiver where obstructions cause interference to the signal.851. Antenna Height Optimization – Optimizing antenna height using GIS 3D modelling.852. Operations Support Systems (OSS) – Ensuring that network functions properly including outages, billing, and testing through GIS shared services.853. Submarine Cable – Sketching out submarine cables that stretch across oceans. (Submarine Cable Map)854. Network Signal Interpolation – Clustering geographically high and low network signals and interpolating results in cellular signal maps855. Cellular Coverage Analysis – Maximizing cellular coverage using tower height by using interference analysis including viewshed and line-of-sight.856. Frequency Management – Regulating radio spectrum to evaluate frequency interactions when approving applications using use terrain, environment, and building data. (Spectrum Regulation)857. Fibre Optic Cable – Planning fibre optic cable infrastructure through network views showing capacity, equipment and customer demographics.858. Market Segmentation – Segmenting customers geographically and forecast the demand for services where growth is likely to occur.859. Operations – Investigating interruptions in service and managing repair and maintenance work with the Autodesk Topobase infrastructure model. (LIWEST and AutoCAD 3D)860. Signal Expansion – Planning expansion by better understanding signal strengths in three dimensional buildings – or mapping your home Wi-Fi signal in 2D.51 Tourism GIS Applications861. Personality Atlas – Assigning personality stereotypes to countries around the world based on a sample size of global population’s perspectives. (Personality Atlas)862. Tourist Map – Plotting out landmarks in tourist maps.863. Sunrise and Sunset – Finding the perfect sunrise and sunset during at any given location. (SunCalc)864. Subway Map – Simplifying maps for the reader to better understand such as the lines of a subway map in high contrasting colors.865. Linear Referencing – Using linear referencing along shorelines to track volumes of organic debris.866. Off-Beaten Tracks – Finding the off-beaten track for backpackers and marking its position with 3 words. (Off-Beaten Track Location – What3Words)867. Safe Travel – Advising travelers where unsafe location are on a map.868. Tourism Dollars – Tracking the exports of purchased goods and services using desire lines.869. Sustainable Tourism Planning – Identifying conflicting interests from tourism and solving issues by examining suitable locations for proposed developments.870. Hotel Search – Searching geographically for five star hotels using a circle radius.871. Horizon Blockage – Calculating the horizon blocking line in all directions from a given observation point with gvSIG’s Horizon Blockage.872. Travel Mode Detection – Detecting travel mode (walk, car, bus, subway and commuter rail) from a multi-modal transportation network using GIS and GPS in New York City.873. Finding Islands – Using satellite to find uninhabited islands around the world – Landsat found Landsat Island near the coast of Canada.874. Time Zones – Representing time zones around the world.875. Eco-Tourism Site Selection – Gauging environmental impacts for sustainable eco-tourism sites.876. Virtual Travel – Seeing your destination before physically being there. (Google Earth Street View)877. Geo-tagging – Discover places with 360 panoramic camera views. (Mapillary)878. Highway Planning – Constructing viewpoints with multiple layers like ecology, topography and cultural features for a three-dimensional visual highway.879. Virtual Arctic – Exploring the Arctic in Google Street View without getting out of your chair.880. 3D Synthetic Scene – Overlaying synthetic scenes over real scene. (Manifold)881. Life Travels – Accompanying travellers in their life travels in map-form. (Where in the World is Andrew?)882. Yellowstone – Putting all the pieces together in a GIS database at Yellowstone National Park including its geologic past, geyser recharge and seismic activity.883. Trip Planning – Adventuring around for your next road trip with pit stops and offbeat using suggested sites.884. Observer Points – Calculating visibility through multiple observer points.885. Historic Street View – Time-travelling in the past to see just how much a location has changed over time with historic street view.52 Transmission GIS Applications886. Corridor Analyst – Identifying possible corridors and preferred transmission routes using Least Cost Path engineering, environment and combined routing algorithms. (Trimble Corridor Analyst)887. Transmission Line Monitoring – Monitoring overhead transmission towers with active and passive satellite data.888. Viewshed – Understanding the impacts of how a transmission line would look using viewsheds.889. Right-of-way – Buffering proposed transmission lines which will be areas cleared for the transmission line.890. Transmission Line Design – Considering slope, soils and land use for factoring into transmission line design.891. Tree Encroachment – Reducing risk of falling trees with LiDAR in search for dead and dying trees near utility lines.892. Public Consultation – Visualizing the transmission line with towers during public using 2D and 3D environments.893. Line Vision – Synchronizing 2D viewing in 3D environments with viewports. (gvSIG 3D Plugin)894. 3D Geometry – Sketching up custom 3D transmission towers and lines for import into ArcScene. (Google SketchUp and COLLADA)895. Line Profile – Utilizing slope profiles to generate terrain profiles with Manifold GIS.896. Environmental Monitoring – Referencing environmentally sensitive sites along a linear transmission and reporting conflicting points.897. Map Automation – Generating maps automatically from tiles along a transmission corridor with ArcGIS Data Driven Pages or QGIS Atlas.53 Transportation GIS Applications898. Travelling Salesman – Constructing efficient journeys that visit any number of points on a network in no particular order. (Travelling Salesman)899. Hadoop – Leveraging the Hadoop framework for millions of data points with big data spatial analytics. (Hadoop Framework)900. Deadliest Roads – Pinpointing the safest and deadliest roads on the planet with the Roads Kills Map. Spoiler: Dominican Republic has the most dangerous roads. (Roads Kill Map)901. Multimodal – Getting cars off the road for multi-modal options by studying cycling paths and walkability.902. Turn Restrictions – Adding restrictions to U-turns in a network dataset. (TNT Network Analysis)903. Parking Demand – Estimating parking demand and its fit with parking capacity with Python. (PARKFIT)904. A/B Testing – Making real-world choices sending cars to various routes for the fastest deliveries. (Spatial A/B Testing)905. Closest Facility – Solving the cost of traveling between incidents and facilities for which are nearest to one other.906. Infrastructure Damage – Reporting damaged infrastructure in a browser web mapping system.907. Motor Vehicle Collisions – Correlating motor vehicle collisions with spatial attributes such as speed limits, guardrails and on-street parking.908. Intersection Analysis – Improving intersection safety through crash and road safety analysis with the MapWindow Safety Software Plugin.909. Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) – Feeding data from GPS units, video cameras, and road monitoring units to advance efficiency and safety of transportation systems.910. Shortest Path – Generating the shortest, fastest, or least-costly route between any number of origins and any number of destinations, with any number of intermediate points. (Shortest Path)911. Vessel Tracking – Plotting automatic identification system (AIS) points on a map in real-time.912. Network Travel Costs – Determining travel costs from each origin to all destinations913. Road Asset Management – Using ground survey data showing assets on a roadway in Manifold GIS.914. UPS Parcel Delivery – Seeing every driver in near-real time to study safety and find shorter routes – saving time, tire tread, and costs.915. Floating Car Systems – Displaying taxi fleet in one hour. (Floating Car Systems – Anita Graser)916. Logistics Management – Planning, implementing, and controlling the efficient effective flow and storage of goods and services from a point of origin to point of consumption.917. Street Repair – Inventorying and reporting repairs on streets.918. Road Assessment – Taking measure of pavement through aerial and mobile LiDAR.919. Trip Generation/Production – Estimating the number of trips that are produced or originate in each zone of a study area. (TransCAD Trip Generation and Production)920. Railways – Tying railways together with CartoDB’s railways map – from cargo to passenger trains. (Railroads – A Staple for Growth)921. Service Areas – Identifying service areas from a fixed points along a network route to show response coverage for emergency vehicles.922. OD Cost Matrix – Improving coordination amongst transportation providers when given multiple origins and multiple destinations.923. Paratransit – Accessing rides through address entry and buffering points to find nearest routes.924. World Traffic – Helping drivers get to destinations efficiently with traffic conditions around the world. (World Traffic Map)925. Transportation Master Plan – Planning future highways and roads by looking at growth of communities and traffic demand.926. Airline Planning – Navigating to safer airspace by including nearby land use to runway lighting systems.927. Routing Workers – Optimizing routes by seeing overlap which saves fuel costs.928. Traffic Ways – Seeing the world as only traffic ways. (Traffic Ways)929. Carpooling – Adding carpool lots by analyzing the number of incoming trips in a city.930. Bus Route – Designing transit routes with cost and demographic impacts. (TransMix Transit Planning)931. Active Transportation Planning – Leveraging the public with Participatory Geographic Information Systems and active transportation932. Conflation – Conflating two road datasets with OpenJump Vivid extension “Road Mapper” or Spatial Adjustment in ArcGIS.933. Infrastructure Life Cycle – Reiterating the process of planning, designing, constructing, operating, and maintaining a transportation system.934. Inter-modal Transportation – Compiling two different modes of transportation (such as rail and truck) to move goods or passengers.935. Rails-to-Trails Conservancy – Converting unused railway into a paved multi-use paths. (Rails-to-Trails)936. Traffic Congestion – Alleviating traffic congestion by making the best possible use of the existing transportation network and gathering data to improve decisions for modifying the network.937. Sidewalk Inventory – Storing sidewalk data in a database with attributes like width, surface type and clearing priority.938. Transit Ridership – Collecting statistics on how many passengers ride transit in a given neighborhood.939. National Bridge Inventory – Making a repository of bridges in a national-wide database.940. UPS Telematics – Monitor performance and safety of package cars Safety including seatbelt usage, speed and whether or not a door was shut.941. Urban Traffic Air Pollution – Recording urban traffic air pollution and quality trough 3D visualization in planar and non-planar views.942. Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis – Selecting highway route using multiple criteria. (Multi-criteria Decision Analysis QGIS Plugin)943. Walkability – Mapping out hot spots and cold spots with walkability and kernel density.944. Bike Sharing – Optimizing locations bike-sharing programs stations.54 Utilities GIS Applications945. Billing Systems – Updating and correcting billing system for the cost of street and security lighting. (Spatial Billing Systems)946. Network Management – Visualizing complex spatial webs of utility networks as the foundation to manage the lifecycle of network assets for utilities. (GE Smallworld)947. Emergency Repairs – Flagging potential emergencies with weather forecasts, staging support where needed and logistics for the movement of people.948. Underground Utilities – Penetrating the ground with radar for precise locations of underground gas, water, electrical and telephone utilities.949. Pole Inventory – Pinning down with GPS accuracy utility poles.950. Power Distribution – Figuring out where in a distribution line could take down an entire network.951. Vegetation Encroachment – Overlaying LiDAR data with transmission to see where and how much vegetation is encroaching952. Subsurface 3D Utility Model – Viewing underground utilities in 3D.953. Lifecycle Management – Updating life cycle status of utility information as existing or proposed in GE SmallWorld954. Permafrost – Assessing the impacts of permafrost freezing and thawing on utility lines.955. Utility Pole Replacement – Obtaining all the information when replacing utility poles and other business operations (Asset ID, construction date, overhead/underground conductor and conductors it supports with number of wire and cable segments956. Power Outages – Helping customers keep the lights on with assets and attributes such as poles and transformers in AutoCAD Map 3D.957. Cost Path – Laying out a gas pipeline from one location to another location with a CAD schematic in AutoCAD 3D.958. Energy Usage – Mapping trends of electricity usage that are metered to a network.959. Smart Grids – Determining optimal locations for smart grid and real-time analytic components.960. Infrastructure Design – Planning network infrastructure, build, operations and maintenance with Smallworld Core.961. Energy Demand Estimation – Combining building volume, number of floors and other characteristics to predict the energy demand for heating and cooling using 3D city models in Germany. (Energy Demand Estimates)962. Schematics – Representing a complex utilities network in a simple schematics diagram with ArcGIS Schematics.963. Street View Measure – Examining utility operations in street view and measuring distances (MM Plugin in ArcGIS)964. Line Extension Easements – Creating electrical line extension easements (legal rights of access) in GE SmallWorld Electric Office Geospatial Asset Management965. Cloud Computing – Building and sharing maps in the cloud for common operating and faster decision-making. (GIS Cloud)55 Volunteer GIS and Open Technology966. GIS Corps – Volunteering in GIS projects such as bridging the divide between the world’s insurance markets and the most vulnerable, low-income people. (GIS Corps)967. National Geographic Society – Preserving and protecting our planet as a global non-profit organization funding hundreds of projects each year. (National Geographic Society)968. Urban and Regional Information Systems Association (URISA) – Solving challenges in local and national governments through GIS and other information technologies. (URISA)969. Wikimapia – Describing the world in online, editable maps and mashups with free data available for you to experiment with and create unique applications. (Wikimapia)970. OpenStreetMap – Establishing open information as a free, editable map through volunteered input. (Founder Steve Coast)971. Open Geospatial Consortium – Making quality open standards for the global geospatial community. (Open Geospatial Consortium)972. USGS Earth Explorer – Opening up satellite data to the world for free. (USGS Earth Explorer)973. NASA World Wind – Monitoring weather patterns, visualize cities and terrain, track the movement of planes, vehicles and ships, analyze geospatial data, and educate people about the Earth with the cross-platform, Java-based NASA World Wind. (NASA World Wind)974. Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) – Supporting the collaborative development of open source geospatial software, and promoting its widespread use. (OSGeo)975. ArcGIS Open Data – Exploring tens of thousands of data sets around the world from thousands of organizations around the world. (ArcGIS Open Data)976. Real-Time Collaboration – Collaborating in OpenStreetMap with multiple user entries. (Real-time Collaboration)977. Natural Earth – Producing public domain data with beautiful cartography layers.978. Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) – Harnessing tools to create, assemble, and disseminate geographic data provided voluntarily by individuals (Citizens as Sensors – Goodchild, 2007)979. QGIS – Pioneering the #1 option for open GIS software. (QGIS Founder – Gary Sherman)56 Weather GIS Applications980. Real-time Lightning – Capturing real-time lightning strikes in a map with monitoring stations located around the world. (Real-time Lightning)981. Global Wind Vectors – Displaying gusting winds with vectors as directions. (Global Wind – Null School)982. Albedo – Measuring albedo for Earth’s heat budget using surface reflectance satellite data – bright areas reflect more than dark areas.983. Solar Irradiance – Harnessing the power of solar energy with the Global Horizontal Solar Irradiance. (Global Horizontal Irradiance)984. Night-Day Boundary – Illustrating which parts of the Earth that people are fast asleep and are wide awake with the night-day boundary map. (Night-Day Boundary)985. Rainfall – Illustrating rainfall in NOAA’s National Weather Service web map.986. NASA Ocean Color – Downloading chlorophyll-a concentrations and sea surfaces temperature data sets for studying the increasing risk from ocean acidification and hypoxia. (NASA Ocean Color)987. Historical Weather – Discerning weather patterns by studying old weather. (Old Weather)988. Temperature – Mapping out temperature with multi-dimensional NetCDF which includes dimensions of latitude, longitude, altitude, and time. (NASA Temperature NetCDF)989. Snowfall – Knowing how much snowfall occurred where. (NOAA Snowfall Data)990. Azimuth – Calculating solar elevation, solar azimuth, and sun hours in the sky for each location (R.Sun – GRASS GIS)991. Weather Anomalies – Tracking weather events in a spatial database such as snow in the Sahara desert or southern Algeria.992. 3D Snow Depths – Plotting out 3D snow depths at ski resorts using Golden Software. (Snow Depth Map)993. Pacific Ocean Blob – Mapping the extent of “The Blob” – an anomalous body having sea surface temperature much above the normal.994. 3D Atmospheric Data – Visualizing layers of the atmospheric features as a vertical profile.995. Ocean Surface Current Analysis Real-Time (OSCAR) – Delivering near real-time global ocean surface currents. (OSCAR Data)996. Weather Warnings – Feeding out live warnings with physical locations from National Weather Service. (Weather Warnings)997. Historical Precipitation – Observing historical precipitation from ground stations and radar in NetCDF with MapWindow Meteobase.998. Cirrus Clouds – Detecting cirrus cloud with Landsat’s Cirrus band.999. Hovmoller Diagrams – Plotting meteorological data with latitude and longitude as axis. (Hovmoller Diagrams – ILWIS)1000. Doppler Radar – Predicting rainfall using Doppler Radar.1001. Sky View Factor – Considering the visible sky and topographic influences to estimate radiation balances, temperature and evapotranspiration.1002. Weather Stations – Obtaining the latitude and longitude positions of weather stations around the world.

At the heart of conducting a benefit-cost analysis is assessment of the benefits and costs of an intervention. Both of these dimensions are challenging, but could benefit from greater standardization in the field. Two speakers at the workshop looked specifically at the costing of interventions, while one explored the valuing of benefits.AN INGREDIENTS APPROACH TO COSTING PREVENTIVE INTERVENTIONS1Benefit-cost analyses tend to use calipers to measure effects and witching rods to measure costs, said Henry Levin. In many cases, costs are all but ignored because analysts are so focused on finding effectiveness results. This includes not just overt cost transactions but other costs that together represent the true costs of an intervention. For example, a budget is not necessarily a full or accurate metric for determining costs, Levin observed. Nor do administered prices in a hospital or grant support for a community intervention provide accurate pictures of the resources required to produce benefits.In determining costs, important questions includeWhat are the criteria for determining costs?How complete are the costs? Do they cover all of the requirements needed to produce the effects on which benefits are based?Do the costs use comparable prices for comparison (e.g., local versus national prices for goods and services can vary dramatically in price)?Is the information adequate for an observer to replicate results?Standards for benefit-cost analyses will not be easy to develop, Levin acknowledged, but they may help answer these questions.The Ingredients Cost MethodLevin uses what he called the “ingredients cost method” to determine costs. It relies on the use of competitive market prices or shadow prices based on markets. Its goal is to ascertain the cost of all the resources required to replicate an effectiveness result.The method has several major steps. First, for each alternative, an intervention and its theory of action need to be described. This enables a benefit-cost analysis to reflect what was being attempted and how and why outcomes occurred.Second, the specific ingredients or resources used to implement the intervention need to be described in terms of both quantity and quality, irrespective of how they are financed, Levin said. A volunteer can be self-financed, but a volunteer is not simply free, because in another setting the market cost for that input must be paid. Documents, interviews, and observations can identify these ingredients or resources, although these sources of information may not be fully available for interventions conducted in the past.Third, market or shadow prices are assigned to all ingredients based on opportunity costs. This is done independently of funding sources, including in-kind resources such as volunteers. Finally, the costs are analyzed in different ways to make them amenable for analysis and comparison. For example, marginal costs or average costs may be calculated. These costs can be presented in the form of worksheets that identify the categories of program ingredients and the constituencies who are paying for those ingredients (see Figure 3-1). Developed during the past four decades, this method has been computerized and includes a database of prices, discount rates, and other data, Levin said. For example, the Poverty Action Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has adopted this method to do cost-effectiveness studies of its randomized controlled trials.FIGURE 3-1Worksheet identifies types of costs and the groups on which costs are imposed. SOURCE: Levin, 1975. Reprinted with the permission of Sage Publications.Levin particularly pointed out that the identification of costs needs to be done separately from a program's financing. For example, over time, a program may not be able to sustain volunteer efforts, in which case it may be necessary to look for financing to cover those costs. Separating financing from costs is a bedrock principle of cost accounting.Levin also pointed out that doing a cost analysis can sensitize people to the assumptions made in that analysis, just as with analyses of benefits. For example, a question that can arise is what does the time and effort that a student is putting into a program displace? That is not an easy question to answer. Some interventions may argue that they cost nothing or very little, but the ingredients cost method demonstrates that their cost may be fairly high. For example, some interventions simply reallocate resources from one program to another (e.g., from health prevention to educational enrichment) and argue that there is no cost. Of course, the cost is determined by the value of what is sacrificed by abandoning the initial program rather than assuming that such transfer is “free.” Figuring out what these opportunity costs are is important, said Levin.A Call for a Civil UnionLevin urged setting standards for cost analysis that are equally rigorous as those for both effectiveness and benefits analysis. Costing should not be an afterthought, he said, but should be closely related to and done simultaneously with benefits analysis, with the sharing of data for a complete evaluation.Analyses also need to incorporate a strong ethnographic component that documents the intervention process and ingredients, Levin added. Such analyses, which could be done parsimoniously with periodic visits and data gathering, can reveal what really happened during an intervention, not just what theory would predict should happen. Qualitative analyses also can help explain differences in site results.Finally, retrospective cost analysis should be avoided, Levin said. Though sometimes necessary because costs were ignored at the time of the intervention, such analyses irretrievably lose much information. If done retrospectively, it is important for cost analyses to be as timely as possible.Go to:COST ANALYSIS FOR PLANNING PURPOSES2Whether with expanded home-visiting programs, school violence prevention efforts, or early learning initiatives, robust cost estimates are needed to support prevention efforts that can effectively meet public health needs and reduce the strain on overburdened service systems, said Max Crowley. In particular, by demonstrating the resources needed for prevention, cost analyses are inextricably linked to efforts to take interventions to scale. “Even basic cost estimates can end up having greater utility for program planning than some of our best estimates of program cost-effectiveness or benefit-cost ratios,” Crowley said.Crowley discussed three key issues related to the process of costing prevention programs. The first involves the resources needed to ensure adequate programming infrastructure is in place. Many estimates of prevention costs capture only the most immediate resource needs of programs. In particular, they often neglect crucial elements of infrastructure. For example, local knowledge about how to adopt and implement preventive programs can vary tremendously on the ground. Many programs now use manualized training to teach program facilitators how to deliver a specific prevention curriculum, but few programs seek to train the managers overseeing those facilitators to ensure programs are delivered as they were intended and with quality. Nor are these managers generally taught how to enable themselves to fend off threats to the sustainability of a prevention effort, even though such training is often crucial to replicating the effects of an evaluation trial. These skills are often assumed to be available in the existing labor market, but the reality is that these skills may be in very short supply, especially in rural or impoverished areas. To successfully deliver preventive programs and replicate the effectiveness of trials, this local capacity must be deliberately built through training and technical assistance, Crowley said, which can require significant resources. “If we don't budget for infrastructure, we can undermine the whole prevention effort.”Infrastructure building can be divided into three main areas: adoption capacity, implementation capacity, and sustainability capacity. Adoption capacity refers to the ability of a local community to attract or train a labor force with the ability to adopt an evidence-based prevention program. This involves local capacity to understand the needs of the target population as well as the fit of a program in that community (Lutenbacher et al., 2002). Prevention delivery and support systems such as the PROSPER (PROmoting School–community–university Partnerships to Enhance Resilience) Network and Communities That Care (see Chapter 2) seek to supplement this local capacity when it is lacking. These systems also allow for different programs to be deployed depending on local needs. Such “plug and play” systems allow program evaluators to include infrastructure development in their cost analyses with less research burden than if a program were implemented in isolation.Implementation capacity refers to the ability to deliver the program from manualized curricula and to ensure program quality. Many communities lack existing quality assurance systems that are compatible with many of the prevention programs currently available in the marketplace. Developing these systems can take time, but they are essential to ensure prevention services are delivered with fidelity (Durlak and DuPre, 2008).Sustainability capacity refers to the ability of a prevention effort to integrate a program into the existing service infrastructure and develop robust funding streams. Developing this capacity requires training and ongoing technical assistance around fundraising and management of in-kind and volunteer resources.Volunteer and In-Kind DonationsThe next issue Crowley discussed involves volunteer and in-kind donations. Because they attempt to avert a future outcome, prevention programs often require substantially greater buy-in than do downstream solutions that seek to triage existing and visible problems (Elliott and Mihalic, 2004). As a result, prevention initiatives often rely heavily on local volunteer and in-kind donations. Securing these resources not only solidifies buy-in from the community but also can help alleviate resource scarcity (Feinberg et al., 2008).Program evaluators often seek to estimate the cost of a program retrospectively (Crowley et al., 2012). But institutional knowledge of what group donated which resources and which people volunteered their time is often lost in such analyses. This is particularly a threat for programs that rely on existing service infrastructures to house their programming. While there will always be a place for retrospective analyses, Crowley acknowledged, the issue is planning for cost analyses up front in a project. By building an overall data architecture, costs can be captured in more naturalistic settings so the process is less burdensome.As an example, Crowley noted that the education system has often been the natural home for preventive interventions targeting adolescent populations. The opportunity costs of such a program may be small when they are delivered within trials, but when they are delivered at scale, they often require sizable investments from local education systems. These investments include not only the more visible teacher time but also the less visible administrative and staff time. When these costs are not captured, they can threaten program planning and place an unexpected burden on service systems, possibly derailing an entire program.Participant CostsWhen prevention programs seek parental support, as is often the case with family-based programs, this support represents a cost, Crowley pointed out. Parents are also the targets of many preventive programs. Thus, participant costs can include the cost to a child, the cost to a parent, and the cost to a family.Participant costs require special handling, Crowley observed. Sometimes costs are incurred up front, often through losses in time, but sometimes they are incurred as part of programs themselves. For instance, preventive programs that improve parents' success in the labor market can produce a cost to children. The hope is that child participants will gain an overall benefit from the program. But the cost to a parent of not being able to provide child care can be important for recruitment and participation in a program and can inform program planning.Self-report interviews can identify losses of service, but they can fail to capture the complexity of program costs, especially in the context of increasingly dynamic preventive efforts that are delivered across substantial periods of time. However, with the development of more robust data collection systems, particularly through new technological supports, the field can dramatically extend the science around prevention costs, Crowley observed. For example, the geographic information systems being deployed by many community prevention efforts can capture such costs as participant travel time to participate in a family-based program. Looking farther into the future, e-health technologies could collect large quantities of data to quantify participant costs.Potential Best PracticesCrowley concluded by pointing to several best practices that can guide the development of standards for cost analyses. First, he said, cost analysis should always be prospective. Failing to include a cost analysis at the beginning of a trial makes the process of estimating costs much more difficult and increases the likelihood that cost estimates will be incomplete. Ideally, funders and reviewers will someday expect a program evaluation to include capturing opportunity costs.Another best practice, Crowley observed is to use the ingredients-based approach described earlier by Levin to capture a full economic accounting of a program and deconstruct the resource needs into specific cost categories. Such an approach would yield more standardized protocols for cost collection and would link resource consumption to program activities.Third, cost analyses should always seek to estimate the full economic costs of implementing the program, Crowley said. Cost estimates need to move beyond simple budgetary review and include all of the resources needed to replicate a program's effects. These resources include those needed to build local capacity, the cost of donating time and goods, and a full accounting of participant costs.Fourth, Crowley pointed to the need to explore uncertainties in cost estimates. Sensitivity analyses could test the robustness of cost estimates under a variety of assumptions. Monte Carlo analyses can be applied to the costs of a program as well as to the benefits to yield confidence intervals around point estimates.Crowley also identified four areas that could benefit from greater standardization:1.Identify essential cost categories that all cost analyses should strive to include.2.Develop guidelines for appropriate handling of costs that are not reflected in program budgets.3.Establish minimum levels of sensitivity analysis to explore uncertainty in cost estimates.4.Ensure consistent reporting of cost estimates to enhance transparency and utility.Prevention programs, especially for children, youth, and families, are increasingly in the spotlight, Crowley observed. Well-done cost analyses can describe these investments and help communities decide which investments to make. But cost estimates need to capture all of the resources needed for a program to avoid jeopardizing the quality of the services being delivered and the sustainability of a program.Go to:VALUING THE OUTCOMES OF INTERVENTION3When a preventive intervention is evaluated, the headline is often the total economic return the program will generate. But this headline obscures a number of important questions about what is included in the total dollar amount, said Damon Jones, includingIs the return based mostly on one sector?Does it involve a combination of many sectors?Who is receiving the economic benefits—participants, taxpayers, other nonparticipants?When does the savings or benefit occur?Is the benefit based on projections?These are the kinds of questions that need to be addressed to measure the economic outcomes of an intervention, Jones stated.Previous benefit-cost analyses of early childhood interventions have found benefits in a variety of economic and societal sectors. For example, evaluations of the Perry Preschool Project have found lower crime rates, less retention and special education use in school, and increased lifetime earnings (Belfield et al., 2006). Study of the Chicago Child Parent Centers revealed increased earning and tax revenues, reduced costs associated with crime, and reduced need for special education services (Reynolds et al., 2011). The Abecedarian Program demonstrated increased lifetime earnings for participants, increased maternal earnings, decreased school costs, and decreased smoking-related costs (Barnett and Masse, 2007).An important question with these and other studies is how these outcomes were monetized, said Jones. For example, shadow prices for valuing interventions are often a critical element of this process. Shadow prices evaluate the return on such interventions as increasing high school graduation or test scores or reducing criminal acts or early substance use. Shadow prices are harder to determine for outcomes measured at younger ages, Jones observed. Shadow prices also are easier to apply with some sort of categorical result, such as a diagnosis. And the more projection required to determine a price, the more uncertainty needs to be accounted for in the methodology.Standards for Valuing BenefitsCurrently there are no established standards for valuing benefits, Jones noted, especially with preventive interventions in the behavioral sciences. Instead, economic evaluations are carried out in widely varying ways with respect to approach, measures, outcomes, and the structure of the assessment. In thinking about how to monetize benefits, a decision has to be made between determining how to value key study outcomes that may be indirectly linked to dollar amounts and focusing on the extent to which a program affects true economic outcomes. The answer to this question depends largely on the nature of the program, the age of the participants, and the outcomes that are targeted. Studies of preventive programs for children and families, for example, vary widely in terms of what outcomes are monetized. Many outcomes are left out because of a lack of precedence for how to monetize them, such as mental health outcomes, social skills, child behavior, and parenting skills.Great variation also surrounds how effects are projected into the future. Some studies look only at the low-hanging fruit, which may lead to greatly underestimating economic impacts. But the difficulties involved in measuring the harder-to-obtain outcomes can lead to errors in estimates. At the same time, evaluators need to consider the full set of possible outcomes (both observable and those projected to occur) to achieve adequate coverage of economic impact.A critical step for any evaluation is to think about what is left out, Jones added. When interventions are evaluated for economic impact retrospectively, the lack of planned measures may lead to incomplete assessment of benefits. But this could also be partly a matter of the inability to capture costs within a set of measured outcomes.What may be particularly underestimated is the value of factors linked to long-term personal success, such as the development of interpersonal and intrapersonal skills, said Jones. The complexity of the interrelationship among different factors—such as cognitive and noncognitive skills, as well as context of these factors—is not easily represented in assessments of economic benefits. Even when the importance of certain skills for long-term personal success is recognized, the challenge is determining how to capture those skills in measuring outcomes that are not currently included. Possible approaches can build on prior research, but a standard methodology for modeling more complex associations is unlikely.Valuing OutcomesAlthough there are no clear standards for carrying out economic evaluation in preventive interventions, certain steps could be taken to increase consistency across studies. For instance, the first step in developing standards for valuing outcomes is to plan ahead, said Jones. As with the evaluation of costs, the economic evaluation component needs to be considered before establishing plans for the overall program evaluation, he observed. This requires consulting with economists who can provide expertise on how to structure an evaluation. It also requires reviewing prior research to learn what has been done, with what population, and in what context, and also checking whether any standards already have been established for economic evaluation.The second step is to consider the scope and reach of a program's effects. What outcome domains will be affected? How far over time will these effects extend? Who will be affected? These questions reflect the logic model of the intervention, and while it is possible to include too many different effects, more is preferable to less, Jones said.The third step is to determine the best measures for economic evaluation based on the intervention's logic model, Jones continued. Measurable outcomes as well as program benefits that cannot be measured need to be identified. Prior research may have used measures that can be applied or used in models. Deciding how to represent the uncertainty in valuations is also part of this step.The fourth step in the process is to assess what key program outcomes cannot be valued, Jones said. Evaluators then need to determine whether the evaluation should incorporate other methodologies to determine economic benefits for these outcomes. If the outcome is a primary variable in the program evaluation, should the evaluation incorporate a cost-effectiveness component? Current or future research may help determine the possible valuation of these outcomes so they can be incorporated into later retrospective assessments.Examples of the ApproachAs an example of identifying potential outcomes, Jones described a hypothetical middle school preventive intervention program aimed at improving social skills and decreasing substance use in adolescents. The program was delivered in the sixth grade through a curriculum occurring 2 days per week. It involved components such as demonstrative video modules, journal writing, and role-playing activities. A pilot study indicated multiple program effects measured at posttest, including fewer class disruptions, lower rates of bullying, increased engagement in class, and lower rates of initiation of substance use.In subsequent research the evaluators wanted to include an assessment of the program's economic impact, Jones continued. They planned to assess the full cost and resources needed to deliver the program. They also planned to follow participants into high school to assess longer-term effects of the program. Prior research provided common methods for valuing outcomes in school programs, which helped the researchers determine what measures to include for this age group at posttest and follow-up assessment. These measures included use of special education services, class grades, grade retention, reported substance use, and use of other school services (including disciplinary and counseling services).For a middle school program, participants can provide outcomes that are more readily monetized than for other populations or programs, Jones said. For instance, academic achievement can be identified at these ages and followed through high school. Moreover, substance use, delinquency, and early involvement in the justice system all can be measured.Still, Jones observed, several key questions need to be answered. Are only the outcomes listed above valued, some of which also involve direct costs? How much can the costs from effects on current outcomes be projected into the future? For example, should reduced early substance use be projected to reduced longer-term problems? Should improved academic achievement be projected to future earnings? How about the value of outcomes that are not easily monetized? How long should effects be followed? For example, if participants are followed into young adulthood, should things like high school completion, college experience, early employment, longer-term substance use patterns, and longer-term delinquency and criminal activity be assessed? Evaluators also need to assess whom else might be affected by a program, such as teachers, other educators, family members, or the broader society.The effects of a program can be distinguished by recipient, time frame, and whether they can be monetized. These potential outcomes can be derived from the logic model for a program, Jones stated, including both effects that can be monetized and those that cannot.Programs for Younger ChildrenSome programs are at a disadvantage for economic evaluation based on the nature of the processes involved, Jones said. For example, younger children usually cannot be followed much beyond the time frame of program delivery, and outcomes measured at young ages usually cannot be readily monetized. In addition, intervention effects linked to future costs are typically subject to down-weighting through discounting and fade-out.At the same time, lasting effects may rely on delivering services to children during key developmental periods, and research has demonstrated the importance of early intervention (Cunha and Heckman, 2008; Dodge et al., 2008; Barnett, 2011). The challenge is how to value outcomes with complex processes involving multiple dynamic and interacting factors. For example, important new research is examining the mechanisms by which noncognitive factors and personality influence long-term success (Almlund et al., 2011). Ideally, this research could help explain how these factors collectively influence future adult outcomes and how they are best measured in economic evaluations. For example, noncognitive factors could be more important at older ages and more malleable, making them a better candidate for intervention with older children. Today, however, Jones indicated that the role of noncognitive skills on long-term success is not represented in economic evaluations of programs for children.The Potential of ResearchThe field will be greatly helped by research that establishes the links between outcomes in program evaluations and future direct or indirect costs and benefits. This research should be based on robust methodology, include multiple studies, and involve causal associations, Jones said. Once those links are determined, then some consensus is likely to develop as to what measures best represent early skills. If certain domains, such as early aggression or social skills, are found to have a stronger association with economic outcomes controlling for other factors, these areas could be prioritized. Research also could factor in how much these traits may fluctuate over time, the likelihood that they may change as the chronological gap between measured skill and economic outcome is increased, the influence of different contexts for understanding these associations, and the varying characteristics of different populations.Variable associations may be represented in terms of likelihoods for later states to occur. For example, an improvement in an early mental health outcome may increase the likelihood for high school completion. Around this likelihood, the potential for variation in causal influence must be understood. In this context, ranges of estimates are good. Policy makers may not like ranges, but they need to be factored into the overall sensitivity analysis of the economic evaluation.“The future is bright,” Jones concluded. Economic evaluations for family, child, and youth programs will only get better in the coming years. But standards and consistent methodologies are needed to compare across studies, Jones stated, and researchers need to fully consider the possible impacts of effective programs. Thus, some collective organization of determining and promoting appropriate methods and measures would help researchers in the future.

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair…” Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two CitiesNever in the history of the world have people been so mobile and never have there been so many changes and challenges. In a great TED talk, Pico Iyer asks a question: What is the 5th largest country in the world?His answer: those who live in a country other than the one they were born in. One of the fastest growing numbers of the migrating populations -- those seeking educational opportunities. Hundreds of thousands of students are leaving home and often spending great sums to enroll in schools mostly in the US, UK, Canada and Australia. The country that sends the most students across the world in search of the best educational opportunities: China, but India, Korea and Saudi Arabia send many students away and the list of countries sending students abroad numbers in the hundreds.Graph from Open DoorsBest of TimesThe graph demonstrates it is the best of times for international students leaving their country to enroll elsewhere for their education. The growth is breath taking. Schools benefit by bringing in students who are not only predicted to do well academically, but will also add to the range of voices and experiences on campus. And no less important, at least to most schools, is the money these students bring. Almost all undergraduates who come to the US (and other places around the globe) are full payers. Very few schools have financial aid for international students and few offer merit aid that will come anywhere close to the total cost for attending the school. Local economies benefit too as these students spend money on housing, food and lots more. The staggering cost of education at many colleges has left many in the US unable to afford attending them unless they take on debt or get significant aid. International full paying students have helped support low income US students and in some cases have kept the schools from running short of cash to operate the schools. And it isn’t just colleges that have grown dependent on international students. There is huge growth at secondary schools too:“A fast-growing number of families are sending their children to America earlier to study (and moving with them) as well. In 2013 about 32,000 Chinese received visas for study at secondary schools in America, up from just 639 in 2005.The raw number of incoming students, the range of schools attended and the money brought in all support the thesis that these are the best of times in international education. The numbers don’t lie. But they also don’t tell the whole truth. Not even close.Worst of TimesNovember 3, 2011 is an important date. A New York Times story, written by Tom Bartlett and Karin Fischer, detailed for a broad audience what many in international education knew but had not talked about much in public. The story highlighted how students from China were getting accepted to schools in the US and elsewhere by using, to say the least, unethical methods. The story was based on interviews with students but also on a report that had been previously published:Zinch China, a consulting company that advises American colleges and universities about China, last year published a report based on interviews with 250 Beijing high school students bound for the United States, their parents, and a dozen agents and admissions consultants. The company concluded that 90 percent of Chinese applicants submit false recommendations, 70 percent have other people write their personal essays, 50 percent have forged high school transcripts and 10 percent list academic awards and other achievements they did not receive. The “tide of application fraud,” the report predicted, will likely only worsen as more students go to America.I already knew about all of these issues and so did others who had spent time in China talking to insiders and students. (Full Disclosure: I should mention that Zinch also released a white paper back then outlining what I had implemented at the University I worked for to detect fraud and cheating in a low cost way that would also improve recruiting and encourage educational reform. My solution was pretty simple and I will come back to this topic later).Since then, however, the number of stories about fraud and cheating has now become so prevalent that not a week goes by that another major media outlet does not publish their own story about all the irregularities going on in China (and to some degree in other parts the world too, including the US). Each story seems to confirm that the issues of fraud have worsened since the story/report came out. What was once a dirty secret, however, is now “common wisdom” but common wisdom also has the danger of not being as useful as more nuanced approaches.I agree with much of what has been written about cheating, but I also have a number of significant caveats. Rather than simply pile on more condemnations, I propose to look at some of these issues from a broader perspective and to look at the role the various parties involved in this landscape play in what some might call the worst of times for an ethical approach to admission. More importantly, I will question some of the assumptions that many have about the students, about what constitutes fraud and cheating, and finally what are some simple and cost effective things that can be done to improve the situation.After the Zinch data came out a number of people questioned the stats. They said the percentages of students doing unethical things to gain admission were too high. I would say that today the percentage might actually be too low. Even as I say this however there are a number of factors that make what these percentages seem to mean less helpful than might meet the eye.TranscriptsWhat admission officers see when they get a transcript from China (and some other places too) are not in many cases what they will see when they look at a transcript from an American high school. In most cases the grades and courses listed are not accurate. There are several reasons why this is so depending on the school, on whether the school has control over the transcript, and perhaps most importantly the cultural differences between what a transcript means in China and what it means in other places.Grades: The grades that students earn in Chinese high schools are often much lower than grades given in the US. Schools use low grades to motivate the students. However, schools in China have learned that sending transcripts with low grades to selective US schools virtually assures the student will not be offered admission. As a result, there are many schools in China that have what they call an American transcript. The transcript is sent by the school and is therefore official, but the transcript is almost always filled with all A’s. The schools (and some of these are the top magnet schools in China) feel that a lower grade in China should be increased to reflect the grade inflation in the US. This practice of changing grades raises questions. If the schools themselves change the transcripts is this then fraud? Schools in the US weight grades for many classes but weighted grades are not a part of the education system in China. US admission officers at selective schools rarely ever see a grade of C on any US transcript these days. Even one C can sometimes be enough to keep a student out of contention. In China, a C can actually be what it is supposed to be-- an average grade that many students get. In the US these days, A’s are the average grade at many schools. Are the officials in China wrong to change the transcripts?I mention this as I had a heated discussion about this issue with an official from China. They feel justified in giving students high grades, as this is what they feel the students would earn if there was a weighting system. It is important to remember too, that many students applying from China attend what are called key high schools. These are the equivalent of magnet schools in the US like Stuyvesant in New York or ‘Thomas Jefferson High in Fairfax, VA. In order to earn a spot a student must place at the very top of students taking a city wide exam. The acceptance rates into these schools are far lower than they are at US magnet schools. Hundreds of thousands of students are vying for a few hundred spots. In other words, the students at these schools have already demonstrated high academic potential. The level of competition at these schools is unlike what most in the US can imagine. For example, some schools I have visited have proudly showed me their bulletin board which tracks student progress. Each week the grades of students are posted, by name, so that everyone in the school can see how a student stands in relation to his or her classmates. Competition is not only not discouraged, it is re-enforced so that the top students at these schools can do well on the national exam, the Gaokao, and get accepted to prestigious universities like Beida and Tsinghua (the Harvard and MIT of China). Students at these schools are incredibly driven and are in most cases prepared to do well at any school in the world. I say this having talked with thousands of students from China over the years. I have watched the top ones go on and do exceptionally well both in China if they choose to stay or at top universities around the world. Is it any wonder that officials would want to raise the grades of these students knowing that low grades on a transcript, while motivating these students, will hurt their admission chances outside of China?If this practice were the only issue then I think the controversy surrounding transcripts would not be quite as great at it is. Unfortunately, at many schools things are much worse. There are many schools that not only don’t post grades, the grades themselves are an afterthought. Jordan Dotson has been in China for over a decade working in Shenzhen, a city with some of the top schools and students in China. His ethical approach to admission and his insights into the process have educated me in ways no one else has. He does not mince words about what grades do and do not mean in most schools in China:The grades are meaningless. Only Gaokao matters, so everything that happened before that point is ONLY used to determine how much a student needs to be preparing, and with what focus, for the Gaokao. It's really not such a bad concept, if you think about it. Grades are only used as analytical tools to ascertain weaknesses-- gaps in a student’s education. If a student asks for "transcripts," of which they don't really have anything useful, they just make up a bunch of stuff that looks like what the Americans are asking for. Now when someone IS changing grades at these "normal" high schools, for the explicit purpose of increasing a student's chance of admission, what we call cheating, it doesn't always seem like cheating to them. Many people are willing to cheat here, yes, but many others don't consider this cheating. They're just trying to appease a pushy American system that doesn't really make sense to them.Remember that the semester-by-semester grades aren't that important to them, so writing in "A" when the student had a "B" has little meaning. What does an A or B matter when the student still hasn't taken the test? When they still have one year to review and learn what they didn't learn in that short semester?To some readers, what Jordan says about grades not mattering is a strange concept, but at places where national exam results are all that matters this can be the case. Schools that get numerous students into top schools will be rewarded with raises and promotions and the families and students will be looked at with awe. (Some in the US worry that the implementation of Common Core standards may lead to schools being evaluated in ways that may begin to reflect this model.). Given the size of China it should come as no surprise that there are marked differences in the way schools assess students.There is one piece of this puzzle about schools and transcripts that not enough in the world of admission are aware of: “International” vs. Chinese National Curriculum.First of all, an international curriculum is different than an international school. Most international schools in China do not enroll Chinese nationals. They are filled with expats. Some Chinese schools call themselves international but they are composed of Chinese nationals but do offer an AP or IB curriculums. Some schools have within the National school itself both national and what they call international curriculums. National students are studying for the Gaokao. Students in the international curriculum have opted out of studying for the Gaokao and have committed to studying outside of China. If this isn’t confusing enough, there are three important things that need to be clarified about the students and the curriculum in each of these tracks. There also needs to be some clarification about why more and more students leave China while in high school to finish secondary school in another country.Many of the students in the international track spend the last year of high school preparing for SAT, TOEFL and AP exams. Put simply, these students are not actually taking classes in the school. Instead, they are spending all their time outside school preparing applications and doing test prep. Here is the way Jordan describes it:The students don't go to school their Senior 3 year; instead, they are taking SAT classes if anything, despite consistent, English-language transcripts listing a full class schedule. Universities could classify these schools as the ones who may have some "AP" classes, but still list broad subject titles for all three years of high school. That is: Math, Chemistry, Physics, Politics, Biology, etc.Many admission readers are not aware that some students in the international track are not in school for the last year. (It is important to note, however, that some schools really do offer AP and IB classes.) In fact, some readers look at the students who have AP classes and who have a transcript that lists senior year AP courses as more trustworthy and possibly more academically prepared than students who are in the national Gaokao prep program. Admission readers know what AP tests are but may not be as aware of how intensive the Gaokao track is. In other words, some admission officers give an edge in admission to students who are, for all intents in purposes, not in school their senior year and may not be close to the top students in the school. A student who gets in to Beida or Tsinghua has done something far harder than getting into an Ivy or Stanford or MIT. The acceptance rate for students who apply to the most elite schools in the US is between 5%-10%. The acceptance rate to get into the Chinese equivalent of Ivy level schools is about 1/7000.Once again Jordan puts it well:If the school does NOT have an international program, and they're providing these wishy washy (but not sinister) transcripts, then this school's students have probably taken more real classes (and more difficult classes) than those in the fancy international programs. Simply by virtue of the students being in a Gaokao-curriculum school, it means they're mastering extremely difficult academic material. We can't say that for some of these "elite" schools with international programs and AP classes.Note: the Chinese government is changing the education system to place more emphasis on Chinese subjects and cutting out some of the ‘international programs. It will affect some of the ‘international’ programs offered but in what way is still uncertain.) Jordan summarized the reasons behind the change and how it might affect students:“The new legislation has two edges: 1) promote nationalism, 2) consolidate and centralize education-related graft to approved parties. This falls directly in line with much of this government administration's recent actions ("tigers and flies"). I believe that schools will still be able to retain the existing systems for helping students with transcripts and Letters of Recommendation, however.” Colleges need to be aware of these changes and need to keep updated about other initiatives.Here is another trend in admission that affects international students from China (and other places too). In the last several years the number of students who have been offered admission to the most elite colleges and universities who are attending secondary schools outside their country has increased. Students who have left China or Korea (the two biggest sources of international students coming to the US during high school), seem to be getting an edge in admission. On the surface this makes sense given what I have written above. The transcripts of students in China are suspect and so are many other things and those who attend schools in the US, UK, Australia, Singapore etc. attend schools that educators trust. The parents in China have noted this, so many have followed suit and sent their children abroad at an earlier age. This has helped many private schools that have had problems enrolling enough full paying domestic students. On the face of it this all seems like good news. But once again there are underlying factors that complicate this issue.As noted, many of the best students in China are enrolled in the Gaokao track. A goodly portion of the students who are going abroad are doing so not just because they know schools trust their transcripts but also because they face a lower level of competition than back home. I am not the only one who has noticed this. Terry Crawford, whose article on Chinese education in the Atlantic Magazine should be mandatory reading, puts the issue this way when I asked him about it in an interview:There is one thing I would note, however: we continue to be impressed at how time in the U.S. for high school does not necessarily make a top candidate, or even a student with adequate English. Many go to the U.S. because they did not do well on the high school entrance exam, and parents see high school in the U.S. as another bite at the apple. If a student is able to get into a top high school in China, my sense is that many will go—a student who legitimately gets into Renda Fuzhong, Nanjing Foreign Language School or Beijing No. 4 has already indicated that they are in the upper echelon of high school students in China, so turning down the chance to go to one of the top high schools is not something to be taken lightly. In China, there is a greater national awareness of its top high schools—much greater than in the U.S. The “going to the U.S. high school for a second chance” is of course not every student—we interview many top students who are applying to top boarding schools in the U.S.—but it is a significant percentage.Parents who have noticed that their child has not scored well enough to get in to a key high school may send their child abroad to get a second chance to get into a top US school. I would also add that there are many parents who are doing the same thing even with some students who attend top high schools in China. These are the students whose grades on the bulletin boards do not top the class. In other words, there is evidence that they will not have a good shot at getting into top schools in China. If it appears that I am saying these students are not great this is anything but accurate. I know many students from China who have finished school in Singapore, the UK and the US who are among the most impressive I have ever met (I feature a number of interviews with students like this on my blog). But I have also met some who were only marginally prepared to converse in English and who do not have the same overall strengths as some of the top Gaokao students I have met and interviewed. I fear that some exceptional students who may not have quite enough money to support international education for more than four years will be overlooked because they attend a Chinese national school. I have known students like this. All this leads me to ask these questions:Are we being fair to individual students or are we making assumptions about groups and schools and letting that affect our decisions? What this means is that in effect, colleges and universities are just not sure about so many parts of the application from students applying within China that they are not taking any risks. Should they, or are there ways to reduce the risks?RecommendationsMost selective schools in the US require recommendations, sometimes as many as 3. In China, teachers who are Chinese nationals rarely write recommendations. Many do not speak English and this adds an additional layer to getting a letter. More importantly, Selection to a university there consists, as I have mentioned, of a single score on a single test, the Gaokao, so they do not see it as their job to write recommendations for US schools. In addition, many of the teachers do not want their top students to go abroad. It isn’t that they are anti American (although there may be some that are). Instead, secondary schools are ranked in China based upon their placement of students to top universities in China. (It is not that much different at secondary schools around the world.) If a number of top students from the school opt out of applying to top schools in China in order to go instead to the US or other destinations, then it can then hurt the school’s ranking. This will have a ripple effect on salaries, job security etc.). Suffice it to say, that Chinese nationals who are teachers do not often write recommendations.So what is a student to do? In some cases, the student writes the recommendation and gets the teacher to sign it. At least in this case the teacher has seen the recommendation. Is a recommendation like this a fraudulent document? If the teacher agrees with what the student has written why would it be fraud? In other cases the student has someone else write the recommendation and send it, sometimes with the school’s tacit approval and sometimes not.AgentsFor those not familiar with what goes on with students around the world the term agent may sound a bit like Hollywood. In some ways this is not all that far off the mark as some agents help students play a role that has little or nothing to do with who they really are. Terry Crawford thinks that as many as 90% of students applying to schools in China use agents. He has lots of stories about how they try to “help’ students get accepted to great school but he is far from alone. Agents are endemic to the process in China but they play an increasingly important role in many other countries too. Whether it is India, Korea, Panama, or the UK there are agents everywhere. In the US there are agents too, but they go under a different name—private counselors. What these people do is to help students through the application process. How they do this varies tremendously in part based on where they are and in part based on the expertise and ethical approach of the agent. The number of stories of unethical agents in some parts of the world is nearly endless. These agents that manufacture recommendations, create false transcripts and write essays are the ones who give the whole profession a bad name. While there may be a higher percentage of agents like this in some parts of the world there are people like this everywhere. Some charge huge amounts of money others just a few hundred dollars, but all of them represent an obstacle to admission officers trying to discover the real student. Because of their egregious actions they are the ones who give people the impression that the whole system is corrupt.I know a number of people who help students around the world who are ethical and committed to helping students find great choices. Many of these people are former admission officers or former secondary school counselors. They bring with them experience but also a firm adherence to the rules and regulations outlined by NACAC and IECA. Families hear some that of the agents guarantee admission to certain schools (the agents charge an up front fee and then get a bonus if the student gets into to certain ‘guaranteed’ schools that are often highly selective). Many of the disreputable agents are not all that good at what they do and that is why they end up being outed by the schools and the press. Many of the best professionals keep a low profile and guide students well but don’t even think about guaranteeing admission or creating contracts with bonuses. I do not think anyone really knows how many students work with bad agents and how many work with good ones but the fact is that in certain parts of the world agents are simply a part of the admission process, whether schools like it or not. The ones who do things right are not often given the press they deserve nor are they given much outward support from colleges and universities. Since they charge money for their services they are seen as contributing to the inequality of access between those families that can pay for help from those that can’t. I think if more outward support was given to these professionals, then some of the issues that go on with those who will do anything to get a student accepted would decrease, at least a bit.In China many high schools do not have college counselors so it is not surprising that families are searching for people to help them through the complicated maze of applying to schools in the US and elsewhere. In a country that is exam driven the idea of holistic admission in which essays, activities, and other non-quantifiable factors play a role is ‘foreign’ in every sense of the word. To condemn families for seeking help seems shortsighted and culturally unaware. Terry has some great things to say about how US schools, wittingly or unwittingly, drive some of the things that happen across the world:First, almost all students work with agents. It is the air that the educational prep community in China breathes. Some agents are ethical. Some care about the students. There are some great schools with educators who care. But everyone should know that the incentives set up by the U.S. admission system encourage unethical—or at least unsavory--behavior. At a minimum, it has created a high school system that offers “international” programs that are essentially test prep factories. Students cram for the tests, and the agents take care of all of the other details.Students in China taking a testTestingIf stories about unsavory agents appear frequently in the media, they pale in comparison to the number of stories about cheating going on by students on the SAT in Asia. I won’t rehearse in any depth all the people to point at to blame for the cheating but the list in pretty comprehensive: the testing prep companies that use sophisticated techniques to let students know what questions from prior tests will be on the current test, the families and students that pay for people to help them get access to answers, and even the College Board for its decision to recycle old tests through a part of the world that has every old question catalogued.These stories have encouraged many around the world to categorize the majority of students from China as cheaters and while there is cheating going on, those who really know the students and the education systems there understand that the stories have blown this out of proportion and in doing so have hurt all the students applying to selective schools outside of China. For students who have lived and breathed a testing culture from birth, doing well on standardized tests that are, by the standards of the Gaokao and other national exams, is no great feat. I say this having data to back it up. I did a great deal to make sure every student I admitted to the university I worked for had not done anything ethically problematic. The students who enrolled at my university from China had, as a group, the highest GPAs of any group of students who enrolled. The average GPA at their university was over 3.8, far above the typical student GPA of 3.1. These students are among the most impressive students I have met in over 30 years in education. The median SAT Math SAT II score for enrolling students from China was 800. I have known many students from China who feel that anything but an 800 on the Math test is a failure. In a system that accelerates students in math far past what is typical in the US this should not be shock.Try this thought experiment: Start with a smart student who is used to preparing for tests and then put them in a summer program to prep for the SAT for 8 weeks in which they do nothing but work on the test for up to 12 hours a day. It should not come as a surprise they would do well on every portion of the test. Terry Crawford says much the same thing:“There may be a significant amount of fraud with regard to standardized tests, but I think it is more likely that students in China do well simply because of the emphasis upon cramming for the tests”.Both Terry and I agree that the top students in China do not need to cheat on the SAT. For thousands of these students putting in endless hours of prep in addition to being highly motivated and smart means they don’t need to in order to score well above 2000 without using anything remotely close to cheating. Unfortunately, those who read the popular press don’t hear this part of the story. The students who are cheating are, frequently, not the top students, but those who need to get “good” scores in order to appear like a strong student.I have to add that I believe that there are some colleges and universities that do not do enough investigation of their applicants to determine if they are manufactured by agents, given answers to the SATs and have transcripts that are doctored. The students they enroll, by the stats at any rate, are good, and this helps the school's profile. In addition, they also pay full fees. The expectation that students have to submit things like recommendations when some countries or schools do not have the capacity to generate these documents places families and students in a difficult ethical position. In other words, the schools in the US are not without some blame for some of the problems.SummaryIf transcripts, recommendations, essays, test scores are all subject to question, then this creates what many would call a justifiable doubt in the minds of admission officers and those who read the popular press about the students. The question is then whether every student from these places should, in effect, be looked at as guilty until proven innocent. And there are some who believe that the answer to this question is yes.Terry Crawford puts it this way:“In fact, I think admission officers should begin their assessment thinking that a lot of the applications are not accurate. Absent some outside verification—by a guidance counselor they trust.”Does this mean I believe that admission officers are colluding behind closed doors to exclude students from China? There are some who believe this. I actually don’t but I still believe that there is discrimination going on. This may seems like a contradiction but it isn’t. The science to back up unconscious bias is, to me, persuasive. https://www.gv.com/lib/unconscious-bias-at-workThere are many documented cases of people treating people of different races or backgrounds unfairly without being aware of it. Rather than get into a long scientific defense of this (I leave it to the published research to prove this) I will instead simply ask what seems a couple of pretty simple questions.Do you think you could be objective about a student when you have been told that most of the information you have been given is false or at the very least misleading or inaccurate?If you have been told that you should approach these students with suspicion from the outset do you think you could be objective about their applications?Perhaps there are people who think they can do this, but the science is there to say that this in not possible. We all have cognitive biases of many sorts. We may believe we are being objective when making many decisions, but the evidence is there from neuroscience and psychology to demonstrate we make most decisions with a mix of emotion, previous experience, and what the scientists call priming. http://onlyconnectparke.blogspot.com/2014/07/you-think-you-are-smart-so-did-i.htmlMy contention is that most who have read about what is going on in some parts of the world are primed to believe that any student who applies from these places is suspect and as such may have to be even better than everyone else in order to stand out to be offered admission to a highly selective university or college.If I am right about this, then this means that there are thousands of students applying to schools who are being judged more harshly than others. What this also means that students who have done everything right may be negatively assessed because they have been grouped in with those who are not doing everything right.Since I have already given my own personal experiences with students from China I want to end this examination of the worst aspects of international admission by letting a student make his case.Jerry applied to highly selective schools in the US this past admission season. Jordon Dotson brought him to my attention as he has said in no uncertain terms he is one of the top 5 students he has ever known. Given that Jordan's former students populate places like Stanford, Oxford, Harvard etc. this is high praise indeed, and given that I know and trust Jordan, I believe him. Jordan put me in touch with Jerry and I asked him a few questions about cheating before admission decision were released. Instead of giving a few short answers he wrote a compelling essay. I cannot quote it all but these words are ones that should be a part of any discussion about how to treat students from China:Objectively, I didn’t cheat on any of my tests. I prepared on my own without the help of any training centers or tutors, and certainly didn't have any leaked question sets. Materials that helped me, like Princeton Review and previously released problems sets, were my own choices. I can say that I deserve the scores I got. Whether or not I get an offer from my dream school, I earned my score…Subjectively, however, I can’t guarantee that the cheating didn’t affect me. After all, admissions is competitive. Spots are already limited for international students. On the one hand, if Admission Officers and schools ignore the leaking and cheating, and continue basing decisions on the premise that SAT scores accurately assess students’ English and logical abilities, my competitors with irregularly high scores would take my spots.On the other hand, if the AOs take the leaking seriously, especially in how they consider Chinese students, then I’m suddenly a member of the cheating group. It lowers my chance to get into all schools. In this way it doesn't matter if I cheated or not, because other people's cheating harms my own application…Every individual is different; everyone can make her own choice regardless of her nationality. I choose not to cheat so don’t call me a cheater. If what Mr. Muth says is true, that AOs are “primed...to interpret students from these countries as dishonest,” then I'm primed to picture these officials as racists.Do you question Jerry’s logic? If so, in what way? Has he ‘earned” what he says in his last sentence? Why or why not?Some students feel they get hurt by playing by the rules. And I believe they are right. I ask these questions not just to be provocative but also to underscore that all too often I hear people lump all students from China applying to schools into simplistic categories: cheaters, test taking machines, rich etc. If you think Jerry is an outlier I do not think this is accurate either. In preparation for this story I have talked, mostly in person, to over 50 students from China about these issues. I know them well and they too have done things ethically. All of them believe that there is discrimination against Chinese students and Asians as a group, at least in part due to people’s belief that they are less than ethical and prone to cheat. Clearly I am not saying that a lot of cheating and use of unsavory agents does not go on. What I am saying is that some of the best students who are not involved in doing things the wrong way are being hurt and that there needs to be more of an effort on the part of colleges to distinguish individuals in the admission process.And Jerry? He was turned down at his top choice school even though he has great grades, a top recommendation from a US citizen who knows him, a wonderful essay (I have read it) and outstanding activities that he genuinely did. His SAT score was not above 2250 but it was quite strong. His top choice admits well above 25% of the applicants…SolutionsI don’t pretend to have solutions to solve what is a huge set of problems. I will, however, offer some advice from the experts I have already quoted and then add a few of my own that I hope will at least encourage discussion among educators, families and students.I began this article by quoting Karin Fischer’s NY Times article that raised many of the issues I have addressed. I thought it would be helpful to get an update from her about what she thinks has changed and what people can do to improve the situation. She said many things during out talk but here are a few I want to highlight:Karin:Things have changed since the New York Times piece. Back then many people did not know about many of the things going on in China. Now it is a big issue and it may be that the pendulum has started to swing back. Back then many in admission were naïve about the practices, in some cases willfully so. Now there are many who may have reacted too strongly in the other direction thinking that Chinese students are by and large paying for agents who write essays and alter transcripts.I doubt that many in admission would want to believe that they have a form of confirmation bias when it comes to evaluating students. It is hard. They do not want to be naive but they do not want to go too far in the other direction.As for solutions, admission people need to spend more time on the ground developing relationships with schools and counselors. Admission officers can learn to trust the school, the counselors and the students, but this may hurt a student in a third tier city who goes to a school that won’t get visited and wont get looked at in the same way.Jordan echoes in a somewhat different way what Karin has said schools can do:Teaching colleges that don't come over here are missing the boat. I can't tell you how many times a school like Wheaton College has sent a quirky, talkative, happy person to a college fair and I've had two dozen students tell me within hours how much they love that school and now want to apply there early. The kids are starving for real, tangible, emotional experience with individual schools.Terry also underscores the importance of admission officers:The international admission officer has a unique opportunity to craft a process that is not only fair but that also impacts high school curricula in China and elsewhere. It is not an exaggeration to say that we are witnessing one of the greatest migrations in history, where hundreds of thousands of top students in the world’s second richest country are voting with their feet (and dollars) to enjoy the benefits of a western education. The college prep process in China will reflect whatever admission officers value, and as a result the admission requirements for international students will reverberate deep into the high schools of China and other countries. I think it is safe to say that change and social advancement via the admission process for U.S. students is more incremental. In contrast, just a handful of international admission officers at a few top schools can make decisions which benefit secondary students in countries all around the world.All three underscore the importance of those in admission as having a significant role to play in making things better. All of them encourage greater communication between the colleges and the schools. This may sound like common sense in the world of admission but I am not so sure. A number of schools have cut back travel to China because they receive so many applications they have diverted resources and staff to other parts of the world. At one level this makes sense, but if admission people really want to effect positive change then they should travel to schools, develop relationships with the counselors and officials, sit in on classes and talk with the students-- not just in a formal information session-- but one to one if possible. What I propose is that schools increase their budgets to recruit in China, to spend more time in more cities and to make the time work to the benefit of the school, the students and the education system as a whole.My other suggestion is based on my personal experience working with students coming from China since the time the first undergraduates began to apply to US schools. Overall, I have interviewed many hundreds of students from China. I can say that these interviews made a huge difference in my ability to assess the ‘soft skills’ of students and made it easy to determine a student who had conversational fluency in English rather than just a high SAT or TEOFL score.At present, very few colleges and universities in the US use interviews to help make admission decisions. I would encourage them to consider instituting interviews as a part of the evaluation process --at least in certain parts of the world. It will help admission people get to know individual students but it will also help to improve the quality of the students the schools enroll. In addition, it will keep the agents who are unscrupulous out of the this part of the process and send a message to officials, parents and students that schools are looking for more than test scores and full payers. Generating trust among all stakeholders will improve things-- of this I am sure.There are many schools that cannot do interviews for budget reasons. They do not have the staff to interview all the applicants who would want an interview. Given this, I would propose that schools use the services that businesses like Initial View and Vericant provide. These businesses conduct the interviews and sent both the video of the interview and an assessment to the schools themselves. Some may think I am suggesting this because Terry runs Intial View. I know Terry well and know how committed he is to giving students a chance to present themselves as they really are. I also know the leadership at Vericant too and I fully support their ethical mission. They will help schools enroll students who will graduate and do well not just in the classroom but as a contributing member of the community. They will help find students who ‘fit’.Before either of these businesses existed I instituted an interview program at the university I worked for. I actually used current students from China to do the interviews after giving them intensive training. This accomplished two things. The enrolled students spent far more time talking with the prospective students than an admission officer has time for. The enrolled students evaluated not just the prospective students. English abilities but also their overall profile. Some of the student interviewers wrote up 3 pages of remarks. They did far more than most in admission could ever do. In addition, the student interviewers served as ambassadors for the school. They helped recruit students, not in an overt way, but by simply being a resource. Zinch wrote a white paper on my effort at about the time they did the research on agents. I mention this, as I have been supportive of interviews long before I met anyone from Vericant or IntialView. I see how their model can be a low cost alternative for schools and families and believe that anything that adds the human touch to each applicant will demonstrate what schools say is their mission: to give each individual student a chance to make a case for themselves that extends beyond numbers, gets beyond stereotypes and biases, and looks to create a vibrant class of unique men and women.School use the term ‘fit’ all the time, but I am not sure how many schools determine how well a student from China will fit by looking mostly (or almost completely) at a set of scores a transcript and some recommendations that may or may not be accurate. The schools who take the time to get to know the students who are applying will also diminish the importance and power of unscrupulous agents too. Trust will be established and relationships will flourish. None of what has been proposed here is asking schools to invest huge sums of money. Instead, most of the things that will help reduce fraud and mismatches have far more to do with time and interest rather than money. Looking at each student for what he or she can bring is what many went into education to promote. I hope that some will push the leadership of their offices and schools to permit a more personalized approach to admission in China and in other locations around the globe too.A much shorter version of this piece was first published in Nacac's Journal of College Admission.I would like to thank Nacac for asking me to write the article and for giving me permission to post the longer version here.