Article Reflection No. 84 (1/13/2024)

Article:“The hero we've been waiting for is actually a map”

Reflection: 

In The Washington Post article “The hero we’ve been waiting for is actually a map”, the WP Creative Group describes the geographic information system (GIS), noting its global prevalent usage across sectors ranging from climate sustainability to public health. According to the article, these varying uses specifically include new humanitarian aid transportation routes, clearing dangerous landmines, promoting sustainability through the wind power industry, and spreading public health awareness through COVID-19 case maps. Ersi, a company that creates the global geographic data software, has an especially critical role in this cartographic process. 

According to my AP Human Geography class, GIS is a computer system that preserves, shares, and displays geographical data, and is used for geographic information science (GIScience), the study of geographic data. I believe this field of study is crucial in order to gain critical thinking skills. GIS provides a visual that helps society understand the world around them in different scales. As mentioned in the article, geographic maps help bring people together and make decision-making more efficient. I truly believe that humanity significantly benefits from geographic data and their corresponding maps.