GIS is useful for finding social and environmental patterns in different geographical locations. Once spatially based data has been collected, it can be analyzed to find where things occur the most, why it occurs in these locations, and how these clusters affect other contextual data. All of these conclusions can be used to optimize where things should be located within cities, communities, or any other location under study. In this class, we looked at three areas of study which were drastically improved using GIS tools: landscape ecology, crime analysis, and health geography. These three areas of study are linked by the five “p”‘s: patterns, processes, places, people and perspectives, which we will examine further in this course.

Landscape ecology is the study of how landscape patterns affect the ecological processes within a relatively local environment. The response variables used in landscape ecology statistics are abundance, distribution, and process variables. Health geography combines genetics, individual lifestyle choices, and environmental factors to find statistically based conclusions regarding disease ecology, health care delivery and accessibility, and the interaction of environmental risk and community health. Finally, crime analysis using GIS results in a more efficient crime prevention force by analyzing crime patterns and trend correlations. Analysis of crime trends has given support to theories such as the social disorganization theory, the rational choice theory, and the broken windows theory. GIS is the best method for analyzing this type of information because it combines the spatial data collection with scientific analysis and the computer software to display all the information in an easy to digest way.