GIS Participation Assignment # 1: How is GIS used in the real world?

For this assignment, I read about a very interesting application of GIS Network Analysis, which could be expanded and applied to many needs.  As we learned in Intro to GIS class, ArcMap Network Analysis is well-developed for use by all kinds of motorists, and especially useful to emergency personnel such as EMT’s, the police, and firefighters to plan the most efficient route among any number of destinations or stops.  While planning out a route, it incorporates various forms of impedance to traffic flow, such as stop signs, speed limits and one-way streets. 

The authors of this article realized that people in wheelchairs face impedance every day, in the form of stairs, rough pavement and curbs, as they try to navigate around their cities.  Their goal was to develop a mapping application to help people in wheelchairs easily plan the best routes.  The researchers manually digitized the center-lines of sidewalks in the city of Northampton, UK, then incorporated DEM's to obtain slope for separate segments of the routes.  At this point, Event Tables were developed from field work, which measured surface quality (starting and rolling resistance), and the presence of any type of obstacle that might frustrate a wheelchair user:  steps, gutters, raised manhole covers, fixed furniture, narrow sidewalks, and several more.   This latter part of the field survey was actually carried out in the company of disabled volunteers in wheelchairs, who helped the researchers identify impediments.  

The application was developed in ESRI’s ArcView (the precursor to ArcGIS for Desktop Basic) and featured a user-friendly interface.  The routes were calculated by considering impedance or “cost” with the network analysis environment as well as user physical ability and type of wheelchair.  Two modes of route selection were offered via dialogue boxes: a single best route from one location to another, or all wheelchair-suitable routes from a starting point.

The authors tested their map application with 18 wheelchair users in that city and got very favorable reviews about its usefulness and clarity. 

This type of network analysis would be very useful in any area where pedestrians need to navigate, especially tourists, for mapping restaurants, bus stops, presence or absence of sidewalks, etc.  These data can also be crowd-sourced, for  example, with OpenStreetMap, which we read about in our Cartography class. 

This article can be accessed at this link: Mapping for Wheelchair Users: Route Navigation in Urban Spaces . 
Source:  Beale, L., Field, K., Briggs, D., Picton, P., and Matthews, H. (2006). Mapping for Wheelchair Users: Route Navigation in Urban Spaces. The Cartographic Journal, Vol. 43 (No. 1), pp. 68–81.

(I have placed the PDF in my UWF I:\ drive because it was downloaded from my local library’s EBSCO database, for which access is limited to local card holders.)