Jeffrey Osleeb, head of the geography department, says Geographic Information Systems (GIS) map how geographers work, and how geography students are taught.
He should know. Osleeb has used GIS extensively in his own career, in New York City and around the world.
Shortly after the World Trade Center fell on 9/11, firefighters picking through the rubble figured out their location in the changed landscape by consulting GPS and laptop images showing a 3-D model of what the site had looked like before the buildings were destroyed.
The images of the buildings, their footprints, and subterranean infrastructure were prepared by a geographic information center at Hunter College/CUNY co-founded by Osleeb, who came to UConn in 2005 to head the geography department in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
The images were critical in guiding the rescue effort on Sept. 11. Updated using laser technology in the days after the attack, they showed where in the rubble buildings had been, where there were craters, and where the ground was sinking. And they were accurate to within 18 inches.
Emergency response maps are just one application of geographic information systems, says Osleeb, an economic geographer and GIS expert. GIS is also an increasingly important planning tool.
Osleeb has used aerial photography and GIS tools to help community environmental activists in Brooklyn determine whether waste facilities with potentially hazardous waste were located too close to residential neighborhoods and schools and when they were last inspected.
He also developed a map for the entire city of New York, showing the routes of waste transfer trucks so that planners could look at ways to avoid accidents and possible toxic exposure, and a map showing where all the fire hydrants are – information the city previously did not have.
Osleeb has used GIS in a UNICEF-sponsored guinea worm eradication project in West Africa to locate where guinea worm infestations had idled agricultural production. And he has used remote sensing devices on a World Bank project in Nepal, where he rode an elephant into areas around a national park to find parcels of land that could be used to enlarge protected tiger habitats.
“Everything we do in geography today, GIS is behind it,” he says.
GIS, which he describes as melding computers with geographic tools such as maps, mathematical modeling, and statistical analysis, is increasingly part of the curriculum for geography students.
Osleeb’s Transportation Geography class last year analyzed the spaghetti-like network of Region 19’s 22 school bus routes, looking for the most efficient way to transport more than 1,000 students from Willington, Ashford, and Mansfield to E.O. Smith High School in Storrs.
Using data collected from Region 19, statistical analysis, and specialized transportation planning software, the students developed optimal bus routes – those with the least travel time and distance and the greatest efficiency in fuel consumption. (The routes have not been implemented; each town in Region 19 has maintained its own bus arrangements to date.)
Osleeb also worked on the Blueprint for Mansfield’s Children, preparing an assets map showing all area schools, child care facilities, bus routes, and parks.
Last summer, he was part of a group of UConn faculty who traveled to Ethiopia to help universities there solve that country’s water management and distribution problems.
Back at UConn, Osleeb is pursuing changes in geography class offerings that he believes could make the University a national leader in GIS education.
The geography department this year added a new BS degree in geographic information science. It is also in the process of obtaining approvals for an online master’s degree and an online graduate-level GIS certificate for people already working in the field.
Only 16 schools now offer an online GIS certificate and only three offer an online master’s in GIS.
The Department of Geography in CLAS currently has about 60 undergraduate majors and 20 master’s and Ph.D. students, many of whom have an interest in GIS.
The outlook for GIS-prepared graduates is strong, Osleeb says, noting that GIS is one of the three fastest growing industries in the U.S., and geospatial technology is one of 14 growth sectors in the U.S. labor market.
“All of our graduate students get jobs very quickly,” he adds.
