My ArcMap experience & Potential and Pitfalls of GIS

ArcMap is generally a user friendly software. It bares striking similarity to some other software used by the publishing industry such as Adobe In-Design and Page-Maker. The software developers have probably deliberately done so to make it easy for publishers to use the software. However, the instructions on the ArcMap tutorial are sometimes confusing as it sometimes does not match up with the software we’re using. It took me quite a while to figure out what’s going and familiarise myself with the software as a result.

Geographic Information System (GIS) is an extremely powerful tool for dissemination of information. It takes advantage of the fact that humans are far better at understanding pictographs than just words and numbers. It has a great deal of potential in enabling both the government and the citizen to make better decisions and inferences based on the vast amount of real time information available. GIS also stores historical data, making it an excellent tool for predicting future trend and consequences based on current and past changes. 

However, GIS has its pitfalls; GIS can be both used to inform and confuse. GIS works the best with accurate data. Due to the large amount of data presented in GIS, it is inevitable that some of the data stored may be incorrect or corrupted (sometimes on purpose). It is often very hard to find and identify these corrupt data. Another pitfall of GIS is that GIS is ultimately dependent on technology, which may not be reliable. While this may not seem to be an issue as GIS was not available at all in the past, the increasing reliance on GIS for both business and leisure have certainly made this a major issue.  

In my two years of service in the military, I’ve came to the realisation that Murphy’s Law (Anything that can go wrong will go wrong) definitely applies in GIS when I went into the field for an exercise with no maps (by order). It was a 3 day mission to test the effectiveness of Singapore’s new network centric warfare system whereby we were given tablet computers which gave updated real time information on ‘enemy’ positions. Perhaps due to the high heat and humidity, each of the 10 hour battery lasted only for 4 hours. I have to use hand drawn maps in the end. It is a sobering situation that people today have lost much of their map reading and navigational skills due to advancements in GIS technology. I think that the ability for a person to be able to navigate instinctively on a traditional map is extremely important. However, there is a great deal of potential of GIS with advancements in technology and its benefits cannot be ignored.