Delivered to 16-17 year olds (Year 12) at the King's School in Ottery St Mary, Devon, on 11 December 2019. The talk was hosted by the maths department so I included a section on spatial maths, but it's equally applicable to geography students. The talk was well received and led to lively Q&A - feel free to steal the slides for your own school!

1. Geographical
Information
Systems (GIS)
Dr Thierry Gregorius FRGS
Principal GIS Consultant, Exprodat/Getech Group
The King’s School – Maths & Geography
Ottery St. Mary, 11 December 2019
Views expressed are entirely personal and do not necessarily reflect those of Exprodat Consulting Ltd or Getech Group plc
Spatial maths for a spatial world

2. Geography
ComputingMaths
GIS is also known as geospatial or spatial analytics, location intelligence, geomatics, etc.
GIS

3. GIS &
Mapmaking
Applications Spatial Maths Careers
CONTENTS

4. What is a GIS? Every School in the South West
GIS questions:
How many schools per
square mile?
Which schools within
radius X? etc.

5. GIS = intelligent maps, spatial data and analysis

6. You don’t
need a GIS
to do GIS
‘stuff’
e.g. Instagram geotags: pin photos to locations

7. Exercise: Sketch a rough map of the world!
1 minute

8. Flat Map / Round Earth

10. animated GIF

11. Equal areas on the Earth
(Mercator projection)

12. Gall-Peters
Equal Area
Projection

13. Equal areas on the Earth
(Gall-Peters projection)

14. Latitude & Longitude X & Y
OS Grid x=92050 y=92553
Y (Northing)
X (Easting)e.g. Exeter Cathedral
50°43'21"N, 3°31'50"W
How do you transfer coordinates from the Earth to a map?

15. Mercator Projection Gall-Peters Projection
x = Easting
y = Northing
φ = latitude
λ = longitude
With trigonometry!

16. Applications

17. Your phone!
Photo by Sebastian Hietsch on Unsplash

18. Transport & trade modelling
(road, air, shipping)

19. Weather and climate

20. City
modelling
e.g.
viewshed
analysis

21. Environmental
monitoring
e.g. land
cover analysis
with
AI/machine
learning

22. Intelligence
gathering
e.g. car park
monitoring for
economic activity
analysis

23. Humanitarian mapping support
Mapaction.org

24. Election maps & analysis

25. Flood risk modelling

26. Historical maps
e.g. for environmental risk analysis

27. Earth models across geological time
e.g. for oil & minerals exploration
Globe reconstruction through the last 300 million years © 2018 Getech Group plc
Video clip can also be viewed at: https://twitter.com/Thierry_G/status/1059858721784954880

28. ApplicationsMany more applications…

29. So what about the maths?

30. Environmental modelling
Spatial interpolation
Change monitoring e.g. floods
e.g. Gaussian edge detection
of satellite images
Route optimisation e.g. for online deliveries
Travelling Salesman Problem (TSP)
– linear integer programming
Formulae from Wikipedia

31. Graphic and formulae from The Mathematics of GIS by Wolfgang Kainz
Spatial relations
Topology
Map overlay analysis
Intersect, union, buffer etc.
e.g. impact of noise
& visual pollution

32. Map projections
Trigonometry
Data collection
Error/accuracy estimation:
statistics & calculus
Formulae from Wikipedia and Geodesy by Wolfgang Torge
Positioning & navigation
Matrix algebra
Differential geometry

33. Careers

34. Some jobs
involving GIS
& Geospatial geographer
IT programmer
town planner
surveyor
geologist
data scientist
ecologist
civil engineer
web designer
logistics planner
risk analyst (insurance)
graphic designer
map publisher
archaeologist

35. 21st century
challenges
E.G. CLIMATE SOLUTIONS
• Carbon capture & storage
• Circular economy
• Empowerment of women
• Energy efficiency
• Geothermal
• Marine regeneration
• Microgrids
• Reforestation and soil restoration
• Regenerative agriculture
• Renewable energy

36. The world needs you
to do great things
with GIS
The King’s School, Ottery St Mary, Devon, 11 December 2019
Views expressed are entirely personal and do not necessarily
reflect those of Exprodat Consulting Ltd or Getech Group plc.
THANK YOU

37. Image credits
hiclipart.com
unsplash.com
esri.com (incl. Kenneth Field for the Political Causeway election map)
National Geographic
Getech Group plc
Google & Bing image search – multiple websites (sorry, did not have
time to credit every individual image source)