Mapping Power: How GIS Is Shaping the World Around Us
From 600 B.C., when the ancient Babylonians scratched their province into clay tablets, to 2025, as you type an address into Waze, maps have remained a staple of humanity, enabling the dissemination of information and understanding of space for thousands of years (Andrews, 2016). This is no surprise, as maps visually represent geographic space, enabling us to navigate and explore the world in ways we never could otherwise. Maps have also facilitated the development of our contemporary society by guiding the intricately designed developmental plans and urban structuring necessary for sustaining a global population of over eight billion.
Yet, maps can do more than help us get from place to place and tell us where things are; they can unlock hidden relationships between seemingly unconnected variables through the layering and visualization of data in ways that produce meaningful results. Here lies the power of Geographic Information Systems (GIS). GIS is a framework for gathering, managing, analyzing, and visualizing spatial and geographic data. In other words, GIS translates specific location data into a map. But what does this mean?
Imagine you are trying to understand the effects of hurricanes on the city of Houston, Texas, to help distribute resources to the people who need them most. Using GIS, you can not only overlay pure hurricane touchdown data onto a basemap of Houston to see where hurricanes hit, but also take the analysis much deeper. By adding census tract
data that is publicly available in GIS software, you could consider factors like race and income in terms of disaster impacts. You could even visualize the distribution of households without access to a personal vehicle (i.e., the people stranded when an emergency
happens). Separately, all of these factors would be incredibly difficult to interpret. However, layered together, vulnerable populations can be highlighted rather than hidden, helping inform where resources can be distributed and truly help those who need it.
GIS is more than a tool; it's a lens allowing us to see the intersection of social, environmental, economic, and political conditions. Around the world, GIS is being used to track issues like deforestation, monitor disease outbreaks, improve public transportation, and fight environmental injustice.
For example, planners in California are working to address enhanced fire vulnerabilities and wildfire disasters by incorporating remote sensing tools and satellite imagery to craft thoughtful and data-backed disaster response plans, as well as helping inform the most effective placement of fire hydrants (IBM, 2023). But the applications are truly endless; it can unlock spatial relationships but also allow us to understand the dynamics of our world in ways we never thought possible.
Despite covering 70% of the Earth’s surface, only 23% of the seafloor has been mapped in detail, leaving much of our world quite literally in the dark (Ruby and Zelenak,
2022). However, GIS is allowing scientists to shine a light into the deep through the integration and analysis of data sources like sonar, satellite imagery, and field data, to create detailed maps of even the permanently dark depths of the ocean (ArcGIS, n.d.).
Thinking locally, GIS has immense applications for revealing vulnerabilities and helping direct informed planning. Through GIS analyses, the stark disparities of environmental risk in Orange County, (CA) are highlighted, with northern neighborhoods like Santa Ana, which are more likely to house lower-income and communities of color, facing higher levels of pollution density and fewer green spaces. Mapping tools like CalEnviroScreen use GIS to visualize these inequities, helping identify communities experiencing heightened vulnerability and working to give communities data to advocate for change (OEHHA, 2023). This is the foundation of what is referred to as critical cartography, a field that challenges the myth of maps as neutral tools and, instead, reveals how they can reflect and reinforce power structures (Cal Poly, n.d.). Historically, maps have been used to legitimize colonial expansion, erase Indigenous communities, draw red lines around communities of color, and prioritize development for the wealthy and white, all while obscuring the realities of space (Mitchell, 2018). Even today, mapping decisions–what gets included, excluded, or emphasized–can uphold systemic inequalities when not carefully examined.
But just as maps have been used as tools for control, they can also be used to liberate. GIS and critical cartography offer a powerful opportunity to create counter-maps, elevate community knowledge, and make data more accessible. As the methods become more collaborative and available, the future of mapping holds a transformative potential to represent the world as it is and help us shape a better future.
The global geospatial market, valued at approximately $452 billion in 2022, is projected to more than triple to $1.44 trillion by 2030, accelerating from a 14.6% growth rate to over 16% every year, a clear sign of its explosive role in shaping the future of technology, planning, and policy efforts (Kumar, n.d.). With over 80% of data collected today having a geographic component, from your food delivery app to climate models predicting sea level rise, GIS has truly become an essential tool for making sense of our interconnected world, bridging the gap between data, people, and the natural and built environment (Geraghty, 2024). Through a thoughtful approach, GIS can continue to become more than a framework for analysis but a catalyst for justice, resilience-building, and lasting change. .
Resources
Andrews, Evan. November 21, 2016. 8 Remarkable Early Maps. History.com.
IBM. Examples and uses of GIS. December 18, 2023.
Kumar, Sanjay. n.d. Advancing and augmenting USD 1.4 Trillion Geospatial Market by 2030. Geospatial
World.https://geospatialworld.net/gw-market-insights/advancing-augmenting-usd-1-4-trillion-geospati al-market-by-2030/#:~:text=The%20Global%20Geospatial%20Market%20Size,USD%201.44%20trillio n%20by%202030.
Ruby, Caitlyn and Zelenak, Georgianna. July, 2022. Seafloor Mapping. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. https://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explainers/mapping.html
ArcGIS. GIS for Ocean. n.d.. ESRI. https://oceans-esrioceans.hub.arcgis.com/
Geraghty, Este. April 9, 2024. Health GIS 101: Introducing the Geographic Approach. ESRI. https://www.esri.com/en-us/industries/blog/articles/health-gis-101-introducing-the-geographic-approac h#:~:text=With%2080%2D90%25%20of%20data,the%20vibrant%20life%20around%20you.
Cal Poly Robert E. Kennedy Library. Critical Cartography.
Mitchell, Bruce. March 20, 2018. HOLC “Redlining” Maps: The Persistent Structure of Segregation and Economic Inequality. NCRC.
https://ncrc.org/holc/#:~:text=The%20economic%20and%20racial%20segregation,have%20greater%20 economic%20inequality%20today.
OEHHA. May 1, 2023. CalEnviroScreen 4.0. State of California OEHHA.
US Government Accountability Office. N.d. GIS Diagram. National Geographic. https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/geographic-information-system-gis/
Applied Oceans Research Group. N.d. ArcGIS.
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