City College instructor Mono Simeone teaches students how to make a presentation map at a Geographic Information Systems workshop at the Downtown campus on Oct. 6. CLIVE WALKER / GUARDSMAN

By Graham Henderson
Staff Writer

City College is working to stay ahead of the technology curve by offering workshops in geographic information systems. The GIS Education Center at the Evans campus offers workshops as non-credit classes that meet once a week for two to five sessions.

The United States Geological Survey’s website describes GIS as a technology that collects and combines geographical data with other types of information, allowing the data to be studied in ways that would not be possible if it were simply viewed in a raw form.

“If you look at the information through a map you can see the phenomena,” GIS workshop instructor Mono Simeone said. “It’s problem solving, and it’s better decision making.”

The modern form of GIS technology was developed in 1962 by the Canadian Department of Forestry and Rural Development and became more mainstream in the 1980s as commercial companies introduced consumer-targeted software for GIS use. Today, some programs such as the Environmental Systems Research Institutes’s ArcGIS 9, one of the GIS programs taught in the workshops, are able to synchronize data from spreadsheets with maps, and then present a color-coded map to be studied. Web sites offer free downloads of maps and spreadsheets of data, like census reports, for GIS use.

Workshops of different levels are offered in two separate education tracts, Simeone said. One is focused on GIS use for non-profits, researchers and the general public; the other is geared to teach skills needed by technicians or professionals in the industry. The non-profit workshops focus on Google Earth, while the more advanced professional programs teach students the basics of ArcGIS 9.

Many public agencies that use GIS in their operations send their employees to City College’s GIS workshops. “We get a lot of people from [San Francisco] City and County,” Simeone said.

“Health is one of the great beneficiaries of GIS,” GIS Center Director Suzanne Korey said. “If you can look at the the Bayview district and see where the plume of diesel smoke goes, you can make data and facts to show that asthma is the direct result of putting our school bus yards in these places. It’s about evidence.”

City College student Jamon Franklin said that she was taking the GIS workshop mostly out of personal interest, but also because it would help her when searching for a job. “A lot of the environmental groups I’m looking at [working for] want you to know GIS,” she said.

In the near future, the GIS Education Center will focus on increasing student awareness of the workshops that are offered. More workshops are planned for the fall semester. A full schedule is available on the program’s website, www.ccsfgis.org. Ultimately, Korey said, she would like to see more integration of the GIS Education Center with City College’s geography department to possibly offer GIS courses for credit through the department. At this time the GIS Education Center is not planning to offer credit courses.