ArcGIS 10 Review: One new feature is a siren’s song for historians

Single User Purchase: $1500 or Basic Annual Subscription: $800

Check the www.esri.com website for multi-user and multiple extension pricing.

Advantages: If you have the data, you can map any temporal event.

Disadvantages: The software is complex and training is needed.
 

If you’ve considered learning ArcGIS but dismissed it because of the learning curve, version 10 could change all of that with one new feature: the ability to display temporal data. If London doctor John Snow had ArcGIS when he was mapping the cholera outbreak in his seminal 1854 work, he could have not only mapped the number of dead and their locations, but when they died.

 

For those of you who haven’t used the software before, here are some basics. If you want to map the pandemic of 1918, for example, using the Midwest as a point of focus, you first need data in either Excel or as comma-separated value (CSV) files to import into the software. The typical data will be based on death records that include name, age, sex, location, cause of death and date. In this instance, the pandemic swept through the region twice (1918 and 1919) and there may have been early indicators in 1917. As influenza was not a reportable disease prior to the pandemic, you may wish to expand your records to include the deaths listed as pneumonia in 1917. As this point, you can likely visualize three layers of information: 1917 pneumonia deaths, and 1918 and 1919 influenza deaths, displayed over the “basemap”. Basemaps are professionally drawn maps that come with the software. As the user, you are not redrawing the Midwestern section of the United States, you are adding data to a map that you select to best fit your needs.

 

Still, there is more that ArcGIS will allow you to include. Many of the deaths that occurred were soldiers at World War I training camps, so indicating the size and location of Army and National Guard cantonments is important as is the general population distribution. The result is a valuable and instructive map, but honestly, this could just be the starting point. Should you want to explore the possibility that ecosystem disruption may have led to the emergence of this infectious disease, you could overlay the path of the 1917 tornado that stayed on the ground for seven hours and ripped up over 310 linear miles of earth. Or what about the black dust storms? Many Camp Funston (Kansas) soldiers tied the influenza to horrific dust storms made worse by the fact that this one camp burned 9,000 tons of animal manure a month, leaving the unburied result to picked up by the winds. If you have the data, you can map it and conduct a thorough analysis.

 

Once complete, maps can be explored in layers via ArcReader, an ArcGIS product, but they can also be shared as finished images for classrooms, grant proposals, peer reviews or for press-quality printing. Additionally, animations can be created illustrating changes with virtual flybys, visually moving through study areas. 

 

Now that you are excited about the possibilities, we return to the learning curve. This is not a piece of intuitive, easy-to-use software. It is high-powered, professional software that requires training. The prerequisites that ESRI (Environmental Systems Research Institute) states for their ArcGIS software are “knowledge of Windows-based software for basic file management and browsing is required”. Yes, you do need that, and an online tutorial plus a book or maybe two. The good news is that you don’t need to learn every aspect of ArcGIS to functionally produce a map. The software is intended to meet the needs of many industries, and unless you also plan roads, conserve view sheds or calculate delivery routes, you don’t need to purchase or utilize all the extensions.

 

According to the ARC Advisory Group, ESRI was started in 1969 as company of land-use consultants and now has 43% of the global GIS market, so you are likely to find other users to collaborate with and software that has relevance for the long-term. Allow yourself the time to learn the software and the cartographic jargon and techniques, and you likely will be well-pleased with the results. As historians, we are nothing without dates. Now there is a desktop program to visually display that temporal data that is both captivating and instructive.