| Today was observed as World GIS Day, and here in Belize, Total Business Solutions Limited, one of the local leaders in graphical information systems, hosted its annual GIS expo. Students from primary, secondary, and vocational schools from all over the country traveled to the Princess Ramada Hotel in Belize City to learn about how the Government and major players in the country's industries are using the technology to improve the way they do business.
If you're not familiar with the term GIS, but if you own a smartphone, you're already using it. If you have the GPS activated, you can share your current location with other persons, and the phone can give you driving directions.
GIS simply goes the extra step of layering information on top of a map, so that patterns, such an outbreak in crime, or outbreak in a type of disease, can be identified, and proper response mechanisms can then be deployed.
So, to learn a little about how GIS is being put to use in Belize, 7News stopped by the expo. Here's what the organizers told us:
Loretta Palacio - Managing Director, TBSL
"The Primary purpose, Daniel, of this expo, is the share with the students, educators, and the general public about GIS, its uses in our daily lives and in education. The world is celebrating GIS Day today, and so, there is a map online, and if you click on the map, you'll see what's being done in Ireland, what is they're doing in Jamaica, what's been done in wherever - Venezuela, etc. So, this is our way of celebrating, having our partners, the exhibitors come out and show the students, show the educators, how GIS is being used in real-life, in Belize."
"We have a lot of data coming in and out. We use a lot of information every day. We go to the store. We go to the hospital. We're consuming data. We are also giving data. If we get sick, it's in a system. The Ministry of Health uses ArcGIS. The Government of Belize is on ArcGIS, using it for the different ministries for the work they do. And so, when our students come out of school, they need to have an understanding of the use of GIS in their field of work. But not only that, before they even come out of school is learning how GIS could help improve their studying, their learning in schools, helping the educators."
"We want to be able to see our students learning better. I don't think they should be learning the way we learn 25 years ago when it comes to a lot of the subject area, especially when it comes to the science of location - in ESRI, we say the science of where."
"Whenever you buy a device these days, you buy a phone there is a strong location element in the technology, correct? And so, this is where the world is."
Today is the 20th anniversary of World GIS Day.
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