Tag Archives: map

Linking Geography and Data Can Help Fight Crime, Find Customers and Protect Nature By CATHERINE GREENMAN Companies use them to plan store locations, watchdog groups to track discrimination and law enforcement agencies to fight crime. Geographic information systems, as they are called, are increasingly ubiquitous computerized mapping programs that help corporations, private groups and governments make decisions. These G.I.S. programs work by connecting information stored in a computer database to points on a map. Information is displayed in layers, with each succeeding layer laid over the preceding ones, like transparent sheets on an overhead projector. The resulting maps often reveal trends or patterns that might be missed if the same information was presented in a spreadsheet. A series of slashings in a Brooklyn neighborhood several years ago, for example, first appeared to police investigators to have little in common with one another. But when their locations were displayed on a Read more…