Students at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU-Q)in Qatar are learning about the emerging field of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), an area with enormous potential within Qatar.
GIS professionals visualise multiple elements of geographical data concurrently. “It’s a way of making sense of big data,” says Chadi Aoun, associate teaching professor of information systems. “For instance, imagine looking where clinics are located within Qatar, and then plotting out where the people are who need access to those clinics. GIS can inform policy on where clinics should be located, closing service gaps and increasing rates of early diagnosis.”
Noor El Sakka, a junior in information systems, studied GIS in the new course offered in the fall of 2016: “GIS is a tool that helps you to find the problem, and once you can visualize the problem, you can make recommendations of ways to solve it.”
In the last semester, the students visited the Center for GIS to see the professional application of what they were studying.
