The Foreign Service Journal, January 2007

n the early morning of Oct. 8, 2005, thousands of Pakistanis were shaken out of their beds as a 7.6 magnitude earthquake struck Central Asia, cen- tered just outside Muzaffarabad. Many thou- sands lost their lives, and government leaders implored other nations for rescue support and assistance. United States government agencies, including the Department of State, responded promptly. Answers to critical questions about the condition of infra- structure, location of affected populations, existence of assets and the distribution of State personnel with skills applicable to support the relief and assistance efforts were crucial for deployment of our resources. Coordination between organi- zations was important and progress on our efforts had to be monitored in the course of organizing personnel and supplies as critical issues continued to arise. This scenario is reminiscent of many others, including the devastating Asian tsunami crisis of Dec. 26, 2004, and, more recently, the Indonesian earthquake of May 26, 2006. Foreign policy and diplomatic activities are intrinsically asso- ciated with information tied to a locality, region, country or larger area. In disasters, a quick, visual situation analysis such as an annotated map or “common operational picture” is crit- ical for understanding where and how to best apply assets and coordinate with other organizations. State personnel assess many other situations and issues that may affect U.S. national interests, including current con- ditions and trends in the economic, agricultural and political fields. Of course, security concerns, boundary negotiations and humanitarian issues, such as trafficking in persons and disaster response, and the ability to track commodities, are all critically important. Monitoring environmental data to ensure compliance with international treaties is another example. Within the department the management of grants, visa applications, personnel and physical assets — all tied to a location — is routine. In all of these activities, a “smart map” is a potentially invaluable tool — a picture worth more than the proverbial thousand words. Geographic information system technolo- gies capable of integrating, storing, editing, analyzing, dis- playing and regularly updating important textual information to a specific location or region are already in use in many fed- eral agencies and international organizations. At the State Department, however, use of GIS systems remains limited — despite widespread interest and convincing testimony of the benefits. The Power of GIS We are reminded of the power of mapping and visualiza- tion systems every time we consult mapquest.com ( Mapquest ) or maps.google.com ( Google Maps ), Web sites that display streets and addresses selected by the user. These online tools also can display information from various databases such as “nearby hotels” or “shoe stores” on the same map by placing labeled icons on the map. The user can click on the icon and obtain more specific information such as the address, a telephone number and other relevant infor- mation, including hypertext links to other related material. Such mapping tools are in regular use through simple Internet browsers. Some sites such as maps.google.com, earth.google.com and local.live.com also allow users to display satellite imagery for recognition of features and landmarks, espe- J A N U A R Y 2 0 0 7 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 37 L OCATION , L OCATION , L OCATION ... G EOGRAPHIC I NFORMATION S YSTEMS ARE POWERFUL TOOLS FOR VISUALIZING COMPLEX PROBLEMS . B UT , DESPITE WIDESPREAD INTEREST , THE TECHNOLOGY IS STALLED AT S TATE . I B Y C AROL C HRISTIAN Carol Christian served as a science fellow at the State Department from 2003 to 2006. She is an astrophysicist at Hubble’s Space Telescope Science Institute. Her expertise is in information technology, visualization, education tech- nology, instrumentation and studies of stellar populations. She thanks the many individuals in several bureaus who assisted and collaborated on demonstrations and consult- ing on GIS within the department.