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Specialized Technology Maps Our Landscape

Watsonville, CALIF, - The central coast is surrounded by rolling hills nearly everywhere we look. We live among the most unique topography in the nation, and from our daily commutes to our weekend hikes all of this topography has to be mapped and analyzed to best connect point A to point B. This is where GIS comes into play.

"GIS stands for geographic informations systems, it's important because we use as a spatial tool for doing analysis and planning, especially mapping but certainly anybody who has been to google maps can turn on there house and see the street layers and that kind of stuff is GIS and that's used to find directions and that kind of stuff too," says GIS coordinator David Johnston.

And for natural disasters like the basin complex fire just a few months ago, GIS also plays a large role.

"What happens after a fire is a lot of material moves down off the slopes, a lot of debris and that sort of stuff and the problem is that we have our state highway one at the bottom of all of those slopes where that fire burned, and we're worried about, we know stuff is going to come down," says GIS specialist Andy Richardson.

So with a few known formulas and slopes of hills, GIS specialists like Andy Richardson can prepare for mother nature.

"GIS really is a tactical planning tool to see where fires are likely to go based on slopes, winds and fuels and that sort of stuff and you can almost think of it as a military kind of operation."