RISE Video Transcription 5 (Rick Bunch)
[Music]
RB: We look at why things are located where they are. Geographic information science is
really the study of the spatial aspects of human and natural phenomena and underneath,
underlying that are the technology such as geographic information systems, remote sensing,
image processing, GPS, and all the other kind of tools that are oriented to gathering
geographically referenced data.
[Music]
RB: One of the projects that we’re working on currently is mapping broadband availability
for North Carolina and it is part of the federal broadband mapping initiative, and so the idea
is that everybody should have access to broadband for educational reasons and economic
reasons. It sort of levels the playing field including rural areas, which tend to lack access to
broadband. Mathematics comes in, where we have to develop mathematical models for
those predictions, so these equations represent those behaviors with the radio wave as they
interact with the natural man-made features. And the macro-model, the purpose of that is to
predict broadband availability, make a map of those. And then we have a model of the
natural features on the earth’s surface, elevation for example, topography, the man-made
features, such as buildings. We can re-create three-dimensional images of the buildings
based on the data that we get. The next step is once you have a map of broadband access for
the entire state, what do you do with it? And one of the things is to increase adoption rates.
When you look at the areas that have broadband, but aren’t adopting for some reason, so you
create educational programs and you can use GIS to identify those areas, whether it be, um,
you can look at GIS and broadband availability in relation to education, income, or any other,
um, social demographic variables such as census data that comes into play and you can draw
out reasons why – is it income? Is it education? Is it just the fact that they’re unaware that
they have broadband availability in their location? You have to be able to dream, and dream
in a child-like manner. It is not, maybe not ignorance but it is sort of this naïve idea that you
can do anything and, um, not that I can do anything, but [laughs] I’m just saying that that
mentality it takes, um, to do those types of things because you really got to expand upon
what has been done and think in a way that is impactful and meaningful, and so some of
those ideas are really out there and anybody that does research in general has to be able to
sort of think in that way and be able to accept the idea that you’re going to be told no more
than once [laughs] and that one time you’re told yes is well worth all those times you were
told no.