Sam Anderson
Intro GIS
Assignment 1
1/25/07
While searching for GIS research related to ethanol use, I stumbled across an odd but intriguing
project at Kansas State University. The project does not seem to have a formal title, but its results were
used in several publications by the university's Food Safety and Security Program referring to it as a
"visualization and assessment tool." The study, conducted by Shawn Hutchinson, (assistant professor of
geography and director of K-State's GIS lab), John Harrington (professor of geography) and Lori
Emerson (graduate student), focuses on preparing for a serious outbreak of livestock disease. The group
collaborated with the state's Department of Health and Environment and the National Agricultural
Biosecurity Center (also located at K-State). The study was aimed at answering this question: if Kansas
officials suddenly need to dispose of a large number of dead livestock, where should they put the
carcasses?
That morbid topic requires a quick bit of background. The NABC was formed in 2002, in
response to post-9/11 fears about bioterrorism focusing on the U.S. food supply. Additionally, the
livestock industry in the U.S. keeps a constant eye on any potential disease outbreak, due particularly to
fears of mad cow disease, bovine tuberculosis, and the particularly contagious foot-in-mouth disease
(which has caused serious problems for the livestock industry in Britain). The GIS project aims to put in
place a plan that would help officials to quickly and effectively deal with a large livestock disaster – more
specifically, the problem of where to quickly and safely bury of a very large number of dead,
contaminated animals.
The group used GIS for this project in order to best produce an easy-to-use set of maps that would
show officials exactly where they should or should not bury the carcasses. Here is an example of one of
these maps:
The researchers used the Department of Health and Environment's twelve criteria for what makes
an area part of the area in which the carcasses should not be buried, called the exclusion zone. Since I
could not obtain the actual maps (other than in .jpeg format) or the actual data, I was unable to pinpoint
the source of the data used in the project. However, Hutchinson does outline some of the layers as data
on soils, geology, water resources, transportation networks, threatened and endangered species, and
population density. GIS data from all of these areas is readily available at the state's GIS site, (see
http://www.kansasgis.org/catalog/catalog.cfm), and it may very well be the source, though since the
report was published by a GIS lab, it is very likely that they already had most or all of this data. The soil
data included type and quality, distance to groundwater, and topographical slope (which can be seen in
the gray layer above which appears to be a triangulated irregular network or TIN), in order to watch for
areas where burials could contaminate water supplies, threatening both humans (population centers were
mapped) and engendered and threatened animals which may live downstream. The geographical extent
of the data was the state of Kansas.
Because this project's aim was to create a tool that could be used quickly and easily during a
crisis, and because the concerns addressed are specifically spatial (not covering how the carcasses should
be disposed of but rather where), GIS was not only an appropriate tool but an essential one. The final
product combined twelve different layers of information for the whole state – something state health
officials would hardly have had time to do in the event of a crisis – and created easy-to-read, visual tools.
I can not imagine how this project could have been at all successful without mapping, since the maps are
both a means of determining acceptable burial locations, but maps also make up the end product.
I do wish I had been able to find the data itself, but it also occurs to me that since the tool is
meant for use by state officials, it may not be readily available to the general public – especially since it is
meant to be able to be used as a response to bioterrorism. However, based on what I was able to find, I
would be interested to see overlays of the twelve layers to see not just where is "suitable" or "not
suitable," but also to see the maps set up in terms of how suitable they are. The values could be set up
categorically by simply seeing which areas fall outside of all twelve exclusions (giving areas a value from
0-12), or continuously by turning some of the twelve layers into rasters with continuous values (for
instance, distance from a population center).
URLs:
http://www.directionsmag.com/article.php?article_id=2333
http://www.mediarelations.k-state.edu/WEB/News/Webzine/Safetyandsecurity/GIS.html
http://www.k-state.edu/geography/research/gissal/projects.html