My name is Wesley Catanzaro and I am a cartographer and GIS analyst in the field of public health.
GIS is software that allows you to represent real world phenomenon mainly through maps.
I've always liked maps. I think they are pretty cool.
And I think they are cooler now that I know how to make them.
Um, and I think they're pretty awesome tools for just you know relating
the world around us and processing information and communicating it in a really effective way.
You don't have to be a doctor or a nurse to get into public health.
You know, there are different subsets of public health like environmental health,
which takes very interdisciplinary approach and requires a pretty broad understanding
of how things relate geographically and spatially.
Well, uh, a typical day for me might include going out into the field and doing some field work.
Surveying the streets for pedestrian environmental quality.
Determining whether or not these things can be improved upon.
For instance, we'll look at how many crosswalks there are at an intersection.
How long a pedestrian is given to cross at a particular intersection.
We'll look for additional signs at intersections
or along the streets which relate to pedestrians' safety.
Whether two people can walk side by side on a street -
are there sidewalk obstructions
things like abandon buildings and graffiti and excess litter, keep people from using sidewalks.
When you're talking about public health especially you know you
want to get people out and about walking and encouraging them to get out of their automobiles.
So after I conduct a survey and I fill out the forms, I take that information back to
the office and I'll uh input it into the computer using standard programs like Microsoft Access
and then that information is imported into ArcGIS the main spatial analysis software
that GIS analysts use usually.
That information then can be mapped, you know, in a very easy to understand
uh fashion by scoring the streets according to the data that we picked out from the field.
The mapped area is really what you want the user
to spend their time looking at.
And you know, the text should inform but it shouldn't dominate.
Somebody can easily look at this map
and they can see what needs to be changed,
and what streets are ranking pretty high in pedestrian quality,
and which streets don't rank as high and then that information can be relayed
to you know,
the department of public works or you know, anyone else who's making decisions
in regarding pedestrian infrastructure.
You wanna really focus while you're in high school
on, you know, those basic math courses
and science courses to learn how to write well in a scientific way.
If your school offers geography as an elective, you should take that
because you can really start gaining an understanding
for that... relationship
that spatial relationship between things and how
things effect each other in space.
I do wish that I had learned how to
uh, program, when I was in high school.
um...
Because a lot of GIS analysts use computer programming
to more effectively do their work.
For a long time I haven't really felt that I had much of an artistic bone in my body.
But, I think that I've been able to kind of express that
um...
through maps.
I think that it is something that I'm pretty good at
and uh, I've liked what I have done so far with them.
You can really make beautiful looking maps
that are pleasant to look at
as well as being effective in communicating something about the real world.