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player ready...When Joe Blockland’s students at Indiana University Northwest want to call up a tree on campus, they can use an app he created for it.
“When this recent storm hit, it gave me the idea that we should really focus on the health of the tree,” Blockland said, so he’s showing his first-semester GIS students how the technology can be put to practical use. They’re examining the 400-plus trees on campus to see which have cracked trunks, are leaning, have insect holes, or show other signs of damage or disease.
“Each time they go out, they get a little bit better at it,” he said.
“We’ve mapped roughly 130 trees so far,” he said. “We’ve put a good dent in the campus already.”
Along the way, they’re figuring out how well this new app works. Blockland hopes it will be useful for local communities and other campuses.
When he builds a new tool like this, he always thinks of how users will use it, how easy it is to use and other factors, he said.
Students helped come up with categories of what to look for. “I want the students to be interacting with the content,” Blockland said. “It gives them more job opportunities locally; they really learn the job landscape with GIS.”
“We did a couple little baby exercises the first time,” then they started branching out.
An app to assess trees came naturally to him.
“I used to do tree servicing when I was younger,” he said. As an undergrad at IUN, he had a side job doing tree servicing with a friend’s business. “I learned a lot by working with him.”
Blockland’s father cut down trees as a side hustle. “I certainly helped my dad out with a lot of trees.”
The GIS students are learning more than when it’s time to call a tree surgeon. They’re learning about how apps can collect data in the field that can be put to use to solve problems.
“These have actually come in super high demand, these apps,” Blockland said. Government entities, land trusts and other nonprofits are looking for ways to collect data in a way that is streamlined so anybody can use it. This year, Ducks Unlimited and Shirley Heinze Land Trust used an app to begin assessing conditions around culverts in Northwest Indiana.
When the data is collected, it ends up on a dashboard to help evaluate how to use it.
Street departments, for example, could allow citizens to report potholes. Just snap a photo of the pothole and surroundings to show where it is. Using AI, if necessary, a GIS specialist could figure out exactly where the pothole is so it can be fixed, Blockland said.
“There’s some stuff you can automate, too,” with telemetry devices. The U.S. Geological Service uses stream gauges to get real-time information about water levels at various points along the Little Calumet and Kankakee rivers, for example. Using that data, forecasters can determine whether communities along the river should prepare for potential flooding and to what extent.
“It’s not just field data anymore where you have to go out to the device and look at it,” Blockland said.
“Most cities and stuff now realize the advantage of using this” technology, he said. Even lagging cities that didn’t have the budget for GIS work now realize they need to get on board.
Blockland first picked up GIS as an undergrad in 2007 or 2008. “People were realizing it was really amazing,” he said. “I hated the course” in GIS because computers were always crashing. “It took me a while to see the advantage of it.”
As a graduate student, he started using it for his research.
“A lot of the work in GIS is very tedious,” Blockland said. Mapping counties by hand takes months. Technology is changing that. Now there are AI tools to scan the boundaries of a building. “It’s not as good as doing it by hand, but it’s still good enough,” he said.
The technology is evolving rapidly. “I redo my classes every time I teach them to try and keep up with industry standards.”
For entry-level positions, he said, “they’re demanding more of people, and they want students to come in immediately and have all these AI tools and these dashboards mastered.”
Entry-level salaries range from the $50,000s to $80,000, Blockland said. After five years of experience, a GIS specialist can land a job paying $90,000 or more. As you get better at programming, the salary rises well beyond that.
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“We’re offering them a four-course GIS certificate now,” he said, to prove students have mastered essential skills for employability.
“I do teach them a lot of environmental science and geology and stuff,” Blockland said. Many students study GIS for use in an environmental science career, but students in other majors are taking the classes. The beginning assessing trees includes psychology and even art majors, too.
They’ll learn how to use GIS to create an app and turn it into a dashboard. “There’s a pothole here, you log it. Any city problem, you can put in the same workflow,” he said.
Often, it’s a matter of rearranging forms to make it look right.
The beginning students this year realized they had to leave their expectations behind. “They were shocked that we were out in the field doing stuff,” Blockland said.
The survey course offers a sweeping overview of basic tools. “Give them enough information to make them dangerous enough to go out and do stuff with it.”
In the advanced GIS class, they’re working with AI tools. “I don’t even know where this is going to go fully. We’re at the frontier right now,” Blockland said. Students work with database tools, becoming more professional. “We go into more of the tools and stuff like that.”
Environmental GIS focuses on environmental issues like mapping flood hazards, where the damage would be, estimating total damages, identifying risks for floods, landslides and other dangers. Students learn to use infrared technology and others.
The programming class teaches how to use Python to automate workflows. Handed 500 files and have to manually click on each one? That can be automated.
After this year’s beginners finish with the trees and learn more, Blockland hopes, their interest in GIS will take root and grow.
Doug Ross is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.