Carnegie
Mellon University at Qatar (CMU-Q) recently announced that it is offering a
class focused on geographic information systems (GIS), an area of major
potential for Qatar.
“It’s a way
of making sense of big data,” said Chadi Aoun, associate teaching professor of
information systems. “For instance, imagine looking where
clinics are located within Qatar, and then plotting out where the people are
who need access to those clinics. GIS can inform policy on where clinics should
be located, closing service gaps and increasing rates of early diagnosis.”
CMU-Q
students studying GIS have been offered prestigious internships at the Center
for GIS. One of the students, Farjana Salahuddin, said she appreciated studying the impact of GIS by
looking at an investigation into accident rates in one U.S. county.
“We looked at accidents and then plotted out factors like
speed zones, pedestrian crossings, weather and lighting,” Salahuddin said. “We saw that one area had a high number of
accidents at night, and when we looked at the data, we realized there were no
streetlights. Adding a streetlight is [a] simple solution that could prevent future
accidents.”
Salahuddin
and others are considering the internship offer.
