GIS stands for Geographic Information System. You can share data via maps and get interesting insights from them.
Guessing means expressing a suspicion that you are not sure is correct.
GIS and guesswork are therefore quite opposite. By visualising data, you get a better understanding of what is really going on. Your suspicions can be confirmed, or not. How nice if you know what you are talking about, instead of having to guess. But now we are going to talk about GIS.
Why is GIS used more often?
More and more data is equipped with location data. You use it more and more every day. For example, where are my friends, how do I get to my hotel, where can I drill a hole in my wall without hitting a pipe, which route did I cycle, etc. Geographical data is also increasingly being used for business purposes. Meal delivery companies, such as JustEatTakeaway, have to think carefully about their routes so that they can deliver more in less time. This is good for business, but it is also good for the consumer because food is delivered faster and warmer. With environmental zones in large cities, transporters are no longer allowed to enter the city with their existing fleets. They will be driving smaller electric trucks for the last part of the journey. This means that hubs will have to be set up around large cities, as these electric cars cannot cover long distances. Where are you going to set up these hubs? Geographical Information Systems will help.
Systems
In the past, you needed expensive large systems to do this. Fortunately, this has all become available on the desktop and in the cloud. Tableau allows you to display data on maps in many ways and use them interactively. You can use latitude and longitude data, which plots specific points on a map. There are shapefiles available that allow you to show polygons on maps, or areas. Think of provinces, postcode areas or for example delivery areas - see example of neighbourhoods in Amsterdam. And for more specific geo data, like in the Netherlands where you have Rijksdriehoek measurements, there are always options to show this on a map in Tableau.
With the example of determining routes for deliveries, it is not the distances but the driving times that are important. As the crow flies, two locations may be 100 metres away, but if there is water in between and the bridge is 3 kilometres away, the driving time is unfortunately a lot longer. Fortunately, there are solutions for this. Alteryx is a platform that allows you to analyse and process data in a fantastic way. And you can even use it to calculate driving times using TomTom data, which can be integrated. In the example below you can see what the average driving time is to an Albert Heijn supermarket in Amsterdam. A nice combination of the power of Alteryx and Tableau. Do you want to know if this is interesting for you, please contact us and we will show you what is possible.
