Skip to the content.

Introduction to GIS

Final map

Screenshot of a slide defining GIS as Geographic Information Science or Systems, and discussing how it can be methods, data, or tools GIS definitions.

Classic John Snow map from 1854 showing the locations of cholera outbreaks centered around drinking wells.

John Snow cholera map, 1854.

Original John Snow map with a GIS heat map superimposed over it

John Snow cholera map, overlaid by a modern-day GIS heatmap layer.

Screenshot of a map of Olympia national park Offical Olympic National Park map.

Screenshot of United States 2020 census map Graduated proportional symbol map showing 2020 population by state in the United States.

Photograph of a roadmap of Louisiana Louisiana and Mississippi roadmap from the Harvard Map Collection.

Photograph of the road map, zoomed into New Orleans Louisiana and Mississippi roadmap from the Harvard Map Collection showing the New Orleans area.

Photograph of a 1909 map of land use in New Orleans Land cover map of Louisiana from 1909 in the Harvard Map Collection.

The legend showing different kinds of land use The legend of the 1909 land cover map of Louisiana.

USGS tool to extract modern day land cover data USGS data download tool, showing land cover data from 2016.

Screen capture of a map of Boston from Map of Boston from 1743.

Map made by student assistants who went on to use GIS and data processing in job GIS heatmap of density of restaurants in Boston.

GIF of the vision zero data page on City of Boston's data portal Analyze Boston, Boston’s open data portal.

Screenshot of the vision zero data as a table Vision Zero dataset, open as a table.

Screenshot of vision zero data as crowded points Bike crash data displayed visually as individual points in GIS software.

Map of bike crashes shows patterns better

Screen recording of New York Public Library app OldNYC OldNYC: Mapping Historic Photographs at the NYPL.

Diagram of multiple GIS layers corresponding spatially to one another

GIS data layers diagram.

Picture of Belle's old house, on 4 Folsom Ave Belle’s house in college.

Picture of the City of Boston reading room City of Boston Archives Reading Room.

Picture of a real estate atlas open, it is a large book 19th century insurance atlas, open to a plate of downtown Boston.

Atlas viewer, Atlascope, a GIS tool from the Boston Public Library.

Screenshot from 1880 census 1880 census from Archive.org.

Comparison of 1890 atlas to today ArcGIS Map comparing 1890 atlas to today.

Screenshot of the final project assignment prompt Screenshot of the midterm writing prompt Screen recording GIF of adjusting the transparency of an old map, draped over a modern map

Screenshot of data symbolized as graduated points Screenshot of data symbolized as pie charts

Screenshot of workshop details

Screenshot of workshop signup dates Follow along the GIS tutorial in a workshop setting with Belle signup form.

Screenshot of where to look for finished maps on assignment website

Screenshot from Harvard Geospatial Library Global volcanoes dataset in the Harvard Geospatial Library (HGL).

Screenshot of map of Chile

maps@harvard.edu

You can contact us at maps@harvard.edu.