GITS: SAC - "Jungle Cruise" - On Geographic Information Systems

In the tenth episode of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, a deranged ex-soldier (Marco Amoretti) from the American Empire is massacring Japanese civilians by skinning them alive. Section 9 agent Batou recognizes the MO of the suspect; it is a tactic formerly used during one of the world wars, one that Batou is very familiar with. Thus the race is on to capture the culprit before the heinous crimes can continue further.

An integral clue in solving the mystery of Amoretti's whereabouts involves maps of Newport City's underground waterways and sewers. Additionally, the members of Section 9 were given access to the city's network of video cameras, accessible through a map-interface, in order to get a bird's eye view of a crime scene. This is not the first time where visual information in the form of a map has been crucial to the success of an operation, and it demonstrates the true power of Geographic Information Systems (GIS).
These days, before you can have a map, you need to have a geodatabase. Cartography programs such as ESRI's ArcGIS rely on specific package files containing vector data (points, lines, polygons) or raster data (pixels bearing a specific value). This data is organized in a series of tables.

Rather than reference the visual features of a map, GIS tools reference the values in the associated data tables, usually by selecting all records of a specific value or classification. GIS tools can also be used to convert vector data into raster values based upon estimates, and the reverse can be done as well.
While having terrain features match up to their real life counterparts is an important feature of a map, it is far from the only one. With enough information in the geodatabase, a map can be retooled to display all sorts of important information, such as slope, population density, land usage classification, energy consumption, resource density, and much more.

In the Ghost in the Shell universe, maps are created and referenced with real-time sensors overlaid to show relative location of people and objects. For example, in the episode "Testation," Section 9 used a city transportation map and overlaid the relative position of the tank unit they were pursuing, in order to estimate how much time it would take for the tank to hit a residential neighborhood. This is but one of many potential uses for maps within the series.

However, in real life, geodatabases aren't always accurate, let alone uniform across agencies. State and local governments may share GIS information, but sometimes they create their own information and it conflicts with information from another agency. In those instances, it can be very difficult to determine which information is most accurate. But it isn't just the government. Even Google Maps, heralded for its accuracy, is plagued by errors not just in locations of objects but in symbology.The problem is, the general public does not understand the process behind creating maps. Furthermore, they take for granted the amount of information that can be derived from a map, provided the information one starts with is accurate. It is imperative that the significance of Geographic Information Systems be highlighted in the public arena, so that we can overcome such dilemmas and create more powerful information resources.