Geographic Information Systems Essay Example for Free

Geographic Information Systems Essay The future prospects of geographic technologies such as GIS (Geographic Information Systems), satellite images, remote sensing, and more are increasingly discussed in literature (Matthews and Herbert 2005). Today, GIS software can be used in a highly efficient way. In 18 years, people are likely to be amazed by what is being done with it. This paper projects the possible impacts of the technologies for the public service and democratic society of Auckland in the year 2025. The capabilities of GIS will be analysed. In doing so, an overview of GIS is followed by an analysis of the relationship between this technology and democratic values and implications of this relationship for Auckland society. Future Horizons Hardware and software costs for both personal computers and workstations have been declining steadily during recent years. This trend, combined with the rapid increases in technology development, will dramatically benefit the GIS market. Geographic data are of great size and require several unique hardware and software adaptations for data entry, processing, and output (Donaldson 120). These adaptations include hardware equipment and digitizers, scanners, and plotters. With a healthy development of GIS market, these adaptations will become more sophisticated, easier to use, and less expensive. The GIS market also will supply a variety of hardware and software innovations from which to choose. Bottom-Up GIS In the year 2025, GIS will be cheaper, faster, easier to use, and supplied with more and better data. As large amounts of local data will become easily available in GIS format, the outlook for GIS in local area planning will look very bright. Besides using GIS to inform and analyze in the traditional sense, planners will consider using it as a cognitive tool. In this new approach, people learn to use GIS data to exchange their views concerning planning processes, neighborhood issues, and future wishes. This new view of how GIS can be used in planning emerged from recent concern that traditional use of GIS in planning is top-down, controlled, and technicist (Brown 246). Donaldson (2002) have noted that GIS that is merely technological in orientation will fail to address important issues. Therefore, it is likely that GIS will be used in local communities in a way that is not technicist in a fundamental way. One could predict that GIS will have a more democratic approach to planning in which the processes of communication and interaction are considered. As a result, GIS will be used in a bottom-up way that will let the citizens of Auckland characterize their local environment. As a way to ensure a more bottom-up approach to GIS, planners will focus on the inclusion of local knowledge in GIS. There are some examples in regard to planning. Some researchers (Craig Elwood 1998) studied how local knowledge was incorporated in the creation of GIS databases. Such information as how residents value their homes or their feelings about the concerns of a given area was incorporated. Because these approaches have an objective to provide local residents with greater access to GIS, they are integrated with other community-based uses of GIS (Matthews and Herbert 2005). New approaches will enable residents to use GIS to communicate how they perceive their neighborhood or the locality in which they live, via their description, evaluation, or propositions for their local environment. New approach will be both the tool used to explore an issue and the means of its expression. It will be using GIS as a spatial language tool to have access to local knowledge and communicating residents observations, rather than presenting only objective facts. With this new approach, the citizens of Auckland will be able to redefine the questions asked within GIS. For instance, â€Å"Where are roads most overcrowded? † becomes â€Å"What streets do I consider as inconvenient due to traffic jam? † â€Å"What is the location of parks relative to the location of children? † becomes â€Å"What parks are most frequently visited in my neighborhood and how many children use them? † (Craig Elwood 104) The answers of the residents to the first type of question create an entirely different image than the answers to the second type. The result is that the content of the analysis may be significantly improved. Using this new approach, analysis of residents observations that result through traditional visioning processes in answers such as â€Å"We need to have a better system of transporting† become answers such as â€Å"Here are places where we need to travel and where we prefer to travel,† and â€Å"Here is where we at present can and cannot travel† (Donaldson, 189).

Founding Fathers Of The Usa :: essays research papers

There are many people who can be considered the indirect founding fathers of The United States. Such people are The Christian Crusaders, Marco Polo, Cortez, Pizarro, and Martin Luther. The Crusades were a series of holy wars fought to win the holy land of Christianity from those who follow Mohammed. Even though these wars failed in the respect of winning the land back, they did triumph in another aspect. The crusaders introduced a lifestyle to the Europeans in the Holy Land that was more appealing than they knew before. Following the wars the Europeans returned and they created a market to deliver the desirable goods they came accustomed to in the Holy Land. This was one reason for the beginning of exploration, and ultimately led to the discovery of America. Marco Polo was a great explorer of his time. He wrote a manuscript on his voyage entitled, "The Voyage of Marco Polo." In this manuscript it said how the Kahn of China lived in riches, used fine china, decorated with gold, and used spices. When the manuscript reached the people of Europe they realized how life could better if they had the materials as did the Khan. This discovery encouraged people to find new places to find these riches. Cortez founded the city of Tenochtitlan, which was created by the Aztecs in central Mexico. He said how the people of this town lived with the riches of a Khan. They city was advanced further than any European had seen in the New World. The ruler of this land, Montezuma, lived in huge room filled with "jewels, precious stones, silver, and an astonishing amount of gold." Soon after his arrival the Aztecs rebelled. Cortez had Indian and Spanish allies and won the battle against the Aztecs. News of the conquest of Mexico created a rush of Spanish to America and led to further settling of the continent. Francisco Pizarro found the empire of the Incas in the Andes Mountains region. This empire, like the Aztec Empire, was advanced and rich in gold and silver. Inca, the head of the Empire and was considered a God, was killed by Pizarro. This lessened the spirit of the Incas and made it easier for Pizarro and his men to succeed among them. This success, again, encouraged the Europeans to settle their own area. One of the best known reformers, Martin Luther, can be considered a founding father of The United States. Luther tried to reform the Church of England, and rid it of Catholic ways.

Improve end-of-life care Essay

Advocacy to improve end-of-life care and decision-making for patients over the past twenty-five years has frequently turned to the law as a source of protection and procedural innovation. There has been a deliberate strategy to use the legal system to improve the outcome for patients at the end of life by means of courts of law and congressional hearings. Such efforts have resulted in the formation of legislation and regulation but have produced varying measures of gain as well as some serious limitations. As a result of these efforts a wide array of patients’ rights respecting end-of- life care have been established. These include the right to self-determination and to refuse unwanted life-prolonging interventions. Additionally there are regulations which have established decision-making processes and protocols should patients lose the ability to make decisions for themselves. The right to die is understood as the freedom to make a decision to end one’s life, on one’s own terms, as a result of the desire to allay painful effects of an incurable illness (Angus, 2004). The act of ending one’s life can take various forms, depending on the role the patient, their family and the physician plays in this process (Rosen, 1998). Euthanasia refers to the family member or physician intentionally ending the patient’s life by direct request from the patient. Euthanasia can be active or passive, voluntary or involuntary. In active euthanasia either a physician, a family member or another prescribed person, at the directive of the patient or an authorized representative, administers or withholds some form of procedure that leads to the eventual or immediate death of the patient. Passive euthanasia involves these agents withholding a procedure necessary for the patient’s continued survival. Active euthanasia involves administering either drugs or another treatment that will directly lead to death. Voluntary euthanasia is where the patient makes a direct request for either an active or passive procedure and involuntary euthanasia is when this decision is made by someone besides the patient because the patient is probably incapable of making such a decision. Assisted suicide refers to helping the patient end his or her life. There are numerous advocates and agencies throughout the United States, Canada, Europe and other countries, that either promote or oppose the right to die concept. One group advocates the establishment of clear limitations on the ability of healthcare providers or the state to impose undesired life-prolonging interventions against the wishes of the patient or the patient’s authorized surrogate decision-maker. The strength of this effort lies primarily in the articulation by these advocates of procedures for decision-making that respect patients’ autonomy and anticipate the range of circumstances in which patients would lack decision-making capacity and thus would require tough decisions about end-of-life care to be made for them (Johnson, 1998). In contrast to such articulation of ‘negative rights’, more recent advocates for dying patients have focused on using legal mechanisms such as courts of law and legislative processes to try to establish and articulate rights and responsibilities governing the role of the physician in a patient’s suicide. Instead of asking for patients to be free of unwanted interventions, these efforts have lobbied for legal support for positive assistance at the end-of-life. This assistance involves purposefully bringing an end to life through the use of medical interventions. To date, these efforts have met with mixed success. While physician-assisted suicide has been legalized in the Netherlands, achieving the same results in the United States has been challenging. Thus far only the state of Oregon has managed to make any headway in this regard. They managed to pass the ‘Death with Dignity Act’ which came into effect in 1997 (Public Agenda, 2006). This act gives patients a limited amount of legal right to physician-assisted suicide. Furthermore, the Supreme Court has determined that at this time, there is no constitutional violation if a state’s criminal laws prohibit assisted suicide. At a minimum, however, these efforts have succeeded in arousing public interest and inquiry into the suffering endured by patients and their families when serious or terminal illness becomes unbearably burdensome. This outcome may be more valuable than any articulation of a theoretical legal right. Another category of advocates targets the issue at the level of the health centers that provide care for these patients. They argue that the presence of so many discussions on the provision of suicide assistance is a reflection of the U. S. ’ failure to make proper palliative care readily accessible to those who are suffering. They believe that little has been done to ensure that all dying patients and their families receive competent, compassionate care at the end of life, regardless of the care setting or disease process. Such care does not simply involve being left alone or freedom from the use of machines. Efforts and successes in the legal arena have had more to do with decision protocols and processes, documents and directives, than with the substantive clinical aspects of quality care at the end of life. It is not sufficient to simple have a document that articulates a patient’s wish to refuse life-prolonging interventions. What this group advocates is ensuring that doctors effectively communicate with the patient and compassionately provide each with quality palliative care appropriate to their condition (Waters, 1999). There is a limit to the extent to which the law is turned to as a strategy for improving end-of-life care. While considerable time and effort has been spent over the past few decades ensuring, through the law, that certain things should not be done to patients at the end of life, there has been little focus on what should be done for such patients. In this regard the law has limited utility. The earliest and most enduring efforts involving the law in end-of-life care have focused on defining the limits of government intervention and interference, articulating individual freedoms, and creating processes and protocols to address areas of contention. There are precedents from judicial cases, including the cases of Karen Ann Quinlan in 1976 and Nancy Cruzan in 1990, that clearly establish the right of individual patients to refuse all undesired life-prolonging interventions as well as the clear establishment that the interests of third parties or governments cannot supersede individual rights to limit care at the end of life. Also there are legal guidelines and procedures that enable the treatment wishes of patients to be preserved and respected, even when the patients are no longer capable of articulating them. Finally there has been the creation of legal obligations and responsibilities on the part of care providers and care systems to inform patients of their options in this difficult decision-making process. In many ways, the law has been effectively employed to ensure patients’ liberty and privacy against the encroachments of modern medical technology as they approach the end of their lives. However, it is difficult to determine how successful the law has been in impacting positively the quality of care and decision-making provided to patients at the clinical level (Angus, 2004). Through legal principles and legislation, courts at both the state and federal levels have extensively considered the issue of end-of-life care and decision-making. They have consistently emphasized the right of patients to refuse any and all life-prolonging medical interventions, including ventilators, dialysis, surgery, and artificial nutrition and hydration. This protection is extended where patients are able to personally articulate their wishes or do so through authorized surrogate decision-making mechanisms. With respect to the cases that have thus far been examined through the courts, they have extended the fundamental legal right of patients to generally refuse treatment, providing clarity and creating decision paths in situations of uncertainty. The cases have not, however, completely eliminated debate and apprehension in the clinical arena, where moral ambivalence, medical uncertainty, religious convictions, emotional distress, and outright misunderstanding of the law still obscure the decision-making process in individual circumstances. The issue of ending a patient’s life is complex, no two cases being the same. There are significant implications for the patient involved, their family, physician and the facility providing care at this crucial time in their lives. For many clinicians, patients and their families, decisions about whether to withdraw a feeding tube or turn off a ventilator are still difficult. Such dilemmas cannot be addressed by the law, which can provide a process for decision-making but cannot necessarily guide the involved parties to the ‘right’ decision in a particular circumstance. The difficulty of end-of-life decisions are further compounded by evolving standards of care, continuing debate over what constitutes ‘futile’ care and confusion among clinicians, particularly about ‘what is legal’ (Angus, 2004). Evidently there are limits to what the law can clarify and make concrete when the issues are so complex and confounding. Another challenge has been the limited use of the many advance care-planning mechanisms that have been developed through both judicial and legislative processes. Additionally there has been limited advocacy by healthcare professionals for the use of these mechanisms. Mechanisms such as living wills and healthcare proxies or powers of attorney are intended to empower patients and their surrogates. Through the use of these, patients and their caregivers can consider the complex and problematic area of end-of-life care in a thoughtful and deliberate way, long before the chaos that often accompanies an acute, life-threatening event or the onset of serious illness ensue. While none of these mechanisms is perfect, if used properly and as prescribed in the law, such documents and advance planning could help avoid some of the crises that frequently accompany end-of-life care and decision-making (McDonald, 1999). A growing body of studies documents the myriad of problems and challenges that have surfaced in trying to implement advance care planning in the clinical setting. Some studies reveal physicians’ erroneous beliefs about advance directives and their lack of knowledge about how to employ them in clinical care routines. Other studies highlight the inadequacy of understanding between patients and their care providers about treatment preferences at the end of life, even when patients have previously executed an advance directive. Still other studies reflect that there is uncertainty in the clinical arena concerning who is responsible for initiating and helping to formulate advance care-planning decisions. Of course the variety of issues examined by studies are not exhausted as there still needs to be studies on strategies to increase the number of patients who execute advance directives prior to incapacity given that only a small percentage do so now. Also it remains unclear whether more directives will ultimately lead to better care that is more responsive to patient and family needs.

An Ethical Dilemma Of Sexually Oriented Jokes - 1740 Words

An Ethical Dilemma Sexually oriented jokes were used in the workplace that forced the resignation of a younger employee. Looking at different ethical approaches to situations, this paper will see which approach may have been more useful in coming to a solution to this dilemma. Background LeSaint Logistics is third party logistics provider and automotive paint distributor for PPG Inc. They have many departments within each warehouse that must work together to ensure paint and paint and paint products are received, delivered to customers, and disposed of when necessary. In this situation Richard was working as the hazmat disposal supervisor, and Bruce was Richard’s only direct report. They worked side-by-side- for a couple of years. One day Bruce approach me (at that time I was just another warehouse employee) about some crude sexual jokes Richard had been making towards him over the course of several months, and how uncomfortable it had made him feel. When has asked my advice on how to handle the situation I suggested he report it to the next level of management. I was told the only reason he hadn’t done that was because he was afraid the company would take no action because of Richard’s age. Nothing was ever reported to management. About a month after this conversation Bruce told me he could not take the harassment any longer and quit. According to mutual acquaintances, Richard still works there today making his jokes. Ethical Issue The main ethical issue in thisShow MoreRelatedLegal or Ethical Issues in the Workplace: The Lecherous Boss3081 Words   |  12 Pagesï » ¿Legal or Ethical Issues in the Workplace: The Lecherous Boss The workplace is a microcosm of society as a whole. Therefore, one has to anticipate that one will encounter legal and ethical issues in the workplace, just as one encounters legal and ethical issues in the world in general. 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