Home-made GIS

1Two million lines of code: this is the size of a unique geographic information system (GIS), designed and developed within the Institute. It all began in the 1980s at the Bondy Research Centre where, in a dedicated department, cartographers came up with a visual translation of the data provided by researchers. This gave rise to the idea of creating software capable of rapidly managing and processing geographic information. At the time, this was an innovative and daring approach. Developers were recruited, computers equipped with graphics devices were purchased and, in 1986, the application was already being used to draw up a digital land register in Martinique.

Geometry calculations in SavGIS.

2It was subsequently enhanced and used to build an Atlas of the City of Quito. A dedicated database was created, compiling all the geo-referenced information on the city, in terms of demographics, transport networks, high-precision geology and topography, etc. It continues to be used to this day, and is updated by the municipality of Quito.

Health risk modelling: bird flu outbreaks in poultry farms, 2004-2008, Thailand.

3SavGIS software development continued, making it possible to draw up geological, urban and archaeological site maps. Managing and cross-referencing millions of bytes of data, in the 1990s it gained the ability to integrate aerial and satellite images, used for example to analyse the architecture and environment of refugee camps in Kenya. It also eventually offered the possibility of building spatialised models, thereby simulating a number of epidemics in South-East Asia and Africa, and analysing health risks in Thailand and Laos.

4SavGIS is free and accessible on the Internet (www.savgis.org). It has already been downloaded more than 10,000 times, in particular by Internet users from Africa. This French-language software provides numerous downloadable base maps and geo-referenced data sets.