The database also can contain aerial photographs taken of the campus which can be linked to and overlaid with other information, such as political boundaries or county lines. The database can be detailed enough to show the area's every bench, tree, and lamp post. Information in UGA's database, for example, already contains the location of every fire hydrant on campus. Anyone wishing to see the university's fire protection coverage for a particular building or street or for the entire institution can simply call up that information and have it displayed on a computer screen, Breedlove said. Future users of GIS may look for and identify potential crime problem areas by plotting vegetation layers with the locations of light posts to see which parts of a campus may require additional lighting.
Users also can call up data using specific search criteria.
GIS can show all land used for intramural athletics, for example, or display how much land is used for parking lots, Hickey said. The system can be queried to search for all buildings constructed before a particular date or used for particular purposes. Search criteria can cover just an individual campus or the entire University System. Researching similar information in the past without the database often meant sifting through countless real estate records. To make the database accessible to as many people as possible, the Board is considering several options, including making it available through the Internet, though the sheer volume of graphics initially might make access slow.