One area of data analysis that's gotten a lot of attention is Geographic Information Systems (GIS). GIS is a system that is designed to store, manage, manipulate, and analyze geographic data. As such, GIS sits at the intersection of cartography, computers, statistics, and information science.
GIS is applied to fields as diverse as military planning, epidemiology, architecture, urban planning, archaeology, and many other fields. Basically, any domain or problem that involves location or topology can use GIS techniques or methods.
As you can imagine from this very brief description, we won't even scratch the surface of GIS in this chapter. However, we'll apply it to a small problem to see how it can help us understand the way climate change affects the continental United States in a better manner.