Abstract
A geographic information system (GIS) is a system designed to capture, store, manipulate, analyze, manage, and present spatial or geographic data. GIS applications are tools that allow users to create interactive queries (user-created searches), analyze spatial information, edit data in maps, and present the results of all these operations. GIS (more commonly GIS science) sometimes refers to geographic information science (GIS science), the science underlying geographic concepts, applications, and systems. GIS can refer to a number of different technologies, processes, techniques and methods. It is attached to many operations and has many applications related to engineering, planning, management, transport/logistics, insurance, telecommunications, and business. For that reason, GIS and location intelligence applications can be the foundation for many location-enabled services that rely on analysis and visualization.
Highlights
geographic information system (GIS) can relate unrelated information by using location as the key index variable
The earth can be represented by various models, each of which may provide a different set of coordinates for any given point on the Earth's surface
Topological Modeling A GIS can recognize and analyze the spatial relationships that exist within digitally stored spatial data
Summary
GIS can relate unrelated information by using location as the key index variable. Locations or extents in the Earth space–time may be recorded as dates/times of occurrence, and x, y, and z coordinates representing, longitude, latitude, and elevation, respectively. In 1854 John Snow determined the source of a cholera outbreak in London by marking points on a map depicting where the cholera victims lived, and connecting the cluster that he found with a nearby water source This was one of the earliest successful uses of a geographic methodology in epidemiology. By the late 1970s two public domain GIS systems (MOSS and GRASS GIS) were in development, and by the early 1980s, M&S Computing (later Intergraph) along with Bentley Systems Incorporated for the CAD platform, Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI), CARIS (Computer Aided Resource Information System), MapInfo Corporation and ERDAS (Earth Resource Data Analysis System) emerged as commercial vendors of GIS software, successfully incorporating many of the CGIS features, combining the first generation approach to separation of spatial and attribute information with a second generation approach to organizing attribute data into database structures. Geospatial data and mapping applications are being made available via the World Wide Web (see List of GIS software § GIS as a service)
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