GIS

A Geographic Information System (GIS) captures, stores, analyzes, manages, and presents data that refers to or is linked to location.

In the strictest sense, the term describes any information system that integrates, stores, edits, analyses, shares, and displays geographic information. In a more generic sense, GIS applications are tools that allow users to create interactive queries (user created searches), analyze spatial information, edit data, maps, and present the results of all these operations.

Geographic information system technology can be used for scientific investigations, resource management, asset management, archaeology, environmental impact assessment, urban planning, cartography, criminology, geographic history, marketing, logistics, and other purposes. For example, GIS might allow emergency planners to easily calculate emergency response times in the event of a natural disaster, GIS might be used to find wetlands that need protection from pollution, or GIS can be used by a company to site a new business location to take advantage of a previously under-served market.

 

Geographic information can be accessed, transferred, transformed, overlaid, processed and displayed using numerous software applications. Within industry, commercial offerings from companies such as ESRI, Mapinfo and Autodesk dominate, offering an entire suite of tools.

 

Although free tools exist to view GIS datasets, public access to geographic information is dominated by online resources such as Google Earth and interactive web mapping.