What is GIS?

A geographic information system (GIS) integrates hardware, software, and data for capturing, managing, analyzing, and displaying all forms of geographically referenced information. GIS allows us to view, understand, question, interpret, and visualize data in many ways that reveal relationships, patterns, and trends in the form of maps, globes, reports, and charts. A GIS helps you answer questions and solve problems by looking at your data in a way that is quickly understood and easily shared. GIS technology can be integrated into any enterprise information system framework.

Top Five Benefits of GIS

GIS benefits organizations of all sizes and in almost every industry. There is a growing awareness of the economic and strategic value of GIS. The benefits of GIS generally fall into five basic categories: Cost Savings and Increased Efficiency Better Decision Making Improved Communication Better Recordkeeping Managing Geographically

What Can You Do with GIS?

GIS gives us a new way to look at the world around us. With GIS you can: Map Map Map Find Find Map Where Things Are Quantities Densities What's Inside What's Nearby Change

The Geographic Approach

Geography is the science of our world. Coupled with GIS, geography is helping us to better understand the earth and apply geographic knowledge to a host of human activities. The outcome is the emergence of The Geographic Approacha new way of thinking and problem solving that integrates geographic information into how we understand and manage our planet. This approach allows us to create geographic knowledge by measuring the earth, organizing this data, and analyzing and modeling various processes and their relationships. The Geographic Approach also allows us to apply this knowledge to the way we design, plan, and change our world. Step 1: Ask Step 2: Acquire Step 3: Examine Step 4: Analyze

Step 5: Act

GIS Glossaries
There are many online glossaries of GIS terms and acronyms. We recommend you compare the definitions from three sources to get a comprehensive idea of what the term means. GIS Wiki: wiki.gis.com Dictionary of Abbreviations and Acronyms in GIS, Cartography, and Remote Sensing University of California at Berkeley ESRI Online GIS Dictionary FGDC Glossary most terms are from the Spatial Data Transfer Standard (FIPS 173) Geographer's Craft GlossaryUniversity of Colorado at Boulder GIS Data Depot Helpdesk Glossary Glossaire SIG -French-language glossary from ESRI-France Glossary of Cartographic TermsPerry-Castaeda Library, University of Texas at Austin

Geographic information system

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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A geographic information system is a system designed to capture, store, manipulate, analyze, manage, and present all types of geographical data. The acronym GIS is sometimes used for geographical information science or geospatial information studies to refer to the academic discipline or career of working with geographic information systems.[1] In the simplest terms, GIS is the merging ofcartography, statistical analysis, and database technology. A GIS can be thought of as a systemit digitally creates and "manipulates" spatial areas that may be jurisdictional, purpose, or application-oriented. Generally, a GIS is custom-designed for an organization. Hence, a GIS developed for an application, jurisdiction, enterprise, or purpose may not be necessarily interoperable or compatible with a GIS that has been developed for some other application, jurisdiction, enterprise, or purpose. What goes beyond a GIS is a spatial data infrastructure (SDI), a concept that has no such restrictive boundaries.

In a general sense, the term describes any information system that integrates, stores, edits, analyzes, shares, and displays geographicinformation for informing decision making. The term GIS-centric, however, has been specifically defined as the use of the Esri ArcGIS geodatabase as the asset/feature data repository central to computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) as a part of enterprise asset management and analytical software systems. GIS-centric certification criteria has been specifically defined by the National Association of GIS-Centric Solutions (NAGCS).[2] 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.[3] Geographic information science is the science underlying geographic concepts, applications, and systems.[4]