Geographic Information Systems :: essays research papers fc

Geographic Information Systems Geographic information systems (GIS) technology can be used for scientific investigations, resource management, and development planning. For example, a GIS might allow emergency planners to easily calculate emergency response times and effected areas of the ocean during an oil spill based on the spills location. You may ask, what is GIS? In the strictest sense, a GIS is a computer system capable of assembling, storing, manipulating, and displaying geographically referenced information, i.e. data identified according to their locations. Practitioners also regard the total GIS as including operating personnel and the data that go into the system. A geographic information system (GIS) works in a series of steps, First there is the relating information from different sources. If you could relate information about oil spill location to the oceans surface currents, you might be able to tell where to start clean up based on how long the oil has been in the o cean. A GIS, which can use information from many different sources, in many different forms can help with such analyses. The primary requirement for the source data is that the locations for the variables are known. Location may be annotated by x, y, and z coordinates of longitude, latitude, and elevation and any variable that can be located spatially can be fed into a GIS. Several computer databases that can be directly entered into a GIS are being produced by Federal agencies and private firms. Different kinds of data in map form can be entered into a GIS. A GIS can also convert existing digital information, which may not yet be in map form into forms it can recognize and use. For example, digital satellite images can be analyzed to produce a map like layer of digital information about marine life productivity. Likewise, sea-grass data can be converted to map-like form, serving as layers of thematic information in a GIS. Next Step for Geographic information systems (GIS) would be to Capture the data If the data to be used is not already in digital form, that is, in a form the computer can recognize, various techniques can capture the information. Maps can be digitized, or hand-traced with at computer mouse, to collect the coordinates of features. Electronic scanning devices will also convert map lines and points to digits. A GIS can be used to emphasize the spatial relationships among the objects being mapped.