Geographic Information

System
Possibly the earliest use of the geographic method, in 1854 John Snow
depicted a cholera outbreak in London using points to represent the
locations of some individual cases. His study of the distribution of
cholera led to the source of the disease, a contaminated water pump
within the heart of the cholera outbreak.
• In the year 1962, the world's first true operational GIS was developed
by the federal Department of Forestry and Rural Development in
Ottawa, Canada by Dr. Roger Tomlinson. It was called the "Canada
Geographic Information System" (CGIS) and was used to store,
analyze, and manipulate data collected for the Canada Land Inventory
(CLI). It is an initiative to determine the land capability for rural
Canada by mapping information about soils, agriculture, recreation,
wildlife, forestry, and land use.
• By the early 1980s, M&S Computing (later Intergraph), Environmental
Systems Research Institute (ESRI) and CARIS emerged as commercial
vendors of GIS software.
• A geographic information system (GIS) is a system that creates, manages,
analyzes, and maps all types of data. Source ESRI
• GIS connects data to a map, integrating location data (where things are)
with all types of descriptive information (what things are like there).
• This provides a foundation for mapping and analysis that is used in
science and almost every industry.
• GIS helps users understand patterns, relationships, and geographic
context.
• The benefits include improved communication and efficiency as well as
better management and decision making.
• Components of GIS
GIS enables the user to input, manage, manipulate, analyze, and
display geographically referenced data using a computerized system. To
perform various operations with GIS, the components of GIS such as
software, hardware, data, people and methods are essential.
• Hardware
• Software
• Users
• Data
• Methods
• Software
• GIS software provides the functions and tools needed to store,
analyze, and display geographic information. Key software
components are (a) a database management system (DBMS) (b) tools
for the input and manipulation of geographic information (c) tools
that support geographic query, analysis, and visualization (d) a
graphical user interface (GUI) for easy access to tools. GIS software
are either commercial software or software developed on Open
Source domain, which are available for free. However, the commercial
software is copyright protected, can be expensive and is available in
terms number of licensees.
• Hardware
• Hardware is the computer on which a GIS operates. Today, GIS runs on a
wide range of hardware types, from centralized computer servers to
desktop computers used in stand-alone or networked configurations.
• Data
• The most important component of a GIS is the data. Geographic data or
Spatial data and related tabular data can be collected in-house or bought
from a commercial data provider. Spatial data can be in the form of a
map/remotely-sensed data such as satellite imagery and aerial
photography. These data forms must be properly georeferenced
(latitude/longitude). Tabular data can be in the form attribute data that is
in some way related to spatial data. Most GIS software comes with inbuilt
Database Management Systems (DBMS) to create and maintain a database
to help organize and manage data.
• User
• GIS technology is of limited value without the users who manage the
system and to develop plans for applying it. GIS users range from
technical specialists who design and maintain the system to those
who use it to help them do their everyday work.
• Methods
• A successful GIS operates according to a well-designed plan and
business rules, which are the models and operating practices unique
to each organization.
• Functions of GIS
• General-purpose GIS software performs six major tasks such as input,
manipulation, management, query and analysis, Visualization.
• Input
• The important input data for any GIS is digitized maps, images, spatial
data and tabular data. The tabular data is generally typed on a
computer using relational database management system software.
Before geographic data can be used in a GIS it must be converted into
a suitable digital format.
• The process of converting data from paper maps into computer files is
called digitizing. Modern GIS technology has the capability to
automate this process fully for large projects; smaller jobs may
require some manual digitizing.
• Manipulation
• GIS can store, maintain, distribute and update spatial data associated
text data. The spatial data must be referenced to a geographic
coordinate systems (latitude/longitude). The tabular data associated
with spatial data can be manipulated with help of data base
management software. It is likely that data types required for a
particular GIS project will need to be transformed or manipulated in
some way to make them compatible with the system. For example,
geographic information is available at different scales (scale of
1:100,000; 1:10,000; and 1:50,000). Before these can be overlaid and
integrated they must be transformed to the same scale.
• Management
• For small GIS projects it may be sufficient to store geographic
information as computer files. However, when data volumes become
large and the number of users of the data becomes more than a few,
it is advised to use a database management system (DBMS) to help
store, organize, and manage data. A DBMS is a database management
software package to manage the integrated collection of database
objects such as tables, indexes, query, and other procedures in a
database.
• Query
• The stored information either spatial data or associated tabular data
can be retrieved with the help of Structured Query Language (SQL).
Depending on the type of user interface, data can be queried using
the SQL or a menu driven system can be used to retrieve map data.
For example, you can begin to ask questions such as:
• Where are all the soils are suitable for sunflower crop?
• What is the dominant soil type for Paddy?
• What is the groundwater available position in a village/block/district?
• Both simple and sophisticated queries utilizing more than one data
layer can provide timely information to officers, analysts to have
overall knowledge about situation and can take a more informed
decision.
• Analysis
• GIS systems really come into their own when they are used to analyze
geographic data. The processes of geographic analysis often called
spatial analysis or geo-processing uses the geographic properties of
features to look for patterns and trends, and to undertake "what if"
scenarios. Modern GIS have many powerful analytical tools to analyse
the data. The following are some of the analysis which are generally
performed on geographic data.
a) Overlay Analysis
• The integration of different data layers involves a process called
overlay. At its simplest, this could be a visual operation, but analytical
operations require one or more data layers to be joined physically.
This overlay, or spatial join, can integrate data on soils, slope, and
vegetation, or land ownership.
b) Proximity Analysis
• GIS software can also support buffer generation that involves the creation of
new polygons from points, lines, and polygon features stored in the
database. For example, to know answer to questions like; How much area
covered within 1 km of water canal? What is area covered under different
crops? And, for watershed projects, where is the boundary or delineation of
watershed, slope, water channels, different types water harvesting
structures are required, etc.
• Visualization
• GIS can provide hardcopy maps, statistical summaries, modeling solutions
and graphical display of maps for both spatial and tabular data. For many
types of geographic operation the end result is best visualized as a map or
graph. Maps are very efficient at storing and communicating geographic
information. GIS provides new and exciting tools to extend the art of
visualization of output information to the users.
• Technology used in GIS
• Data creation
• Modern GIS technologies use digital information, for which various
digitized data creation methods are used. The most common method of
data creation is digitization, where a hard copy map or survey plan is
transferred into a digital medium through the use of a computer-aided
design program with geo-referencing capabilities.
• Relating information from different sources
• If you could relate information about the rainfall of a state to aerial
photographs of county, you might be able to tell which wetlands dry up at
certain times of the year.
• 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 consists of knowing the locations for the variables.
• Location may be annotated by x, y, and z coordinates of longitude,
latitude, and elevation, or by other geocode systems like postal codes.
Any variable that can be located spatially can be fed into a GIS. 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 generated through remote sensing can be analyzed to
produce a map-like layer of digital information about vegetative covers.
• Data representation
• GIS data represents real world objects such as roads, land use, elevation
with digital data.
• Real world objects can be divided into two abstractions: discrete objects (a
house) and continuous fields (rain fall amount or elevation).
• There are two broad methods used to store data in a GIS for both
abstractions: Raster and Vector.
• Raster
• A raster data type is, in essence, any type of digital image. Anyone who is
familiar with digital photography will recognize the pixel as the smallest
individual unit of an image. A combination of these pixels will create an
image, distinct from the commonly used scalable vector graphics, which
are the basis of the vector model.
• Aerial photos are one commonly used form of raster data, with only one
purpose, to display a detailed image on a map or for the purposes of
digitization. Other raster data sets will contain information regarding
elevation, a DEM (digital Elevation Model), or reflectance of a particular
wavelength of light.
• Raster data type consists of rows and columns of cells each storing a single
value. Raster data can be images (raster images) with each pixel containing
a color value. Additional values recorded for each cell may be a discrete
value, such as land use, a continuous value, such as temperature, or a null
value if no data is available.
• Raster data is stored in various formats; from a standard file-based structure
of TIF, JPEG formats to binary large object (BLOB) data stored directly in a
relational database management system (RDBMS) similar to other vector-
based feature classes
• Vector
• A simple vector map, using each of the vector elements: points for
wells, lines for rivers, and a polygon for the lake. In a GIS,
geographical features are often expressed as vectors, by considering
those features as geometrical shapes. In the popular ESRI Arc series of
programs, these are explicitly called shape files.
• Points Zero-dimensional points are used for geographical features
that can best be expressed by a single grid reference; in other words,
simple location. For example, the locations of wells, peak elevations,
features of interest or trailheads. Points convey the least amount of
information of these file types.
• Lines or polylines
• One-dimensional lines or polylines are used for linear features such as
rivers, roads, railroads, trails, and topographic lines.
• How is GIS used?
• Hundreds of thousands of organizations in virtually every field are
using GIS to make maps that communicate, perform analysis, share
information, and solve complex problems around the world. This is
changing the way the world works.
• Identify the Problem
• Monitor Change
• Manage and Respond to events
• Set Priorities
• Understand Trends