Skip to main content

What is GIS?

          Once I started writing this blog, I received a number of feedbacks from readers asking me to write something about what exactly GIS is. So here is some information, that will give you an idea about "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.

          People use GIS to map locate where things are and let you find places that have the feature that you are looking for, and to see where to take action. A simple example of this is Geocaching. People map quantities, like where the most and least are, to find places that meet their criteria and take action, or to see the relationships between places. This gives an additional level of information beyond simply mapping the locations of features.

          While you can see concentrations by simply mapping the locations of features, in areas with many features it may be difficult to see which areas have a higher concentration than others. A density map lets you measure the number of features using a uniform areal unit, such as acres or square miles, so you can clearly see the distribution. Mapping density is especially useful when mapping areas, such as census tracts or counties, which vary greatly in size. On maps showing the number of people per census tract, the larger tracts might have more people than smaller ones. But some smaller tracts might have more people per square mile—a higher density.

         GIS is also used to monitor what's happening and to take specific action by mapping what's inside a specific area. For example, a district attorney would monitor drug-related arrests to find out if an arrest is within 1,000 feet of a school--if so, stiffer penalties apply.

         GIS can also be used to locate what's nearby a specific location. Map change is used to anticipate future needs. For example, a police chief might study how crime patterns change from month to month to help decide where officers should be assigned.

         This article must have given you a general idea of "What is GIS?" Do drop in your comments here or send me your feedbacks at my mail address!
Labels:

Comments

  1. BharariNovember 24, 2010 at 7:46 AM

    In past when GIS was not there people who depend on doing there things geographically were using paper maps like defense and government bodies. Now the maps are digitized and they can be viewed in GIS applications. More than this GIS applications provide additional facilities for there user specific requirements. So GIS is a software system which deals with Geographical data and provides intelligence which reduce human efforts, provide greater flexibility.

    ReplyDelete
  2. MarkNovember 24, 2010 at 11:45 AM

    Nice description and explanation about GIS. Heard to many times that GIS is ESRI, while these days it goes beyond that. Nowadays the normal citizen can gain from what GIS has to offer.....

    ReplyDelete
  3. Shreerang PatwardhanNovember 24, 2010 at 6:12 PM

    Absolutely Mark. Today a normal citizen can also gain so much from GIS and not just the corporates!

    ReplyDelete
  4. BharathiFebruary 17, 2011 at 12:49 AM

    Nice post on GIS, this can make a layman to understand GIS. As a GIS person i appreciate the way u have put in.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Shreerang PatwardhanFebruary 17, 2011 at 2:00 AM

    Thank you Bharathi...

    ReplyDelete
  6. rajeswariMarch 22, 2024 at 12:42 AM

    Hi,
    Great article! Your insights are spot on GIS. I especially appreciate your point about education of geographic information system (GIS) integrates hardware, software. It's evident you've done your research. Keep up the excellent work! Looking forward to reading more from you.

    Here is sharing snowflake online Training related stuff that may be helpful to you.
    snowflake online training

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Please leave your comments here...

Recommended for You

Playing with the markers and info window bubbles...

    In the last few posts, we have seen some marker examples and some information window examples. Now, lets do something interesting combining these two things. Just writing that "This is an info window" in the information bubble is not very interesting! And I know this...Have gone through the same phase!     So, today we will do something interesting! We will display the latitude- longitude co-ordinates of the point that the user clicks on the map! Doing this is not at all complex! Copy paste the following code and you will see for yourself a map coming to life!     The output of the above code looks as seen in the result section above! If you have any queries regarding the above code please comment on the blog post or feel free to contact me at my mail ID .
3 comments
Read more

Form info window

         Today we will look at a Google Maps API v3 example to add a form in the information bubble! This is usually required when we wish to accept some data/information from the user! This data can be saved to a server in the form of an XML file or a database! The information can then be retrieved back at a later stage, when necessary!          In this example we will only look at form in the information bubble! The connectivity part with the server will be discussed in another post! So, today's code snippet is as seen below! <html> <head> <title> Google Maps API v3 - Adding marker and info window on Click and creating a form in the infowindow with the lat-lng information in it. </title> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://maps.google.com/maps/api/js?sensor=false"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> var map;    //When using ev...
5 comments
Read more

Ground Truth - How Google Builds Maps

    Todays's article is cross posted from The Atlantic 's Tech section. The article was posted by Alexis Madrigal who is a senior editor at The Atlantic , where he oversees the Technology channel. So, thanks to The Atlantic and Alexis Madrigal, we will have an exclusive look inside Ground Truth , the secretive program to build the world's best accurate maps.     Behind every Google Map, there is a much more complex map that's the key to your queries but hidden from your view. The deep map contains the logic of places: their no-left-turns and freeway on-ramps, speed limits and traffic conditions. This is the data that you're drawing from when you ask Google to navigate you from point A to point B -- and last week, Google showed me the internal map and demonstrated how it was built. It's the first time the company has let anyone watch how the project it calls GT, or "Ground Truth," actually works.     Google opened up at a key moment in its evo...
6 comments
Read more

Jquery Mobile Toolbars - Header and Footer

    In Jquery Mobile there are 2 standard types of toolbars: Header and Footer. The header is typically the first element inside a mobile web page and the footer is typically the last. Both these toolbars usually contain buttons, links and text. In this post today, we will take a look at these 2 toolbars in Jquery Mobile. Lets's take a look at the code below.     As you can see in the HTML above, the structure clearly shows that we have the header as the first element of the Jquery Mobile page and the footer as the last element of the page. The title text is normally an H1 heading element but it's possible to use any heading level (H1-H6) to allow for semantic flexibility. For example, a page containing multiple mobile "pages" may use a H1 element on the home "page" and a H2 element on the secondary pages. All heading levels are styled identically by default to maintain visual consistency as you can see in the above example, we have used H3.    ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Jquery Mobile - Multi-page structure

    In this post today, we will have a look at the multi-page Jquery mobile architecture. We have discussed the single page architecture in detail in the previous post . In case you have missed it, I recommend you to have a look at it first, before you proceed to the Jquery Mobile Multi-page architecture.     Jquery multi-page architecture is nothing but a collection of DIVs stacked together in a single HTML page linked to each other using the div IDs. Let's take a look at the example below and then discuss it in detail.  The example shows a three "page" site built with 3 jQuery Mobile divs navigated by linking to an id placed on each page wrapper. Note that the id's on the page wrappers are only needed to support the internal page linking, and are optional if each page is a separate HTML document. Here is what three pages look inside the  body  element.     You must have observed that each of the page div has an attribute data-r...
2 comments
Read more