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

Two maps on the same page - Side-by-side

    How good I am feeling to post a code example after such a long time! It's been all "news" over the past so many posts! Well now that I am finally doing a code example, I am posting a very highly requested code sample. Placing two Google Maps on the same page (Now that's simple you would say!), but side by side. Now this is the thing that most people struggle with. Well, implementing the second part is also very simple, as you will see in today's code.     Let's see the code. Here it is!     The output of the above code will be as seen in the result section above.     As most of you will realize, there are two maps, one centered at "Pune" and other at "Noida". Why I chose these two locations? Well, just like that!...The main issue of concern is how the maps appeared side-by-side and not one below the other as would be normal behavior of two "div" elements used in the same page. Now here is the trick! Check out the...
10 comments
Read more

Jquery Mobile - Nested Listview

    The Jquery Mobile listview is nothing but a ul-li HTML structure styled to appear as a list on a web browser. The plain ul-li structure can be modified to create the nested listview structure. Take a look at the example below, to understand the nested listview structure of Jquery Mobile.      By nesting child  ul  or  ol  inside list items, you can create nested lists. When a list item with a child list is clicked, the Jquery Mobile framework will show a new page populated with the title of the parent in the header and the list of child elements. These dynamic nested lists are styled with the "b" theme swatch (blue in the default theme) to indicate that you are in a secondary level of navigation.     Lists can be nested multiple levels deep and all pages and linking will be automatically handled by the framework. Note that the page of each nested listview is created when the parent page loads and for each nested page the ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Jquery Mobile - Customizing the listview

    In the examples on Basic Listviews that we have seen in the previous posts, you must have observed that the listview is sticking to the top of the screen. You will probably not have only the listview in your web application, but anyways you will have some divs before the listview and the listview will stick to the bottom of the div above it. Many a times, you would like to have some blank space between the div before the listview and the actual listview and this is the time when you would start over-riding the default Jquery Mobile CSS.     The example that we will be seeing today is a very basic example of using custom CSS to override the default JQuery Mobile CSS to suite our own web application or website.     As you can see in the result above, the listview has some margins around it. If you take a look at the CSS for this example, you will notice the following CSS. .ui-listview{     margin: 30px 70px 0 !important; }   ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Google Map's Real-Time Traffic Layer...

    You can now check the traffic condition on the road before you leave for work, or a party or to your friend's place. Google's Traffic layer shows the traffic conditions in your area - LIVE!!! Live traffic data is available in major cities in the United States, France, Britain, Canada and Australia, with new cities and countries frequently added. The Google Maps API allows you to add real-time traffic information (where supported) to your maps using the TrafficLayer object. Traffic information is provided for the time at which the request is made. Consult this spreadsheet to determine traffic coverage support.     Let us now have a look at the Google Maps API - Trafiic Layer example. Copy the following code in a simple text file and save it as html. Click on this html file and it will open in your default browser. You will then see the traffic conditions in your area - LIVE...     The output of the above code looks as seen in the r...
4 comments
Read more

CSS Text and Font

    In this post today, we will take a look at some of the most interesting CSS text and font properties listed below. text-transform white-space word-break word-spacing word-wrap font-variant Text-transform property:     Let's begin with the text-transform property. The filler text used in all the examples below has been taken from Andy Matthew's filler text generator which is a humorous replacement to the traditional boring lorem ipsum .     The text-transform property will turn your text to uppercase, lowercase and also will capitalize the first character of every word. So now you don't need any javascript to do your bidding. This transformation will be done irrespective of the special characters preceding and following the text characters. The following example will make things much more clear and editable of course =) White-space property:     The next property to explore is the white-space  proper...
Post a Comment
Read more