Geographic Information Systems - GIS

Jestin Joy

Mtech Computer Science and Information Systems

Rajagiri School of Engineering and Technology

September 28, 2010

Jestin Joy (Mtech Computer Science and Information SystemsRajagiri

Geographic Information
School of Systems
Engineering
- GIS
and Technology) September 28, 2010 1 / 15
 Outline

1 Introduction

Jestin Joy (Mtech Computer Science and Information SystemsRajagiri

Geographic Information
School of Systems
Engineering
- GIS
and Technology) September 28, 2010 2 / 15
 Outline

1 Introduction
2 Components

Jestin Joy (Mtech Computer Science and Information SystemsRajagiri

Geographic Information
School of Systems
Engineering
- GIS
and Technology) September 28, 2010 2 / 15
 Outline

1 Introduction
2 Components
3 Characteristics of Data

Jestin Joy (Mtech Computer Science and Information SystemsRajagiri

Geographic Information
School of Systems
Engineering
- GIS
and Technology) September 28, 2010 2 / 15
 Outline

1 Introduction
2 Components
3 Characteristics of Data
4 Conceptual Data Models

Jestin Joy (Mtech Computer Science and Information SystemsRajagiri

Geographic Information
School of Systems
Engineering
- GIS
and Technology) September 28, 2010 2 / 15
 Outline

1 Introduction
2 Components
3 Characteristics of Data
4 Conceptual Data Models
5 DBMS enhancements for GIS

Jestin Joy (Mtech Computer Science and Information SystemsRajagiri

Geographic Information
School of Systems
Engineering
- GIS
and Technology) September 28, 2010 2 / 15
 Outline

1 Introduction
2 Components
3 Characteristics of Data
4 Conceptual Data Models
5 DBMS enhancements for GIS
6 Standards and Operations
GIS methods
Example

Jestin Joy (Mtech Computer Science and Information SystemsRajagiri

Geographic Information
School of Systems
Engineering
- GIS
and Technology) September 28, 2010 2 / 15
 Outline

1 Introduction
2 Components
3 Characteristics of Data
4 Conceptual Data Models
5 DBMS enhancements for GIS
6 Standards and Operations
GIS methods
Example

7 Softwares

Jestin Joy (Mtech Computer Science and Information SystemsRajagiri

Geographic Information
School of Systems
Engineering
- GIS
and Technology) September 28, 2010 2 / 15
 Introduction

Introduction

Denition
GIS is defined as a systematic integration of hardware and software for
capturing,storing,displaying,updating,manipulating and analysing spatial data.

• During 1960’s GIS was a simple software tool that enabled solving simple
spatial problems.
• GIS expanded and is being considered as a Geographic Information
Science rather than a tool/system (introduced by Goodchild in 1992)

Jestin Joy (Mtech Computer Science and Information SystemsRajagiri

Geographic Information
School of Systems
Engineering
- GIS
and Technology) September 28, 2010 3 / 15
 Introduction

• Incorporates distinct fields of study such as geodesy(deals with the

measurement and representation of the earth), Remote sensing,
Environmental Science, City Planning, Business Planning...
• GIS relies on progress made in fields such as computer science,
databases, statistics and artificial intelligence.
• GIS applications are tools that allow users to create interactive queries,
analyse spatial information, edit data,maps and present the results of all
these operations.

Jestin Joy (Mtech Computer Science and Information SystemsRajagiri

Geographic Information
School of Systems
Engineering
- GIS
and Technology) September 28, 2010 4 / 15
 Components

Components

• Hardware & Software : Hardware includes plotters,scanners,processors,

web servers etc. Software includes mainly database management
systems.
• Data : Geographic data is mainly divided into Raster(continuous grid of
cells in 2D) and Vector data (Objets represented by points,lines and
polygons).
• Raster data sets are subdivided into categorical(every cell value is linked to
a category like soil/vegetation types) and continuous(describe continuous
phenomena like air pollution)
• People : Cartographers, surveyors, system users

Jestin Joy (Mtech Computer Science and Information SystemsRajagiri

Geographic Information
School of Systems
Engineering
- GIS
and Technology) September 28, 2010 5 / 15
 Components

• Vector sources include digitized maps, feature extracted from image

surveys...
• Raster sources include aerial images, satellite images, scanned map
images....

Jestin Joy (Mtech Computer Science and Information SystemsRajagiri

Geographic Information
School of Systems
Engineering
- GIS
and Technology) September 28, 2010 6 / 15
 Characteristics of Data

Characteristics of Data

There a particular characteristics of data that make the modelling more

complex. Important ones are described below.
• Location : Defined by coordinates in a specific reference system.
• Temporality : Dynamic nature of data should be considered
• Entity vs Field based data : Roads, rivers are entities and air pollution
distribution, terrain etc are field based
• Generalization : States can be aggregated to country but the reverse cant
be done if enough data is not available.
• Qualitative and Quantitative data quality

Jestin Joy (Mtech Computer Science and Information SystemsRajagiri

Geographic Information
School of Systems
Engineering
- GIS
and Technology) September 28, 2010 7 / 15
 Characteristics of Data

Regarding spatial data, common integrity constraints are not of much use. For
example impose the location of a state within the country boundary.Constraints
that deal specifically with spatial information is classified as follows:
• Topological : Used during insert/update to reduce error.
• Semantic : Define whether database state is valid according to semantic
rules
• User defined : Depends on the working scenario
• Temporal : Time information could be added for better working. For
example occurring event with a specific time such as accidents,
earthquakes ...

Jestin Joy (Mtech Computer Science and Information SystemsRajagiri

Geographic Information
School of Systems
Engineering
- GIS
and Technology) September 28, 2010 8 / 15
 Conceptual Data Models

Conceptual Data Models

• Raster model : Data is an array of cells. Each cell value represents an

attribute.
• Vector model : Discrete object representation as points, lines, polygons...
• Network model : Uses nodes and links . Node table defines coordinates
and link table defines connectivity.
• TIN model : Triangulated Irregular Networks (TIN) is used to create and
represent surfaces. Surface is represented as non overlapping triangles.

Jestin Joy (Mtech Computer Science and Information SystemsRajagiri

Geographic Information
School of Systems
Engineering
- GIS
and Technology) September 28, 2010 9 / 15
 DBMS enhancements for GIS

DBMS enhancements for GIS

• Until mid 1990’s GIS were based mainly on file based proprietary data
models. Scalability, security, recovery was difficult.
• Introduction of object oriented data bases helped to define complex types
needed by GIS. But it was not a success.
• Object Relational Database Management Systems (ORDBMS’) designed
to support GIS applications.In order to support GIS systems ORDBMS
had to create query language,parser etc. that support specific data types.
• Recently several extensions have been released by vendors
• Informix with Spatial and Geodetic DataBlade
• IBM with DB2 spatial extender
• Oracle with Oracle spatial and Oracle Locator
• These extensions are used along with GIS softwares

Jestin Joy (Mtech Computer Science and Information SystemsRajagiri

Geographic Information
School of Systems
Engineering
- GIS
and Technology) September 28, 2010 10 / 15
 Standards and Operations

Standards and Operations

• In 1999 Open Geospatail Consortium(OGC) defined the core data types

and methods.
• In 2003 OGC defined Geography Markup Language(GML) - XML
encoding tailored for geographic information. It enables
transport,modelling, and storage of spatial information.

Jestin Joy (Mtech Computer Science and Information SystemsRajagiri

Geographic Information
School of Systems
Engineering
- GIS
and Technology) September 28, 2010 11 / 15
 Standards and Operations GIS methods

Some important methods defined in OGC standard are described below:

• Equal : Whether geometry spatially equal to another
• Disjoint : Whether geometries share a point.
• Intersect : Whether geometries intersect.
• Touch : Whether geometries spatially touch
• Distance : Returns shortest distance between any two points in two
geometries
• Convex Hull : Returns a geometry that represents the convex hull of the
given geometry.
• Union/Intersection : Union/Intersection of two geometries
• Difference : Returns a geometry that represents the point set difference
of geometry with another geometry.

Jestin Joy (Mtech Computer Science and Information SystemsRajagiri

Geographic Information
School of Systems
Engineering
- GIS
and Technology) September 28, 2010 12 / 15
 Standards and Operations Example

CREATE TABLE STATES

( Sname VARCHAR2(50) NOT NULL,
State_shape POLYGON NOT NULL,
Country VARCHAR2(5),
PRIMARY KEY(Sname)
FOREIGN KEY (Country) REFERENCES COUNTRIES(Cname)
);
• Defines the state name, geometry(polygon), and the country.
SELECT Sname
FROM STATES
WHERE (AREA(State_shape)>50000);
• Retrieve states with an are greater than 50000.

Jestin Joy (Mtech Computer Science and Information SystemsRajagiri

Geographic Information
School of Systems
Engineering
- GIS
and Technology) September 28, 2010 13 / 15
 Software’s

Softwares

• ESRI ArcInfo and Geodatabase : Desktop based GIS products

• Products of ESRI.
• Available on various platforms.
• Basic objects implemented are point,line and Polygons
• Coverage is a proprietary format of ESRI for storing vector data.
• Arcinfo stores geometry in a file based system
• Geodatabase is the data model defined by ESRI for storing retrieving and
manipulating geometric data.
• Geodatabase uses database tables.
• ESRI ArcPad provides GPS integration to Mobile Light weight devices.
• ESRI ArcIMS, Intergraph Geomedia Web Map, MapInfo MapXtreme are
examples of internet based GIS.
• GRASS GIS : Free and Open Source GIS software released under GPL

Jestin Joy (Mtech Computer Science and Information SystemsRajagiri

Geographic Information
School of Systems
Engineering
- GIS
and Technology) September 28, 2010 14 / 15
 Software’s

Reference

[1] Rameez Elmasri, Shamkant B Navathe “Fundamentals of Database

Systesm” Fifth Edition.

[2] OGC on web http://www.opengeospatial.org/

[3] ESRI on web http://www.esri.com/

[4] Oracle spatial data help http://download.oracle.com/docs/

html/A88805_01/sdo_intr.htm

[5] Object relational concepts in Oracle spatial with examples http://

download.oracle.com/docs/html/A88805_01/sdo_objr.htm

[5] Mysql spatial extensions http://dev.mysql.com/

tech-resources/articles/4.1/gis-with-mysql.html

Jestin Joy (Mtech Computer Science and Information SystemsRajagiri

Geographic Information
School of Systems
Engineering
- GIS
and Technology) September 28, 2010 15 / 15