What is a GIS?

A Geographic Information System, or GIS, is an organized collection of computer hardware, software, geographic data, and personnel designed to efficiently capture, store, update, manipulate, analyze, and display all forms of geographically referenced information. Or, in simple terms: A computer system capable of holding and using data describing places on the earth's surface. Many computer programs, such as spreadsheets, statistics packages or drafting packages can handle simple geographic or spatial data, but this does not necessarily make them a GIS. A true GIS links spatial data with geographic information about a particular feature on the map. For example, the centerline that represents a road on a map doesn't tell you much about the road except its location. To find out the road's width or pavement type, you must query the database. Using the information stored in the database, you could create a display symbolizing the roads according to the type of information that needs to be shown. In short, a GIS doesn't hold maps or pictures - it holds a database. The database concept is central to a GIS and is the main difference between a GIS and drafting or computer mapping systems, which can only produce a good graphic output. All contemporary geographic information systems incorporate a database management system. A GIS gives you the ability to associate information with a feature on a map and to create new relationships that can determine the suitability of various sites for development, evaluate environmental impact, identify the best location for a new facility, and so on.

GIS components A GIS is a very powerful tool that can be used to capture, store and analyze geographic data but it is not, by any means, a stand-alone system. You need several other very important components to make up a GIS: 1. People Without well trained, competent personnel operating and supporting a GIS the system would not function. Skill in selecting and using tools from the GIS toolbox and an intimate knowledge of the data being used are essential to your success as GIS user. Just pressing a button is not enough. Volusia County GIS personnel 2. Hardware Currently the GIS network within Volusia County consists of numerous workstations, X-stations, PCs, printers and plotters. The system is driven by a RISC 6000 model H50 server with 1 GB of RAM and 95 GB of disk space. Volusia County GIS hardware 3. Software In order to use a GIS in the most efficient manner it is important to run the most up-to-date version of the software that is available. At this time, Volusia County is running IBM AIX 4.3, ArcInfo Version 8.0.2, and ArcView 3.2. Volusia County GIS software 4. Data The heart of any GIS is the database through which questions such as what a feature is, where it is, and how it relates to other features can be answered. The Volusia County digital map library is designed to allow any user on the GIS network to view county wide geographic data from a common source. The map library also provides an

efficient and secure means of maintaining the database. Volusia County's GIS data

Questions a GIS can answer Perhaps the simplest way to define a GIS is by listing the types of questions it can answer. For any application there are five generic questions that a sophisticated GIS can answer. 1. Location: What is at a given location? The first of these questions seeks to find out what exists at a particular location. A location can be described as a place name, zip code or address. 2. Condition: Where does something occur? Using spatial analysis the second question seeks to find a location where certain conditions are satisfied (e.g., an unforested section of land at least 2,000 square meters in size, within 100 meters of a road, and with soils suitable for supporting buildings). 3. Trends: What has changed since ...? The third question might involve a combination of the first two and seeks to find the differences within an area over time. 4. Patterns: What spatial patterns exist? You might ask this question to determine whether cancer is a major cause of death among residents near a nuclear power station. Just as important, you might want to know how many anomalies there are that don't fit the pattern and where they are located.

5. Modeling: What if ...? "What if ..." questions are posed to determine what happens, for example, if a new road is added to a network. Answering this type of question requires geographic as well as other information.

GIS is not simply a computer system for making maps, although it can create maps at different scales, in different projections, and with different colors. A GIS is an analytical tool. The major advantage of a GIS is that it allows you to identify the spatial relationship between map features. A GIS does not store a map in any conventional sense; nor does it store a particular image or view of a geographic area. Instead, a GIS stores the data from which you can draw a desired view to suit a particular purpose. If every line on a map was the same colour, width, thickness, and had the same label, it would be very hard to make out what was going on. The map would also give us very little information. Take a look at Illustration 1 below for example. The fact that features have attributes as well geometry in a GIS Application opens up many possibilities. For example we can use the attribute values to tell the GIS what colours and style to use when drawing features.The process of setting colours and drawing styles is often referred to as setting feature symbology. Attribute data can also be useful when creating map labels. Most GIS Applications will have a facility to select an attribute that should be used to label each feature. If you have ever searched a map for a place name or a specific feature, you will know how time consuming it can be. Having

attribute data can make searching for a specific feature quick and easy. Finally, attribute data can be very useful in carrying out spatial analysis.Spatial analysis combines the spatial information stored in the geometry of features with their attribute information. This allows us to study features and how they relate to each other. There are many types of spatial analysis that can be carried out, for example, you could use GIS to find out how many red roofed houses occur in a particular area. If you have tree features, you could use GIS to try to find out which species might be affected if a piece of land is developed. We can use the attributes stored for water samples along a river course to understand where pollution is entering into the stream.

Feature

Geometry

Attributes

Point

Polyline
Vector Attributes at a glance

Polygon

GIS software uses two basic types of data: 1. Spatial data - containing the coordinates and identifying information describing the map itself 2. Attribute data - containing information that can be linked to the spatial data--for example, matching addresses or coordinates in the spatial data

Spatial Data Spatial data contain the coordinates and identifying information for various map features. Three types of features can be represented in the map: points, lines, and areas. The various physical aspects of the map--political boundaries, roads, railroads, waterways, and so forth-are organized into layers according to their common features. For example, the collection of points that represent park locations can be organized into a parks layer, the collection of lines that represent streets can be organized into a streets layer, and the collection of areas that represent census tracts can be organized into a tracts layer. A layer can be either static or thematic. Static layers use the same graphical attributes (color, line width, and so forth) for all features in a layer. Thematic layers can use different graphical attributes to classify the features in the layer. For example, a thematic area layer representing sales regions could use different colors to show the quarterly sales performance of each region. A thematic line layer representing highways could use different line widths to show the classes of roads.

Attribute Data The second type of data used in a GIS is attribute data. With SAS/GIS software, SAS data sets or data views can be associated with the map

through links to the spatial data. For instance, the spatial data might represent a county and contain information for city boundaries, census tract boundaries, streets, and so forth. An attribute data set with population information for each census tract can be linked to a map by the corresponding tract value in the spatial data. Two of the ways in which you can use attribute data in SAS/GIS include:

using variables from the attribute data as themes for layers. For example, an attribute data set containing population data could provide a theme for a map of census tracts. creating actions that display or manipulate the attribute data when features are selected in the map. The actions can range from simple, such as displaying observations from an attribute data set that relate to features in the map, to complex, such as submitting procedures from SAS/STAT software to perform statistical analyses. Data capture Data captureentering information into the systemconsumes much of the time of GIS practitioners. There are a variety of methods used to enter data into a GIS where it is stored in a digital format. Existing data printed on paper or PET film maps can be digitized or scanned to produce digital data. A digitizer produces vector data as an operator traces points, lines, and polygon boundaries from a map. Scanning a map results in raster data that could be further processed to produce vector data. Survey data can be directly entered into a GIS from digital data collection systems on survey instruments using a technique called Coordinate Geometry (COGO). Positions from a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) like Global Positioning System (GPS), another survey tool, can also be directly entered into a GIS. Current trend is data collection and field mapping carried out directly with field computers (position from GPS and/or laser rangefinder). New technologies allow to create maps as well as

analysis directly in the field, projects are more efficient and mapping is more accurate. Remotely sensed data also plays an important role in data collection and consist of sensors attached to a platform. Sensors include cameras, digital scanners and LIDAR, while platforms usually consist of aircraft and satellites. Recently with the development of Miniature UAVs, aerial data collection is becoming possible at much lower costs, and on a more frequent basis. For example, the Aeryon Scout was used to map a 50 acre area with a Ground sample distance of 1 inch in only 12 minutes. The majority of digital data currently comes from photo interpretation of aerial photographs. Soft copy workstations are used to digitize features directly fromstereo pairs of digital photographs. These systems allow data to be captured in two and three dimensions, with elevations measured directly from a stereo pair using principles of photogrammetry. Currently, analog aerial photos are scanned before being entered into a soft copy system, but as high quality digital cameras become cheaper this step will be skipped. Satellite remote sensing provides another important source of spatial data. Here satellites use different sensor packages to passively measure the reflectance from parts of the electromagnetic spectrum or radio waves that were sent out from an active sensor such as radar. Remote sensing collects raster data that can be further processed using different bands to identify objects and classes of interest, such as land cover. When data is captured, the user should consider if the data should be captured with either a relative accuracy or absolute accuracy, since this could not only influence how information will be interpreted but also the cost of data capture. In addition to collecting and entering spatial data, attribute data is also entered into a GIS. For vector data, this includes additional information about the objects represented in the system. After entering data into a GIS, the data usually requires editing, to remove errors, or further processing. For vector data it must be made "topologically correct" before it can be used for some advanced

analysis. For example, in a road network, lines must connect with nodes at an intersection. Errors such as undershoots and overshoots must also be removed. For scanned maps, blemishes on the source map may need to be removed from the resulting raster. For example, a fleck of dirt might connect two lines that should not be connected.