Geographic Information Systems :: essays research papers fc

Geographic Information Systems Geographic education systems (GIS) technology privy be used for scientific investigations, resource management, and development planning. For example, a GIS might allow emergency planners to easily calculate emergency solution times and effected beas of the ocean during an oil spill based on the spills location. You whitethorn ask, what is GIS? In the strictest sense, a GIS is a figurer system up to(p) of assembling, storing, manipulating, and displaying geographically referenced information, i.e. data identified according to their locations. Practitioners also postulate the total GIS as including operating personnel and the data that go into the system. A geographic information system (GIS) works in a series of steps, First there is the relating information from different sources. If you could relate information active oil spill location to the oceans surface currents, you might be subject to tell where to start clean up based on how large the oil has been in the ocean. A GIS, which apprize use information from legion(predicate) different sources, in many different forms can help with much(prenominal) analyses. The primary requirement for the source data is that the locations for the variables are known. Location may be an nonated by x, y, and z coordinates of longitude, latitude, and elevation and any variable that can be located spatially can be fed into a GIS. Several computer databases that can be directly entered into a GIS are being produced by Federal agencies and private firms. Different kinds of data in constitute form can be entered into a GIS. A GIS can also convert existing digital information, which may not soon enough be in map form into forms it can recognize and use. For example, digital satellite images can be analyzed to produce a map like layer of digital information about marine keep productivity. Likewise, sea-grass data can be converted to map-like form, serving as layers of thematic infor mation in a GIS. Next Step for Geographic information systems (GIS) would be to Capture the data If the data to be used is not already in digital form, that is, in a form the computer can recognize, various techniques can capture the information. Maps can be digitized, or hand-traced with at computer mouse, to collect the coordinates of features. Electronic scanning devices will also convert map lines and points to digits. A GIS can be used to try the spatial relationships among the objects being mapped.