CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION TO GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION

SYSTEM (GIS)

GIS Technology Overview:

The technology of GIS has developed so fast over the past one decade that it is now
accepted as an essential tool for the effective use of geographic information. There
are many problems such as soil erosion, deterioration of environment, deforestation,
population growth, drought conditions, shortage of drinking water etc. These are
complex issues and require integrated responses. One difficulty in organizing such
integration e.g. among soil, water, vegetation has been the lack of means to link the
data in comparable and manageable sets. In order to overcome these difficulties GIS
offers entry of many types of data in a single spatial framework and has capability of
collection, compilation, storage, retrieval, analysis, manipulation, display and
integration of environmental, economic and social data in a single system.

We are presently positioned at the beginning of twenty first century with the fast
growing trends in computer technology information systems and virtual world to
obtain data about the physical and cultural worlds, and to use these data to do
research to solve practical problems. The current digital and analog electronic devices
facilitate the inventory of resources and the rapid execution of arithmetic or logical
operations. These information systems are undergoing much improvement and they
area able to create, manipulate, store and use spatial data much faster and at rapid rate
as compared to conventional method.

The handling of spatial data usually involves processes of data acquisition, storage
and maintenance, analysis and output generations. For many years, this has been done
using analog data sources, manual processing and the production of paper maps. The
introduction of modern technologies has led to an increased use of computers and

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information technology in all aspects of spatial data handling. The software
technology used in this domain is Geographical Information System (GIS).

1.1 Basic Defination:

There is no clear-cut definition for GIS. Different people defined GIS according to
capability and purposes for which it is applied. Few of the definitions are: -
a) “A computer assisted system for capture, storage, retrieval, analysis and
display of spatial data, within a particular organization” (Clarke, 1986)
b) “A powerful set of tools for collecting, storing, retrieving at will, transforming
and displaying spatial data from the real world” (Burrough, 1987)
c) “an information technology which stores, analyzes and display both spatial and
non-spatial data” (Parker, 1988)
d) “A decision support system involving the integration of spatial referenced data
in a problem solving environment” (Cowen, 1988)
e) A system with advanced geo-modeling capabilities” (Koshkariov, Tikunov and
Trofimov, 1989).

The above definitions cover wide range of subjects and activities best refer to
geographical information, sometimes it is also termed as Spatial Information System
as it deals with located data, for objects positioned in any space, not just
geographical, a term for world space. Similarly, the term “aspatial data” is often used
as a synonym for “attribute data”. E.g. rainfall, temperature, population data etc.

However GIS can be defined more commonly as: -

“GIS is computerized information storage, processing and retrieval systems that
have hardware and software specially designed to cope with geographically
referenced data and corresponding attribute information (tables, charts and
statistics).”

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 or
“GIS is an organized collection of computer Hardware, Software, Data and
Analyst to effectively capture, store, manipulate, analyze and retrieve all types of
spatial and non-spatial information.”

Frequently Used Terms in GIS:

 Spatial Information: information about a particular location called spatial

data. E.g land use, soil, slope, drainage, road etc
 Non-spatial Information: Description of spatial data in the form of table or
statistics. E.g. rainfall, chemical data of soil, temperature data etc.
 Attribute or Aspatial data: similar to non-spatial data
 Coverage, Theme, Feature, Layers: all are different names for spatial data
when different GIS softwares are used.

1.2 Objectives of GIS:

GIS is developed to-
1. Maximize the efficiency of planning and decision making
2. Provide efficient means for data distribution and handling
3. Elimination of redundant data base – minimize duplication
4. Capacity to integrate information from many sources
5. Complex analysis / query involving geographic reference data to generate new
information

For any application there are five generic questions a GIS can answer:

i) Location: what exist at a particular location

ii) Condition: identify location where certain condition exists
iii) Trends: what has changed since ?
iv) Pattern: what spatial pattern exist ?
v) Modeling: what if ……………..?

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1.3 History of Development of GIS:

 The GIS history dates back 1960 where computer based GIS
have been used. The initial developments originated in North America with the
organizations such as US Bureau of Census, The US Geological Survey and
Harvard University Laboratory.
 Environmental System Research Institute (ESRI) was the first to
develop the commercial softwares for GIS applications and till date became the
landmark in GIS development activities and making the GIS common and easy
for one dealing with spatial data.
 A sound and stable data structures to store and analyze map data
became dominant in the early 1970’s. This has lead to the introduction of
topology into GIS.
 Another significant break through occurred with the introduction
and spread of personal computers in 1980’s. After that it was possible to have a
computer on the desk that was able to execute programs that previously could
only be run on mainframe computers.
 Relational database technology became the Standard Research
on Spatial data structures, indexing method and spatial database made
tremendous progress.
 The 1990’s can be characterized as a period of the break through
of object orientation in system and database design, recognition of
geoinformatics as professional activities.
 Potentiality of GIS is realized in the recent past and now it has
become popular among many users for variety of applications.

1.4 Components of GIS

GIS comprises of four components.

1. The Hardware: used to store, process and display.
2. The Software: used to control and perform operations.
3. The Data: on which GIS operations are performed (Spatial, non-spatial)
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4. The Expertise (Live ware): the human element required to drive the system to
meet needs.

GIS Hardware
The general hardware components of Geographic Information System are the main
computer system or the Central Processing Unit (CPU), the terminal, keyboard and
the visual display unit (VDU), digitizer, disk drive, plotter, printer etc. The computer
or the CPU is linked to a disk drive storage unit, which provide the space for storing
data and programs. The digitizer or other device is used to convert data from maps
and documents into digital form and send them to the computer.

A plotter or other kind of output device is used to present the results of data
processing, a tape drive is used for storing / retrieving data or programs on magnetic
tapes or with other systems. The user interacts with the computer and the peripherals
(a general term for digitizer, printers, plotters and other apparatus linked to the
computer) via terminals.

Softwares: The GIS softwares to carry out the GIS operations. These are required
for driving the hardware. Common interfaces in GIS are menus, graphical icons and
commands. Most Common GIS Softwares available in the market are : ESRI
products like Arc/Info, Arcview, ArcGIS, Map Info from Map Informatics Inc,
Intergraph, Ilwis etc.
Data: includes both spatial and non-spatial data on which GIS operations are
performed to derive new information. Spatial data from various sources such as
Remote sensing images, Aerial Photographs or Map Data can be integrated with
corresponding non-spatial data in GIS.

Live Ware or Analyst: equally important as the computer hardware and software, the
brain ware refers to the purpose and objectives, and provides the reason and
justification, for using GIS.

1.5 Capabilities of GIS

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A GIS is a computer-based system that provides four sets of capabilities to handle
georeferenced data.
a) Data inputs
b) Data management (data storage and retrieval)
c) Manipulation and analysis
d) Output.

a) Data Input:
The function of data input to convert data from their existing form into one that can
be used by GIS. Georeferenced data are commonly provided as proper maps, table of
attributes and associated attribute data, aerial photos and satellite imagery..
b) Data Storage and Database Management:
 The data storage and management are the functions of database management
system of GIS. They are concerned with the way the data is structured, handled,
accessed and perceived by the user of the system.
 Effective data management includes all related aspect like data security, data
integrity, data filling and accessibility and data maintenance abilities.
 Data security ensures security against modification of GIS or access of data to
unauthorized use.
 Data integrity defines the ability of the system to protect data from accidental
loss or from contamination by extraneous data. Filling and accessibility provides
an authorized user to organize data into categories, directories, study area etc.
 Data maintenance provides the authorized user with the ability to update,
delete or add data to the GIS database.

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Data Processing: Data processing operations are those performed on the data to
produce information. It includes removal of errors and updating or matching them to
other data. Errors can arise during an encoding and in-putting of spatial and non-
spatial data which can be either incomplete or double, in the wrong place at the
wrong scale, distorted or linked to the wrong non-spatial data. Besides, data may be
over defined and may need to be reduced in volume. Data editing is interactively
performed to ensure that all the errors are corrected, updated and properly verified to
achieve the required accuracy, which are vital to analysis.

c) Manipulation and Analysis:

 Data conversion is only part of the input phase of GIS. What is next is the
ability to interprete and to analyze qualitatively and quantitatively the
information that has been collected.
 Spatial analysis tools are used to model, make predictions and reach
conclusion about the problem of interest. Such analysis involves combining data
from multiple spatial data categories and performing analysis/statistical
operations on the GIS datasets to transform the data into information suitable for
a given application.
 Typical operation includes overlaying different thematic maps, computing
areas, performing proximity searches, buffer zone creation, performing logical
operations, scale changing etc.
 Other techniques are creation of 3D perspective view using elevation data and
generation of slope maps, network analysis, costing etc. Given in brief a few
illustrations of some of these techniques.

 Overlay
 Buffer Generation
 Clipping
 Proximity Search
 Modeling
d) Data Presentation /Output:

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Display and conversion operations produce graphic output and reports such as maps
and color display drawn on a graphic terminal as well as formulated reports of
tabular information, where geographic entities are represented as a series of points,
lines and symbols.

Data Integration:

The image processing hardware and software in general provide the most suitable
environment for manipulating spatial data in general. In order to achieve more
effective information extraction from remotely sensed data, it has been found
necessary to combine spatial data acquired from various other sources with additional
environmental data sets. One such tool is Geographic Information System (GIS). GIS
facilitates integration of data from various sources such as maps, photographs,
satellite images, socio-economic data and other tabular statements into a format the
allows data to be compared and inter related for extraction of information to make
decisions about the real world.