What is GIS

A Geographic Information System (GIS), or geospatial information system, is any system for capturing, storing, analyzing, managing and presenting data and associated attributes which are spatially referenced to Earth.

A Geographic Information System (GIS) is not one particular component, nor a single analysis, but rather a collection of hardware, software, data, organizations, and professionals that together help people represent and analyze geographic data.

What you can do with GIS

• Calculate geographical attributes. A person can easily calculate measures, widths, areas, and volumes, and compare sizes from one feature to another.
• Define distributions. You can cluster geographical features as well as determine their own centered upon precisely how much room these people use, exactly how close they are to each other, and where they are relative to other features.
• Review geographical information. You can easily determine all kinds of stats on your geographical attributes from the easiest detailed statistics to extremely complicated spatial statistics
• Work with networks. A person can easily discover paths centered upon period, distance or additional aspects. You can route buses to reach the maximum number of people and use population density information to locate stores on these routes near many of your customers.
• Examine map layers. A person can easily evaluate the places of attributes from a single map layer (or theme) to another. Overlaying your layers displays a person the comparable position of attributes from one layer to another.
• Perform surface evaluation. Perform on the many areas accessible in GIS and use mathematical methods (such as interpolation) to locate missing values and perform other analyses.

Components of GIS:

As seen in the graphic below, GIS is really a technology system, not just one particular component.  GIS is composed of:

• Data. Both Spatial and Attribute Data
• Software. That data is entered into GIS Software which provides a user interface and data functionality.
• GIS Professional.  Software is accessed by GIS Professionals.
• Hardware.  Increasingly become more mobile, this is where the GIS Software resides.
• Organization.  Their need for data, drives the entire process.
• Output.  Analysis. Reports. Tracking. Decision Making. Planning and Work Flow Management.

GIS Software

GIS Software provides key functionality to capture, access, view, analyse and to produce reports from you geographic data to support decision making. The availability GIS software is vast, so choosing a package that is suitable to your needs, is critical.

GIS Software falls into roughly two categories:

• Open Source
• Commercial

View our comparison of some popular GIS software.