GIS 1001Introduction to Geographic

Information Systems

Instructors

Jeff Fesperman: B309, 224-0356Mike Phillips: B318, 224-0394

Texts

Concepts & techniques of Geographic Information Systems

Getting to Know ArcView GIS

Organization

LectureLab

Exercises Projects

Course Outline & Schedule

http://www.ivcc.edu/phillips

Chapter 1

Introduction to Geographic

Information Systems

Definitions

“…a system of hardware, software, and procedures designed to support the capture, management, manipulation, analysis, modeling, and display of spatially referenced data for solving complex planning & management problems” (Rhind, 1989)

Definitions

“…a computer system capable of assembling, storing, amnipulating, and displaying geographically referenced information…” (USGS, 1997)

“…a set of computer-based systems for managing geographic data and using those data to solve spatial problems” (Lo & Yeung, 2002)

Definitions

a computer system that allows the analysis and display of data with a spatial component (Phillips, 2002)

Definitions

data: collection of facts/figuresinformation: data in useful formknowledge: what you haveintelligence: what you use

Information System

allows the transformation of data into information via: structuring formatting conversion modeling

GIS: transforms data with a spatial component

Geographic Dataspatial data referenced to “geographic space”

coordinate system• grid• other

projection source

• land survey• GPS• aerial imagery

represented at a “geographic scale”

Geographic Information Science

approach to using GISystemswhat to do & how to do it

GIS History

Table, page 61960’s & 1970’s - mainframe

computers1980’s to mid 1990’s - mainframe &

minicomputersmid 1990’s to present - PCs &

workstations

GIS data types

geodetic control network: surface location topographic base: point elevation graphical overlays: thematic data

representation vector: point, lines, polygons raster: grid cells surface

metadata information about the data key when sharing data

GIS technology

hardware organization• intranet: servers & client computer stations• PCs• internet

considerations• processing power• file size (very large)• data access

GIS technology

software proprietary open standard

companies ESRI

• ArcInfo & ArcView

• ArcGIS Intergraph MapInfo

Application of GIS

table - p 12academicbusinessgovernmentindustrymilitary

Users of GIS

Specialist: includes programmers, designers, developers

General Users: planners, scientists, administrators (us)

Viewers: everyone (our “clients”)

Core concepts

figure: p 17