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| GIS Basics |
In today’s world – the flow of information especially digital information has become the critical ingredient for success in any activity. That is why, the period we live in is often referred to as an information age.
It is a simple fact that everything human beings do, do takes place at a certain location
on the earth – it has a geographic component, although we tend not to think about it much.
The digital information revolution of the late twentieth century has allowed this geographic
information to be more easily accessed, analyzed and used than ever before. This led to the
development of GIS as a discipline and emergence of GIS as a core of digital technology.
The technology of GIS is spread over the domain of several disciplines such as
Mathematics, Statistics, Computer Sciences, Remote Sensing, Environmental Sciences and
of course Geography. Similarly, diverse is the list of its applications – Commerce, Governance,
Planning and Academic Research. These application areas are also growing and expanding
every day due to its power and vast possibilities.
Traditionally, the discipline of Geography dealt with spatial description and analysis.
Now in the era of multidisciplinary approach, students, researchers, professionals from
different disciplines fi nd their way into the emerging discipline of GIS making it popular.
The rapid expansion and popularization of GIS means that now GIS is not just for the
specialists, but for everyone, but these GIS users have different requirements. There are
numerous amounts of GIS learning material available in the form of textbooks as well as
posted on various websites. These literature in general tend to be rather advanced and
designed for specialists while requirements of GIS beginners are some what ignored.
The present book is an attempt to provide basic fundamentals of GIS for beginners.
The book is evolved following the basic education approach, spreading onto three stages
of learning. The fi rst stage is about basic fundamentals, here development in technology
instigating the learning processes are discussed. This is spread over first three chapters,
which introduces the beginners to the GIS as a discipline, its history, development and evolvement process. The second stage is about the scope of the field, here the emphasis is
on issues of technological advancements and revolution in spatial learning and their basic
concepts. In this section, four chapters (fourth to eighth) cover the breadth and also depth
of GIS, here geographic data, nature, structure, source and real world models are elaborated.
Lastly, the third stage of learning, where the approach works towards the development of
critical thinking, using the knowledge base acquired from the earlier chapters. The last four
chapters discuss geographic query, analysis, selection and future of GIS, project design and
management.
Content of the Book
Chapter 1: Geographical Information Systems – Representing
Geography: Information technologies in geography, The course of
technological innovation, Geographic information systems: a generic
definitions, The GIS view of the world, Why is GIS important?, Contributing
disciplines, Major areas of application, The appeal and potential of GIS,
Components of GIS, Benefits of computerizing information.
Chapter 2: History and Development of GIS: Maps and their
historical development, Advantages of GIS over manual methods, First
automatic processing of geographical information, Important milestones in
the development of GIS, Recent developments.
Chapter 3: GISs Roots in Cartography: Human cognition of the
spatial world, Sensing and perceiving the world, Cognitive maps, Spatial
learning and development, Using and learning maps, GIS and spatial cognition,
Defining a map, Types, Other representation of the world, GIS and computer
cartography, Mapping concepts, features and properties, Types of information
in a digital map, The shape of the earth, Datum types, General coordinate
systems, Earth coordinate geometry, Map projections, World geographic
reference system (GEOREF), Affine and curvilinear transformations.
Chapter 4: Spatial Data Structure and Models: Information organization
and data structure, Geographic data and geographic information, Information
organization, The relationship perspective of information organization, The
operating system perspective, The application architecture perspective, Data–
Fundamental concepts, Spatial – non spatial data, Database management
system, Data models, Data modelling. Chapter 5: The Nature and Source of Geographic Data : Spatial data
formats – raster and vector, Choice between raster and vector, Data capture,
Data collection workflow, Primary geographic data capture, Secondary
geographic data capture, Obtaining data from external sources, Geographic
data formats, Capturing attribute data, Managing a data capture project, Data
editing, Data conversion, Geographic data – linkages and matching.
Chapter 6: GIS and the Real World Model: Real world model,
Entity types, Entity relations, Geographical representation of objects, Object
attributes, Object relations, From database to GIS to map, Shortcomings of
the traditional GIS data model – Entities and fields, Uncertainty, Conceptual
generalization, Role of maps in data modelling, Extension of the reality
concept.
Chapter 7: Basic Data Models in GIS: Vector data model, Coding
digital data for map production, Coding digital data for GIS, Storing points and
lines, Storing area boundaries, Spaghetti model, Storing Area Boundaries: The
Topological approach, How it works?: The DIME example, Data compression,
Storing vector data. Raster data models-Realizing the raster model, Storing
raster data structures, Raster data Structure: The array, Compression of raster
data, Saving space: The run length encoding and Quad-trees, Automatic
conversion between vector and raster models, Vector versus raster models.
Attribute data and computer registers, Coding and entering attribute data
Storing attribute data, Linking digital map and register information.
Chapter 8: Advanced Data Models: Surface representation, Grid
model, TIN model, Other models, Practical observations – Accuracy, Three–
dimensional objects, Representation of time, Models for movable objects -
Network model, Model for movement over surfaces, Combination of models,
The representation of networks, Node-node adjacency matrix, Forward and
reverse star representation, Representation of network attributes, Computation
of shortest paths on a network.
Chapter 9: Geographic Query and Analysis: Types of spatial
analysis - Queries and reasoning, Measurements, Transformations, Descriptive
summaries, Optimization techniques, Hypothesis testing, Spatial interpolation Inverse distance weighting, Kriging, Density estimation and potential, Advanced
spatial analysis, Descriptive summaries–Centers, Dispersion, Histograms and
pie charts, Scatter plots, Spatial dependence, Fragmentation and Fractional
dimension, Optimization, Hypothesis testing.
Chapter 10: Selection of a GIS: The evolution of GIS software, The early
GIS software programs, Operating systems and GIS, GIS functional capabilities
- Data capture, Data storage, Data management, Data retrieval, Data analysis,
Data display. Data structures and GIS software, The leading GIS software's.
Chapter 11: The Future of GIS: Future data: Easy access to digital data, Remote sensing and GIS, GPS as data source for GIS. Image maps and GIS,
Data exchange and GIS, Location - based services and GIS, Future hardware
– The workstation revolution, The network revolution, The microcomputer
revolution, The mobility revolution, The impact of the revolutions, Future
prospects of hardware, Future software – Software trends, The user interface
and WIMPs, The raster versus vector debate, object - oriented GIS, Distributed
databases, GIS user needs, GIS software research. GIS interoperability, Future
issues and problems – Privacy, Data ownership, Scientific visualization, New
focus.
ltem identification – The rich picture, The root definition, Designing a data
model, Conceptual and physical data model, Cartographic modelling. Project
management – Systems life cycle approach, The prototyping approach,
Implementation problems, Project evaluation, Project Design – An Example
(Urban Sprawl GIS) – Objective, Database design, Database automation,
Database management, Data analysis, Presentation of results.
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