GIS in the Digital Economy
Chapter 1 Slides from
James Pick, Geo-Business: GIS in the Digital
Organization, John Wiley and Sons, 2008.
Copyright © 2008 John Wiley and Sons.
DO NOT CIRCULATE WITHOUT
PERMISSION OF JAMES PICK
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Fundamental Definition of GIS
A GIS consists of the following elements:
• Data-base of attributes
• Spatial information
• Some way to link the two
Source: Clarke, 2003.
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GIS as a Toolbox
• GIS can be viewed as a set of tools.
• Sometimes this is called a process
definition because the subtasks are
sequentially arranged.
• An example of using a set of tools as
procedures is
– Get addresses from a marketing list
– Geocode them (to get X—Y points)
– Map them
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GIS as an Information System
• This dimension of GIS focuses on queries
of data-bases/
• As you know data-bases is a building
block of IS, so this can be an IS definition.
• Some definitions can go as far that GIS is
a spatially-enabled data-base.
• Data-base mgt. and GIS have paralleled
each other in development for 40 years.
• Presently there is some merger between
data-bases and GIS.
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Oracle Spatial 11g as an example
of GIS as IS
• For instance, Oracle is the leading commercial
large-sized data-base package. Every Oracle
database has low-level spatial functions.
• Oracle Spatial 11g is a leading data-base
(Oracle) that has been modified with spatial
functionality. It is today a “GIS” that is very
strong on data-base side and moderate on the
spatial side. We’ll talk more about it in the
course.
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GIS as an Approach to Science
• “GIS has changed the entire approach to spatial
data analysis.”
• It’s the convergence of several technologies that
has led to the huge growth. This includes GIS,
GPS, RFID, sensors, digital photography, and
broadband communications, among others.
• The next two slides illustrate this convergence of
GIS with other technologies. Sometimes they
are referred to as “coupled technologies.”
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Technologies Associated with GIS
Technology
Global positioning systems
RFID
Importance for GIS in Business
GPS combined with GIS allows
real-time locational information to
be applied for business purposes.
Allows portable products of any
type to be spatially registered and to
carry data that can be accessed and
updated remotely. Useful in
business because its inventories
constitute most of the goods that are
moved around and need to be
tracked (Richardson, 2003).
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Source: Pick, 2005.
Technologies Associated with GIS (cont.)
Mobile wireless communications
Hand-held GIS, such as ArcPad
Allows field deployment of GIS
technologies in mobile commerce.
Useful in supporting the real-time
field operations of businesses
(Mennecke and Strader, 2003).
Combines GIS, GPS, and wireless
technologies.
A new type of product that is
equivalent to PDAs, cell phones, and
other mobile devices. It contains
GPS and scaled-down versions of
standard GIS software. Gives
businesses more field flexibility in
inputting, modifying, and utilizing
data. Important in business sectors
such as retail that have substantial
field force (ESRI, 2003).
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Source: Pick, 2005.
Why is GIS a Scientific Approach?
• Why is GIS a scientific approach. There are
certain research questions that are specific to
spatial.
• There is a scientific sub-discipline with curricula,
degrees, conferences, and journals.
• A core discipline that is closely aligned to GIS is
geography. However, geography for many
(human geographers, post-modernist
geographers) is not quantitative.
• Nevertheless GIS has revolutionized many parts
of geography and given the discipline much
more real-world importance (and jobs for
students!)
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GIS as a Business
• This dimension of GIS is crucially important for
this MBA course. GIS as IS is not enough to
provide the full relationship with the MBA. GIS
in fact is a business (industry sector) and is a
business tool and method of growing
importance. It relates to many sides of your
MBA, including marketing, production, and
ethics.
• The size of the GIS software industry is over $2
billion.
• It is growing by 7 or 8 percent a year.
• When all components (software, hardware, data,
services) are taken into account, the size of the
GIS/spatial industry is approaching $30 billion.
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GIS as a Business (cont.)
• However, this side of GIS has not received as
much publicity and is less well known. We’ll look
at many of the reasons in the course. It can be
said at this point that the proprietary aspect of
spatial in business is an impediment.
• Another impediment is that the education in GIS
emphasizes the geographical side (this course
may help to remedy it).
• Decline in cost of computer components is a
business driver of GIS
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Moore’s Law. Transistor Capacity of Intel
Processor Chips, 1971-2000
Moore's Law. Transistor Capacity of Intel Processor Chips, 1971-200.
Year of Introduction
1971
1972
1974
1978
1982
1985
1989
1993
1997
1999
2000
Chip
4004
8008
8080
8086
286
386
486
Pentium
Pentium II
Pentium III
Pentrium IV
No. of
Transistors per
chip
2,250
2,500
5,000
29,000
120,000
275,000
1,180,000
3,100,000
7,500,000
24,000,000
55,000,000
*millions of instructions per second
Source: Intel, 2003.
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MIPS*
0.06
0.64
0.75
2.66
5.00
20.00
66.00
1,000.00
14,000.00
Other Stimuli to GIS in Business
• In the U.S., the GIS industry received the
“gift” of massive government spatial data.
The data comes from such agencies as
the U.S. Geological Service, U.S. Census
Bureau, intelligence agencies (restricted),
meteorological services, NASA.
• Business community GIS support groups
and GIS industry organizations, and
standard-setting nonprofits have grown up.
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Other Stimuli (cont.)
• Parallel technological advances have helped,
e.g. GUI interfaces, map servers, wizards, help
screens, mobile devices, and broadband
communications.
• GIS and spatial are becoming consumer
standards that are increasingly taken for
granted. Just like microprocessors are now not
even identified, so consumer essentials like
OnStar and NavStar in cars, MapQuest, and
E911 location tracing will be taken for granted.
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GIS in Society
• GIS is altering how people interact in
organizations and society.
• GIS can be used in public meetings and in
community electronic collaboration.
Sometimes the latter is called PPGIS, i.e.
Public Participation GIS.
• An example is the City of Sacramento
Police Department, which has made many
of the crime information available to the
general public for their use and interactive
discussion and feedback.
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GIS-Intensive Organizations
• GIS developed earlier and much more fully in
the public sector, while business uses are more
recent.
• In many city, county, and state agencies in the
U.S., such as country planning agencies, GIS
permeates the way people think and interact
with each other.
• In the business world, this can be seen in
spatially-advanced organizations such as ESRI,
which you’ll be visiting, and Rand McNally.
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Impact of GIS on Organizations
• GIS changes job roles, alters teamwork, shifts
cross-functional information exchange, and
changes hierarchies.
• For example, companies that were mapintensive tended to have map rooms with skilled
personnel to produce, print, store, and revise
maps.
• If modern GIS becomes pervasive, the
preponderance of these functions are done
electronically, and those remaining are done by
the end users.
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GIS applied differently depending
on the organizational type
• GIS can be used differently in different
organizations. An example from the public sector
is GIS in growth-oriented vs. environmentallyoriented communities.
• Growth-oriented community. GIS might help on
community growth, new buildings, and planning
expanded services.
• Environmentally-oriented community. GIS is
used as an interactive mechanism for forum
about environmental issues, awareness of
pollution threats and restrictions, and for
debating sound planning.
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Brief History of GIS
• The history of GIS and spatial technologies go back to
non-computerized map overlays in the early twentieth
century.
• An overlay is the exact superimposing of several map
layers such as terrain, hydrology, geology, and
agriculture. The layers can be viewed together, and the
relationships of their features analyzed.
• Using exact scales to match up layers, Jacqueline
Tyrwhitt did this in her Town and County Planning
textbook in 1950 (Clarke, 2003).
• Waldo Tobler’s article in 1959 conceptually foresaw
using a computer to accomplish cartography from
inputting data to producing maps (Tobler, 1959).
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Overlay of Characteristics
in Land Use Planning. Its
early uses in 50s and 60s
Jacqueline Tyrwhitt in 1950 started
the use of overlays – map layers that
could be exactly registered on top; of
each other – for land-use planning
and architecture.
This was carried much further by Ian
McHarg in his famous book in 1969,
Design with Nature. He had plastic
overlay sheets that demonstrated how
overlays could shed new light on
environmental design
Class Question – What is the
advantage of such an overlay versus
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just having one layer.
and Sons
Source: T. Turner, 2000.
Early GIS Software, Role of
Canadian Government
• In the 1960s early computer programs such as
SYMAP and CALFORM could overlay layers
and produce maps using mainframe computers
and on bulky, crude printers.
• The Canadian government was an early adopter
in 1964 of primitive GIS and continued in
subsequent decades to be a lead user.
• In the mid to late 1960s, substantial progress
was achieved on computer algorithms for GIS at
the Harvard Laboratory for Computer Graphics
and Spatial Analysis, include the use of arcs and
nodes to build up boundary files (Clarke, 2003).
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ESRI’s Historical Role
In the late 1960s,
Environmental Systems
Research Institute (ESRI)
was formed as a company
and headed since its
Source:
founding by Jack
ESRI inc.
Dangermond.
Its mainframe product ArcInfo, based on Harvard algorithms,
became the leading commercial GIS software package.
Although ESRI’s early markets were predominantly in
government, this also marked the beginning of GIS and
spatial applications for businesses.
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Role of the U.S. Military during
Cold War
• During the Cold War, there were parallel and
often secret developments in mapping and
satellite technology by U.S. military planners
were reacted to the threat of nuclear war (Cloud,
2002; Charles, 2005).
• This stream of military R&D eventually led to the
first development and deployment of satellite
systems for GPS in the 1980s.
• The military history is less well known and was
largely detached from the academic
developments of those decades.
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Summary
• GIS has a basic definition for the course involving
attribute and spatial information and their overlap.
• GIS has many dimensions that brings it out its roles as
toolkit, science, and in business and society.
• GIS’s history is only 60 years old. From early paper
overlays, it has developed hugely in government and
business.
• There are extensive and varied sources of information
on GIS. Being located in Redlands gives an advantage
to MBA students to access this information.
Copyright (c) 2008 John Wiley
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