GIS 1001
Introduction to Geographic
Information Systems
Instructors
 Jeff Fesperman: B309, 224-0356
 Mike Phillips: B318, 224-0394
Texts
 Concepts & techniques of
Geographic Information Systems
 Getting to Know ArcView GIS
Organization
 Lecture
 Lab


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/figures
information: data in useful form
knowledge: what you have
intelligence: 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 Data
 spatial 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 GISystems
 what to do & how to do it
GIS History
 Table, page 6
 1960’s & 1970’s - mainframe
computers
 1980’s to mid 1990’s - mainframe &
minicomputers
 mid 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 12
academic
business
government
industry
military
Users of GIS
 Specialist: includes programmers,
designers, developers
 General Users: planners, scientists,
administrators (us)
 Viewers: everyone (our “clients”)
Core concepts
 figure: p 17