The Impact of the World Wide Web on Geographical Information Systems (Gis)

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The field of GIS, which stands for Geographical Information Systems or Geospatial Information Systems incorporates elements from geography, cartography, and computer science to capture, analyze, retrieve, and display spatial data. Spatial data is any type of information that deals with a location. This can be a street address, latitude-longitude coordinates, census data, etc. GIS software makes use of databases, graphic design etc. GIS software is used to analyze and solve real-world problems with a spatial or geographic perspective. There are different forms of data or attributes that go into analyzing real-world problem; an example can be a scenario where the county seeks to find the most effective location to build a new hospital. GIS can be used to give answers to such types of real-world problems. One of the simplest outputs of a GIS application is a map. However, GIS can be used to generate answers to queries and other more advanced analytical procedures about a geo-spatial problem. Many GIS software exist ranging from very expensive and professionally used applications like ArcGIS to free open-source programs like Quantum GIS. Regardless of their differences, GIS software organize data in layers; each thematic data layer is placed on top of another layer. Since each of the layers are referenced to a real-world geo-spatial location, they are able to be correctly placed in layers, from which a meaningful assessment can be made about whatever problem is being analyzed. Almost every website on the internet makes use of GIS applications in one way or another. A very obvious example is Google Maps. The backbone of all mapping infrastructure is GIS. All the maps including features on the maps such as highways, schools, hospitals, etc are produced with GIS software. Since most major websites make use of geospatial data, some deriving data from Google Maps, it's

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