Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
packages employs heuristic procedures to solve a set of specific problems. While
this approach may be satisfactory for practitioners facing rather simplified versions
of these problems, it may not be sufficient in more realistic applications that involve
complexities such as capacitated facilities, additional objectives etc. Moreover, the
heuristics available within commercial packages may have not been tested on large
data sets. An alternative approach is to use an appropriate programming or scripting
language in order to implement more sophisticated solution methods within GIS
software packages. For instance, ArcGIS allows customization and access to all
of its core objects through a VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) environment.
This environment may also be used to link the GIS with dynamic link libraries
(DLLs) containing algorithms which can be called upon by the GIS to perform
optimizations. In fact, numerous scripts and tools, some of which related to location
science, have been prepared by developers for commercial as well as open source
GIS and are available in relevant forums. However, they are not always easy to
locate amongst the multitude of similar tools available over the internet. Finally,
another possibility for linking GIS and location analysis techniques is to invoke
both of them through a common programming language such as C
CC
or Visual
Basic. Examples where GIS and location science algorithms are integrated using
one of the approaches described above can be found in Johnson (
2001
), Ribeiro and
Antunes (
2002
), Bender et al. (
2002
), Liu et al. (
2006
), Bozkaya et al. (
2010
), Bruno
et al. (
2010
), García-Palomares et al. (
2012
) and Xu et al. (
2013
).
19.5
Using GIS in Location Science Applications
A GIS is recognized as a decision support system based on the integration of
spatially referenced data in a problem solving environment (Cowen
1988
). This
definition is particularly relevant when, in order to appropriately solve a problem, it
is necessary to conduct a complex multidimensional analysis, involving a significant
set of feasible alternatives and multiple, often conflicting and incommensurable
evaluation criteria, which is most often the case in practical applications. Hence,
GIS appear to be ideally suited for addressing practical problem situations. A
great number of studies have appeared in the literature over the years, reporting
applications where GIS have been employed to tackle a wide range of practical
FLPs. A review of this literature may be useful for practitioners as well as for
researchers since it may identify the main application areas where GIS appear
particularly fruitful as an analysis and decision support tool. A first list of GIS
application areas is given by Maguire (
1991
). In this section we focus on the
most recent literature on the subject. Although an exhaustive review is practically
prohibitive, this literature can be classified into the following broad categories:
land-
use suitability analysis, waste management, energy management, transportation
and
private and public sector applications.
