Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Uses for a Geographic Information System
The following list of examples of the use of a GIS is hardly comprehensive, but as you read through it
you may happen on ideas that will apply to your areas of interest or study.
Land and Its Use
Discounting the possibility of sudden catastrophe, the strongest factor in how things will be tomorrow is
how they are today. A planner or manager who fails to provide himself or herself with information about
the current state and characteristics of the environment will probably misplan and mismanage.
Perhaps the most important variables in a geographic database are as follows:
1. What now exists on the land (land cover and resources)
2. How the land is employed (land use and human-oriented activities)
3. What is legally permitted to happen to the land (zoning and legal control)
Once the present state of the environment, or the portions of it with which we are concerned, is recorded in
a form amenable to processing, we can begin to make decisions about its conversions to some other use.
A geographic information system can be useful in dealing with at least three general categories of issues:
Determining the effect a particular activity or land use will have at a particular location (sometimes
called environmental impact analysis).
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Given a particular activity, with its characteristics known, determining a set of locations where it
might be placed (sometimes called locational analysis).
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Given a particular location or site, determining a set of land use activities that might well be placed
there (sometimes called site analysis).
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Let us now briefly look at a variety of specific areas in which geographic information systems could have
an impact. The thrust of presentation is mostly by example and is far from comprehensive. The format we
will use, for the most part, is as follows:
1. Examples of types of spatial (and other) data that might be stored
2. Advantages that might accrue by careful use of those data
An important factor to notice in the following is the degree of overlap among variables of different areas
of concern.
The Natural Environment
Knowledge of the natural environmental state of the land is central to a determination of what should be
preserved, what should be enhanced, what activities could be supported, what impacts are likely to occur
from given uses, and a host of other questions.
This change—the realization of “spaceship Earth”—has been occurring since the 1960s and has had many
profound and far-reaching effects. As a partial result, many of the first attempts to use spatial information
systems to support decision making have had the storage of natural science information as their basis.
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