Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
range of bodies of water, or the expected annual rainfall, and so forth. Instead, it should clearly show the
50-year floodplain, with a notation that more detailed or sophisticated information is available for other
floodplain limits in roughly the same format. If the system can produce a complicated map, it should also
have the ability of producing less complicated ones.
Documenting Products
Developers of GIS products sometimes become so caught up in the task of providing primary products to
decision makers that they neglect a second but vital component of the operation: providing explanatory,
documenting, and context-setting information. When the information relates to data sets, we call it, as
you know, metadata. Products need equivalent attention. Some of the information about products can be
obtained from the metadata; some cannot. A partial list of defining information for a report, document, or
map might include the following:
A title
❏
A descriptive paragraph on the content of the document and how it is to be used
❏
The geographic area covered
❏
The date the information was produced
❏
Identifiers that allow the user to determine the defining information about the data that support the
information in the report—references to the metadata, perhaps
❏
Statements about the precision of the information in the report
❏
Estimates of the accuracy of the information in the report
❏
The variables that went into the production of the report
❏
A name, phone number, e-mail and postal address of a person (or agency) to contact for information
about the report
❏
All of the parameters that were supplied by the user in the production of the report
❏
Any warnings to users
❏
Identification of agencies and individuals responsible for the report
❏
Not all of this information needs to appear in the same format in the same place. Some of it may be
generated by the computer and appear on the printout: date, data identifiers, parameters, precision
and accuracy information, and so forth. Various descriptive information might better be printed
separately and attached to the computer-produced report. Regardless of the methods of production
or dissemination, a product from a GIS should be a complete package. And, of course, pointers to the
metadata of the constituent data sources must be provided.
It may be determined that each user of an institution's GIS should be given a user's manual of the
system that mainly describes any customization of an off-the-shelf GIS such as ArcGIS. Such a manual
could set the context of the entire system and then describe each product series. Such a manual should
be loose-leaf and modular; it should also be available online. An updating scheme should be thought
out carefully.
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