National Council on Mapping & Geographic Information Systems (GIS)

The latest technology developments have provided biggest opportunity to Mapping and GIS. Accordingly National Council on Mapping & Geographic Information Systems (NCGIS) has been promoted to look after development and promotion of GIS, mapping.

Geographic information system (GIS) is a system designed to capture, store, manipulate, analyze, manage, and present all types of geographical data. That means that some portion of the data is spatial and in some way referenced to locations on the earth. Coupled with this data is usually tabular data known as attribute data. An example of this would be schools. The actual location of the schools is the spatial data. Additional data such as the school name, level of education taught, student capacity would make up the attribute data.

The partnership of these two data types has enabled GIS to be such an effective problem solving tool through spatial analysis.

GIS is more than just software. People and methods are combined with geospatial software and tools, to enable spatial analysis, manage large datasets, and display information in a map/graphical form.

GIS can be used as tool in both problem solving and decision making processes, as well as for visualization of data in a spatial environment. Geospatial data can be analyzed to determine

· the location of features and relationships to other features,

· where the most and/or least of some feature exists,

· the density of features in a given space,

· what is happening inside an area of interest (AOI),

· what is happening nearby some feature or phenomenon, and

· and how a specific area has changed over time (and in what way).

GIS Techniques and Technology

Modern GIS technologies use digital information, for which various digitized data creation methods are used. The most common method of data creation is digitization, where a hard copy map or survey plan is transferred into a digital medium through the use of a CAD program, and geo-referencing capabilities. With the wide availability of ortho-rectified imagery (from satellites, aircraft, Helikites and UAVs), heads-up digitizing is becoming the main avenue through which geographic data is extracted. Heads-up digitizing involves the tracing of geographic data directly on top of the aerial imagery instead of by the traditional method of tracing the geographic form on a separate digitizing tablet (heads-down digitizing).

Geoprocessing is a GIS operation used to manipulate spatial data. A typical geo processing operation takes an input dataset, performs an operation on that dataset, and returns the result of the operation as an output dataset. Common geo processing operations include geographic feature overlay, feature selection and analysis, topology processing, raster processing, and data conversion. Ge oprocessing allows for definition, management, and analysis of information used to form decisions.

GIS covers software, application tools and products based thereon. The applications are tools that allow users to create interactive queries (user-created searches), analyze spatial information, edit data in maps, and present the results of all these operations

GIS refer to a number of different technologies, processes, techniques and methods. It is attached to many operations and has many applications related to engineering, planning, management, transport/logistics, insurance, telecommunications, and business. GIS and location intelligence applications is foundation for many location-enabled services that rely on analysis and visualization.