Specifically, a GIS is a special-purpose digital database in which a common spatial coordinate system is the primary means of reference. Contemporary GIS can even integrate datasets that are actually in several different coordinate systems, converting as needed.
More broadly, a GIS may be considered an information system with software, hardware and data components that is designed and used to efficiently capture, store, update, manipulate, analyze, and display all forms of geographically referenced information.
While a GIS is a type of database application, all information in a GIS is linked to a spatial reference. Thus, while other databases may contain locational information (such as street addresses, or zip codes), a GIS database uses geo-references as the primary means of storing and accessing information. The ability to integrate information and support decision-making is the true power of a GIS.
Some common capabilities of a GIS include the following.
Cartography. Computers offer the same advantages to cartographers that word-processing software offers writers. Automated techniques are now the rule rather than the exception in cartographic production.
Spatial Statistics. Statistical analysis and modeling of spatial patterns and processes have long relied on computer technology. Advances in information technology have made these techniques more widely available (cheaper) and accessible (easier to learn and use), and have allowed models to expand in complexity and scale to provide more accurate depictions of real-world processes.
Data Integration. GIS systems allow geographers to collate and analyze internal and/or external data variables far more readily than is possible with traditional research techniques. The various types of data referenced spatially in a GIS system are often referred to as "layers". These layers work much like a set of clear transparent overlays, laid one on top of the other, and allow the analyst to consider the relationships between layers -- which could represent, for example, information about transportation networks, hydrography, population characteristics, economic activity, political jurisdictions, and other characteristics of the natural and social environments.
GIS systems are used extensively in government, business, and research for a wide range of applications. These applications include the "traditional" ones, such as environmental resource management and analysis, facilities management, and land use planning; and a more recent generation of applications empowered by technology availability and accessibility. These latter applications -- marketing and demographic studies, location and site analysis, and real estate analysis -- are the core "business GIS" applications that RPM specializes in.
Further, as GIS technologies make their way into the mainstream, more and more information systems will be spatially-enabled and become, in effect, GIS systems (although the spatial may or may not be the primary means of data storage and access). This represents a "sea change" in the history of GIS, in that IS professionals can now incorporate spatial technology into their existing environments and applications, rather than having to create a GIS aside and apart
from those systems.
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