Geographical Information Systems – an overview

Valentin P. Măzăreanu, PhD student

Iaşi, România
vali.mazareanu@feaa.uaic.ro

Abstract
For every question that the business world has asked there are answers in the
shape of information systems (IS for data mining, for statistical analysis, for
decisions support and many others). For the question “where?” the geographical
information systems appeared. GIS are a distinct class of information systems that
collect, store, process, analyze, create and display data that are identified starting
from its geographical location.
Key words: GIS, geographical, system, information
Introduction to GIS concepts
It seems that the literature does not offer a standard definition for the
Geographical Information System (GIS) concept. The Handling Geographic
Information Report (which is a standard creation body) describes GIS as an
information system where data has a geographical dimension [Hawkins, 1994, p.4].
What we can understand from this idea is that data can be bound to a very specific
point from a geographical map.
An interesting way to define this concept is offered by Meeks and Dasgupta
[Meeks and Dasgupta, 2005, p.179]. In their opinion GIS is a system that include
components as hardware, software, data, connectivity, procedures and operators.
GIS = f {Hardware, Software, Date, Connectivity, Procedures, Operators} where,
- Hardware – all the hardware components of a system;
- Software – operation systems, applications and tools;
- Date – all kind of data;
- Connectivity – component that connect GIS with data sources and other support
application;
- Procedures – processes, algorithms, methods necessary in order to use a GIS;
- Operators – annalists, researchers, users of GIS.
GIS are systems used for storage, extraction, mapping and analyzing geographical
data. GIS are metaphorical described as the 21st Century’s datasheets. These systems
became extremely important in many fields: starting with geography and geology,
continuing with business, healthcare or criminology and finishing (but not ending) with
governing (GIS is an important component of a e-Government plan).
 The main advantage of a GIS system is that all the complex data that have been
displayed in tables, datasheets, balance scorecard and other technical reports until now,
are displayed in graphical manner very easy to understand and interpret. If we think just
for a moment as a risk manager we understand that such a system would help me to
simulate and understand whether conditions in order to better identify nature risks for a
project.
Modus operandi – the system, its strengths and limitations
We have seen that a GIS is a system based on the utilization of the electronic
calculation techniques in order to collect, manage, process, analyze and display data
spatially (geo-)referenced. With other words, a GIS can be described as a system able to
memorize and use data that describes zones from a geographical map. Actually, this is
its novelty: the possibility to work with spatial data (data that can be referred through
geographical coordinates – latitude, longitude).
The table below present the way that a spatial data can be referred in a data base:
Table 1 An example of a data base with spatial components
Client Name Address City Postal Latitude Longitude
cod code (fictive) (fictive)
001 Alfa Carol 1 Iaşi 700505 -84.1234 34.5678
002 Beta Catargi 4 Suceava 725500 -84.2345 35.6789
Although there are many such definitions, GIS has to perform at least four
functions [Kropla, 2005, p.25]:
- Data manipulation;
- Analytical capabilities;
- Spatially referencing the data;
- The possibility to store and to extract geographical information.
GIS works with three types of data entity: points, lines and zones. The way that
these entities are represented in a geographical information system is presented in the
figure below:
Points – e.g. peaks, entrance on caves
Lines – e.g. rivers, streets
Zones – e.g. land properties, delimitation of types of forests

Fig. 1 Data representation

Source: adaptation from Laurini, R., Thompson, D.,
Fundamentals of Spatial Information Systems, Academic Press, 1992
 A geographical information system organizes information in layers. Each layer
may contain different kind of information, such as rivers, lakes or highways, specific
location like hospitals or hotels or land properties. A coordination system helps to
create a connection between all these layers so in the end to be able to cumulate all
the information into one map. The way that this process works is presented in the
figure 2.

The street layer

The hotel layer The complete representation of all the

layers into a GIS

The train station layer

Fig. 2 The way GIS works
Although GIS is a powerful tool, it can be criticized. And the main limit is that
these systems are statically and mostly two dimensional, not being able to display
data in a dynamical manner. With other words, these systems ca not store, process
and display the time dimension. There are also other weaknesses [Sheppard, 2004,
p.6184]: limitation in representation the real world or in accessing the right
technologies, some legal and ethical implication and impossibility in applying GIS
in order to redress social and geographical inequalities.
Who use geographical information systems?
The geographical information system are used in various fields, starting with
public administration, military activities, transportation and infrastructure
administration, business, healthcare, social services or land properties management.
Of course, not to mention geography, geology and all the relegated fields. The
advantages of these systems made risk managers to use it in their risk management
plan at the time they take into consideration the possibility of nature disaster and the
disaster recovery plan. And because we mention healthcare, in 1854 John Snow used
for the first time a map in order to identify the water source responsible for a cholera
disease [Ghinea et al, 2002, p.225]. But the medical systems use GIS also for
monitoring the spreading of a disease, market research, logistics and so forth.
Another interesting approach is the effort made in combining the multi-agents
systems with geographical information systems [Monteiro de Farias, O.L. and dos
Santos, N., 2005, p. 998]. This approach could eliminate the limitations in
representing the world also taking into consideration the time dimension. These
systems are called agent-based geographical information (ABGIS) and they are used
with great success when the scope is simulating an event (e.g. a fire spreading into a
village where all the houses are made by a specific kind of wood).
These systems are increasingly used in the process of developing procedures to
support educational policy analysis and school site management [Bruno, J.E., 1996,
p.24]. The decision makers are using GIS techniques in order to obtain reports where
quantitative data are displayed in a graphical manner. This way of presenting
statistical data as images and pictures are considered an efficient method, especially
when there are lots of data to analyze and the decision makers are not very
familiarized with statistical techniques or with the data mining complex systems
(e.g. board of directors of a school, professors, parents, large audience and so forth).
The necessity of a geographical information system at the public administration
level is without a doubt extremely important. The Royal Institution of Chartered
Surveyors of United Kingdom has recognized this since 1987 [Ralphs, M. and
Wyatt, P., 1998, p.84] when made some recommendations to the public authorities
suggesting them to develop departments of administration of land properties and to
create centralized data bases of properties. Starting this idea some public authorities
developed the concept of Land Information Systems (LIS).
Some other perspectives of geographical information systems:
- SDSS (Spatial Decision Support Systems): a system that combines geographical
information systems with decisions support systems [Huerta, E. at al, 2005,
p.21];
- MuTACLP+ (Multi-theory Temporal Annotated Constraint Logic
Programming): a programming language that can be used in order to improve
the spatial and temporal analysis of the geographical data stored and managed
by a geographical information system [Raffaeta, A. and Renso, C., 2000,
p.900];
- Hyper-spatial documents: multimedia spatial information created by a
geographical information system integrated with hypermedia.
Conclusions
We accept that this is a complex subject that can be analyzed in different
manners. And of course there are lots of subjects that can be taken into
consideration, like designing, implementing and managing of spatial data
warehouses, data mining in geo-referenced data, open source GIS models, wireless
technologies and geographical information systems (mobile GIS) or the Scalable
Vector Graphics (SVG) standard, an eXtensible Markup Language used in
describing the two dimensional graphics. A comparative approach of the GIS and
mapping software could be a great move also since there are many such products on
the market (e.g.: AutoCAD Mapo, ArcView by ESRI, MapInfo Professional,
Maptitude by Caliper, BusinessMAP Pro by ESRI, CensusCD+Maps, Lotus 1-2-3,
MapPoint by Microsoft, TNT Mips or Net Set, a Romanian product).
Under this light we have to accept that the geographical information systems are
at the beginning of a journey and there are lots of words to be said and written on
this topic.
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Aparut in Măzăreanu, P.V., Geographical Information Systems – an overview, The

Proceedings of International Conference on Informatics in Economy „Informatics in
Knowledge Society”, may 2007, ASE Printing House, ISBN 978-973-594-921-1