ISSUES in GIS

Pushpalata Shah
pushpa@sac.isro.gov.in

‘I want to combine several maps into one and the data won't
line up. Objects in drawings using the same projection do not
align well’. This is a very common refrain among GIS data users and
analysts. Spatial data industry and users are looking forward to the
opening up of GIS data (thematic maps) through the National Spatial
Data Infrastructure. Are we well prepared and geared up to put the
data to use straight away for efficient decision making and
management of our Natural Resources? Or will we be entering into the
whirlpool of matching scales, registration, compatibility, resolution,
projections and searching for data / metadata?

Although the use of geographic information technologies is pervasive

throughout business, government, industry and the scientific
community everywhere; it has its own intrinsic problems and issues.
Conflicts are arising on a daily basis for those using geographic
information systems and their affiliated databases, for those
implementing such systems, and for those designing the next
generations of spatial information technologies. Balancing among
competing interests and resolving conflicts involved in the use of these
technologies are growing problems for numerous parties within
society. Among the problem domains of greatest concern in use of
these technologies are those involving personal information privacy,
intellectual property rights in geographic information, liability in the
use of geographic data sets, public access to government geographic
data sets, public goods aspects of geographic information in libraries,
and sales of geographic information by government agencies.

Issues related to usage of Data from Different Sources

You would have to be very lucky to have found data for your entire
final project; that was at the same scale, in the same projection, with
the same datum, collected at the same time and in the same manner.
What is worse is that unless people have been very diligent in their
data documentation, you will not know all of the parameters.

As soon as data from different sources, times, scales, etc., is mixed it is

subject to errors. If we use this data to derive new data, the errors
propagate into the new analysis. An easy example is we overlay data
on top of each other, the areas where the data do not agree forms a
myriad of little slivers, if it is polygon data and over/under shoots if it is
line data. The correct choice is to generalize data to the same scale so
that you do not get a sense of false precision.
Projections as you know cause distortions in at least one aspect of the
data. There is no meaning in calculating area on a data set that has
not preserved it, or similarly, measuring distances in a dataset that
distorts distance is also wrong. Extracting data from a larger dataset
can cause problems with combining data as edge effects might be
present in one dataset and not another. UTM projected data for
example are prone to edge effects. Raster data from aerial sources
also have distortions that should be corrected by the orthorectification
process, but sometimes they are not.

Another common data is the modifiable area problem. If you are using
data that has been produced as a thematic map, it is open to this type
of error. An Example, Junagadh voters lobby for a candidate from
business community, Rajkot voters are conservative, Bhavnagar voters
are influenced by Rajkot tendencies, and the State is equally divided.
Now how would you describe a voter from Amreli? It depends on the
scale that you are using to look. Unless you asked them directly there
is no way to know if your generalization will be correct. On average it
would be correct for each scale of the investigation but not at the level
of the individual. This problem is general in combining data at different
scales or in using data sampled or gathered at one scale to make
generalizations about another scale.

The problems of attribute comparability cannot be overcome unless

there are excellent data definitions stored in a thorough data
dictionary. One person's major highway is a minor road elsewhere. Just
being aware of these problems and making sure you consult the
metadata, data dictionaries, and documentation when you acquire
data helps a lot overcome these sources of error.

Data Mismatch

Data Mismatch can be caused by projection problems, datum errors,

scales differences, errors, temporal mismatch, or distortion in sources
like non-orthographic aerial photography. The first two are the most
common and are possible to fix, the others are much more difficult.

Data mismatch caused by missing or erroneous metadata, datum, or

projection files is very common. Let us conduct a thought experiment.
It is common to have at least one case where downloaded data do not
align. What to do?

First, look at the metadata. Unfortunately, sometimes the metadata

had an error and gave the wrong projection parameters, e.g. the UTM
zone did not line up with the reference longitude. This happens when
people copy metadata from one layer to the next but forget to update
the parts that change. This is a case where Metadata is vital to
understanding your data.
Cartographers often move things to make the map easier to read. The
spatial topological relationships are mostly preserved but the location
coordinates are not. An orthoimage should be correct but may not be,
as there can be considerable distortion from lens or hilly terrain and
these distortions are not always fully corrected in the orthorectification
process. If in this case the error still looks too large for it to be caused
by poor rectification, you could try getting a free satellite image, a
mosaic for the area is sometimes best and free on the web. (However,
whatever is free need not be correct). Satellite images are mostly less
error prone due to the extensive processing they receive before they
are released.

If all these moves fail and you are near enough to use a GPS. You need
to ground truth the image. The amount of correction will be restricted
to the accuracy of the GPS. Find a prominent thing that is static and
permanent, river bends are not good enough but a building is; unless
the map is very old. Get the GPS coordinates for a number of places
covering the middle and edges of the area of interest. Load these into
GIS and see if the align. If the shape file aligns then it is correct. If the
image aligns that is correct. You now need to spatially adjust the one
that is wrong. This process of putting control points on one layer to
where they need to move on the other layer is spatial adjusting.
Finally, make sure you cover the whole process of corrections and
transformations in your own metadata so that you cover yourself when
the data is used.

Data Extraction

The last set of problems to consider is timeliness and data editing.

Almost from the time a map is made it will be out of date, due to
ongoing maintenance, new construction, and changes by third parties.
Sometimes the data is checked out for editing, other times on larger
systems it can be edited concurrently. This causes a big problem. What
happens to this kind of data when you download it? How often should
you down load it? Should you only connect to the data in a mash up
type of approach and down load the data only on-the-fly? There is no
simple answer to the problem. But again, being aware of the problem
is half the battle.

Re-project or not

Supposing you are using data from another source, do you re-project it
on receipt or use GIS to do that on-the-fly? As you can see from above
it is important that it be in a projection that is suitable for the analysis,
if one is to be performed. If it is for display or location problems it is
not so important, however, project-on-the-fly does take time. Finally,
you must be aware of the fact that as good as re-projection algorithms
are, they do not preserve the original accuracy.
Problems with Projections

There is no way to troubleshoot problems with projections that does

not require fairly sophisticated understanding of what projections are
all about. Problems with projections almost always involve a battle with
obscure details. Drawings, images or surfaces disappear from a
map after projection. Using a projection causes extreme
distortion. Objects that are drawn in maps change shape or
position unexpectedly after projection. Changing a projection
is not permanent. Re-projecting an image or other large
component causes error messages. You need to ask yourself some
of the questions below

 Are you trying to combine maps using different UTM zones

into one UTM zone map? That won't work due to limitations
of UTM. Get the data in un projected form and use a
different projection for a combined map.
 Are the datums the same? Using exactly the same
projection parameters but different datums will result in
slightly different positions that will make a difference in
high accuracy applications.
 Was the component imported from a format that does not
save projection information? Formats like .dxf and .shp for
drawings and .jpg or .gif in images do not save projection
information. The component may look visually correct after
import, but if it is not imported with the correct projection
and geo-registration any subsequent re-projection will
cause chaos. After importing from a geographically-
unaware format you'll have to manually specify the
projection.

World model used for GIS work includes the sphere and the geoid.

• Most often this reflects the local coordinate system in use.

• Errors of datum can be hundreds of meters vertically and
horizontally.

Map Projections
 • Map projections can use sphere, ellipsoid or the geoid.
• Simple basis of the "developable form" (plane, cylinder, cone)
• Scale is twofold: (1) Scale multiplier and (2) local scale.
• No flat map can be both conformal and equivalent

• Map projections always sacrifice something, such as continuity,

one-to-one etc.
• Can be interrupted in many places.

Scale issues:

Scale can never be constant everywhere on a map because of map

projection
• problem is worst for small scale maps & certain
projections (e.g. mercator)
• can be true along a line , or a set of lines
• on large scale maps, adjustments are often made to
achieve ‘close to true scale everywhere (e.g. State Plane and
UTM systems)
• On paper maps, scale is hard to change, thus it generally
determines resolution and accuracy--and consistent decisions
are made for these.
• A GIS is scale independent since output can be produced at any
scale, irrespective of the characteristics of the input data— at
least in theory

Why worry about scale?

As is the case with any data relating to a location, scale is a critical
issue in GIS. The scale of a map used for locating major watersheds
within the River basin will be different than the scale of a map used for
locating forest inventory plot centers within a single district in a
National Forest.

The essential problem of scale in a GIS is that all features are stored
with precise coordinates (the computer stores numeric values),
regardless of the precision of the original source data. Data which
came from any mixture of scales can be displayed and analyzed in the
same GIS project. The output of mixing data of differing scales can
lead to erroneous or inaccurate conclusions.

Consider these two coordinates:

(125.875,500.379) & (126.000, 500.000)

Both coordinates are stored with the same precision (3 decimal

places). If we ignore the 3 decimal places of precision, the 2
coordinates are identical, but if we use the full precision of the data,
the coordinates are different. Depending on the scale at which you
view these points, they will either look like a single point or they will
look like 2 separate points. As you zoom in closer, the relative distance
between the points will increase.

What features & details exist at different scales?

Scale will affect not only analytical functions, but also map display. The
smaller a map's scale (i.e., the more ground area it covers on a page),
the more generalized the map's features are. A road or stream that is
quite sinuous on the ground may be represented by a fairly straight
line on a map. Sometimes features are dropped altogether from
smaller scale maps.

Here is an example of data captured at several different scales. The

shaded polygon is Pack Forest's administrative boundary.
(Data from the Digital Chart of the World, from source data at a scale
of 1:1,000,000)

(Data from the USGS, from source data at a scale of 1:2,000,000)

Using data from many different scales introduces these types of

problems. The adage "A chain is only as strong as its weakest link"
applies here; the accuracy and precision of measurements, maps, and
models from a GIS are only as good as the least accurate and precise
data source.
Data Conversion

The objective of data conversion is to maintain all of the data, and as

much of the embedded information as possible. This can only be done
if the target format supports the same features and data structures
present in the source file.

Successful data conversion requires thorough knowledge of the

workings of both source and target formats. In the case where the
specification of a format is unknown, reverse engineering will be
needed to carry out conversion. Reverse engineering can achieve close
approximation of the original specifications, but errors and missing
features can still persist.

Data Use Ethics

Finally, when we download data we have to consider how we use it.

There are often restrictions placed on the user of other people’s data.
What disclaimers are listed at the sites you visited? Where would you
have found these? They are only in the metadata. Is free data less
reliable or more reliable? If you are paying for data the person
supplying it has a commercial duty to ensure it is fit for the purpose it
is supplied, but often in downloading data they do not have any
knowledge of what it is to be used for, the liability often resides not
with the provider but with the end user. Very frequently data is
supplied that cannot be republished, there are no exact guidelines on
how different it has to be so that it cannot be reversed engineered.
Even if the data were modified so that it passes a legal test of use, is it
ethical.

All GIS professionals have strict guidelines on how they treat data.
Today the software industry is much better at establishing licenses for
their material and definitions of fair use etc. The data suppliers are a
long way behind in supplying these definitions. Privacy is an important
consideration.

Privacy Issues

The increase of GIS usage has brought with it a rise in public concern
over privacy. The proliferation of easily accessible public information
via the web is one of the reasons. The availability of not only aerial
and satellite imagery but also street level imagery has also raised
questions about the balance between the public’s rights to access
information versus the individual person’s right to privacy. A.F. Westin
in Privacy and Freedom (1967) defined privacy as “the claim of
individuals … to determine for themselves when, how, and to what
extent information about them is communicated to others.”
A group of taxi drivers launched a two-day strike Wednesday, right in
the middle of the New York Fashion Week and the U.S. Open tennis
tournament, to protest a city plan to require GPS tracking in cabs. The
objections are:

“There are two issues. One is moral and constitutional, the other is
financial,” said NYTWA spokesman Bill Lindauer, in New York. “Under
the system drivers are tracked, they’re spied upon. It’s like we’re
under surveillance. Not only are we under surveillance we have to pay
for the dubious privilege.”

As for privacy issues I think that the following case is germane. In a

battle of the titans, Gabrielle Adelman a dot com billionaire who likes
beaches, flying, and photography has flown a mission along the
California coast photographing the whole thing. Barbara Streisand sued
him for alleging an invasion of privacy, and attempting to profit from
the use of her name. After a case involving several $100,000 in court
costs the pictures were eventually left on line.

Privacy can mean more than personal privacy, is it right to identify the
nest sites of say the Condor on the web when this will lead to the
disturbance or destruction of an endangered species?

Ethical Issues

Whatever it is you are working on, GIS always has ethical

consideration. It has been argued that the process of making a map is
an act of power. The map makers make it for their own uses, they
choose the data, symbolize it, and choose where and how it is
published. These actions might not be in the best interest of another
party who is represented on a map but might have no power on how
they are represented.

Scenario-1: An environmental conservation group has used a GIS to

track the existence and location of plant and animal species over an
extended period of time on a large parcel of land it owns. The group
claims that adverse effects caused by the presence of a recently built
nearby shopping center are destroying the ecosystem of their parcel.
They claim the biodiversity of their parcel has been decimated and
several species have been wiped out altogether. The group wishes to
use their GIS evidence in a law suit for damages and to halt current
plans for expanding the shopping center.

Each of the four scenarios raises varying questions regarding the

principles that will be used by courts in allowing GIS evidence to be
considered by the trier of fact in courtroom settings.

If the data contained within or the products generated from a specific

operational GIS eventually are shown to be readily and successfully
challengeable in court, much of the investment in the system may be
lost. Decisions based on data from the system generally will no longer
be considered reliable by the public.

Data Sharing Issues:

In India most maps are generated by Government Agencies. Should

they charge for this data or provide it free. After all it is the tax payer’s
money that has gone into the generation of these maps. We still live in
an era where information is power. Maps are thought of as institutional
assets that have to be guarded. Most citizens and even businesses
have to guess what spatial data is available and then search for the
appropriate gatekeeper. Another issue to successful data sharing is
Data Standards; or the complexity to adapting to standards. What
could be the cost of withholding GIS Data? Half a Million Dollars -

References:

1. https://www.e-education.psu.edu
2. http://www.californiacoastline.org/streisand/pressrelease-
decision.html
 Annexure-1

1. Vector Formats
o Hardware Specific Formats/ Plotter formats
o PostScript
o Digital Exchange Format (DXF)
o Digital Line Graph (DLG)
o TIGER
o Shapefile
o SVG(Scalable Vector Graphics)
o Arc-Info Coverage
o Arc-Info Interchange (e00)
o GeoDatabase
2. Raster Formats
o Standard Raster Format
o Tagged Image File Format (TIFF)
o Geo-TIFF
o Graphics Interchange Format (GIF)
o Joint Photograph Experts Group (JPEG)
o PostScript
o Digital Elevation Model (DEM)
o Band Interleaved by Line(BIL), Band Interleaved by
Pixel(BIP)
3. Data Conversion
o Vector-to-Vector & Raster-to-Raster
o Vector-to-Raster & Raster-to-Vector
4. Data Standards
o Industry Standards
o Open GIS Consortium, GML

1.0 Vector Formats

Hardware Specific Formats

There are two types of formats, those that preserve and use the actual
ground coordinates of the data and those that use alternative page
coordinate description of the map. Page Coordinates are used when a
map is being drafted for display in a computer mapping program or in
the data display module. In the late 1970s, programs came out that
were device independent.

The Hewlett-Packard Graphics Language (HPGL) is a page description

language designed for use with plotters and printers. Each line of the
file contains one move command, so a line segment connects two
successive lines or points. It is unstructured and does not store or use
topology.

PostScript – It is a page definition language that is usually used to export

or print a map rather than data. It supports graphics in both vector and
raster formats. Postscript is used commonly by Adobe, and most
printers are able to read it.

Digital Exchange Format (DXF) – It is an external format for

transferring files between computers or between software packages. It
is produced by AutoCAD. It does not have topology, but offers good
detail on drawings, line widths and styles, colors, and text. DXF is
typically constructed in 64 layers. Each layer consists of different
features; allowing the user to separate features.

Digital Line Graph (DLG) - DLGs are distributed by the US

government, and are available at 1:100,000 and 1:24,000 scales.
Features are in separate files that most GIS packages will import,
although extra data manipulation is often necessary. DLGs consist of
line work with the contours removed, therefore elevation is not
available.

TIGER - This format was first distributed by the US Census Bureau in

1990. It includes block level maps of every village, town, and city in
the United States. It includes geo coded block faces with address
ranges of street numbers. This means that they include topology and
can match addresses. The maps are a combination of DLG and
DBF/DIME files.

TIGER consist of an arc/node type arrangement with separate files for

points (zero cells), lines (one cells) and areas (two cells) that are linked
together by cross-indexing. Cross-indexing means some features can
be encoded as landmarks that allow GIS layers to be tied together.

Shapefile - It is a vector data format for storing the location, shape,

and attributes of geographic features. A shapefile is stored in a set of
related files and contains one feature class.

Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) - An SVG is an image that is an

extension of the XML language. Any program that recognizes XML can
display the SVG image. The scalable part of the term emphasizes that
you can zoom- in on an image and not lose resolution. SVG files also
have the advantages of being smaller and arriving faster, than
conventional image files such as GIF, PDF, and JPEG.

Arc-Info Coverage - This is a data model for storing geographic features

using ArcInfo software. Coverage stores a set of thematically
associated data considered to be a unit. It usually represents a single
layer, such as soils, streams, roads, or land use. In coverage, features
are stored as both primary features (points, arcs, polygons) and
secondary features (tics, links, annotation). Feature attributes are
described and stored independently in feature attribute tables.
Arc-Info Interchange File (.e00) - An ArcInfo interchange file, also
known as an export file, is a file format used to enable coverage, grid
or TIN and an associated INFO table to be transferred between
different machines. ArcInfo interchange files have a .e00 extension,
which increments to .e01, .e02, and so on, if the interchange file is
composed of several separate files.

Geo Database - A geo-database is an object-oriented data model that

represents geographic features and attributes as objects and the
relationships between objects but is hosted inside a relational
database management system. A geo database can store objects, such
as feature classes, feature data sets, non spatial tables, and
relationship classes.

2.0 Raster Formats

Standard Raster Format - Many of the formats are based on

photographic formats. The file structure has a header with a fixed
length and a keyword or "magic number" to identify the format. In the
header the length of one record in bits and the number of rows and
columns can be found. Often the header also has a color table. This
explains what colors to project.

Tagged Image File Formats (TIFF) - This format is associated with

scanners. It saves the scanned images and reads them. TIFF can use
run length and other image compression schemes. It is not limited to
256 colors like a GIF.

GEO-TIFF - As part of a header in a TIFF format it puts Lat/Long at the

edges of the pixels.

Graphic Interchange Format (GIF) - A file format for image files,

commonly used on the Internet. It is well-suited for images with sharp
edges and relatively few gradations of color.

Joint Photograph Experts Group (JPEG) - JPEG is a common picture

format. It uses a variable-resolution compression system offering both
partial and full resolution recovery.

DEM - Digital Elevation Models or DEM have two types of displays. The
first is 30-meter elevation data from 1:24,000 seven-and-a-half minute
quadrangle map. The second is the 1:250,000 3 arc-second digital
terrain data.

Band Interleaved by Pixel (BIP), Band Interleaved by Line (BIL)

– they are formats produced by remote sensing systems. The primary
difference among them is the technique used to store brightness
values captured simultaneously in each of several colors or spectral
bands.
3.0 Data Conversion

Raster-to-Raster & Vector-to-Vector - There are many types of

vector formats used in GIS, and even more raster formats. It is often
necessary to change between file formats, even if they are both raster
or both vector, to make data sets useable together. There are many
free, and commercial, translator and converter software available on
the web. Some GIS programs support this type of conversion also.

Moving from vector to raster is not that difficult. A line or polygon is

simply given a pixel value. The opposite is not true though. The
problem is that one line might be several pixels wide; therefore one
has to skeletonize the line, often leaving it very jagged. This is a time
consuming and complicated procedure. Sometimes it is impossible to
exchange, and one cannot move between the formats. If this is the
case, the map has to be re-digitized. In other instances, there is just a
poor translation, and data is lost in the exchange.

4.0 Data Standards

Industry Standards - Two major points can be made about the

industry. The first is that none of the industry standards exchange
topology with the data; they only transfer the graphic information. The
second point is that with many different formats each package has to
include a large number of format translators.

Open GIS Consortium - The Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC)

is a non-profit, international, voluntary consensus standards
organization that is leading the development of standards for
geospatial and location based services. Through member-driven
consensus programs, OGC works with government, private industry,
and academia to create open software application programming
interfaces for geographic information systems (GIS) and other
mainstream technologies.

GML or Geography Markup Language is an XML based encoding

standard for geographic information developed by the OpenGIS
Consortium (OGC). The objective is to allow internet browsers the
ability to view web based mapping without additional components or
viewers.