Professional Documents
Culture Documents
A GIS is unique in that geographic data are rather different from traditional
data used in business and similar applications. Most geographic data are
multidimensional. For example, it takes at least two coordinates to specify a
location. When height is involved, a point becomes three dimensional.
Moreover, geographic objects might change with time. The addition of this
temporal parameter makes geographic objects four dimensional.
Input and conversion: Data are converted to a digital form that can be
stored and processed by computers. Some land surveying instruments record
data in digital form. If we collect data from aerial photographs, satellite
imageries, and existing maps, special equipment has to be used to convert
analogue graphics to digital data. Data can also be imported from other
systems, often requiring the help of a format converter to make it compatible
with data in your system.
Data: Data are a very important element because without them a GIS is like
a car without fuel. The flow of data through the GIS software, with an
example given for each module, is shown below.