Geographical Information Systems Supporting tagline
A Geographical Information System (GIS) is the marriage of a drawing software like (Illustrator/Inkscape, Photoshop/Gimp) and database software like (Access, Orcale, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, …).
A GIS allows among others:
- to open/create geographical data (data with geographical reference)
- to process data geometry (points, lines, polygons): add, remove, clean, …
- to process data attributes (tabular data associated with a polygon for instance -country name, population, area, …- similar as an Excel file)
- to process raster data (satellite imagery, digital elevation models, …)
- to overlay several geographical layers on a same view (roads, rivers, landuse, administrative boundaries, …)
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to analyse data by querying the dataset and answering questions like:
- What is the shortest path to reach city A from city B?
- What is the area of lake B included in county C?
- etc …
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to create maps
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to create thematic analysis. For instance drawing circle whose diameter is proportional to population of cities.
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to access external/online dataset
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and many other intersting things