Geographic Information Systems: An Example

Geographic information systems (GIS for short) are computer based information systems supporting input, storage, processing and output of spatial data. Spatial data means data objects characterized by its position and shape in a given application-specific data space, like e.g. a set of polygons describing the boundaries of political subdivisions of a country. Because of the large number of applications, in which spatial data must be stored and processed, the number of GIS installations has quickly grown in the last few years. Important application fields are e.g. land register, urban planning, cartography or environmental information systems based on GISs. In this paper, we will introduce a reader, not familiar with GISs, from the point of view of computer science into basic concepts of geographic information systems. We illustrate GISs at an example of an environmental information system.