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From: ingoldsb@ctycal.COM (Terry Ingoldsby)
Newsgroups: comp.graphics
Subject: Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
Keywords: GIS, LIS, LRIS
Message-ID: <297@ctycal.UUCP>
Date: 29 Apr 89 23:39:14 GMT
Organization: The City of Calgary, Ab
Lines: 47

This is probably not the correct place to post this article,
but I can't think of a better newsgroup.  If you can, please
let me know - no flames are necessary :^)

I would like to know if anyone out there in netland is working
with Geographic Information Systems.  These are sometimes known
as Land Related Information Systems.  Most people don't know
what these are (even though they are taking on great importance
in industry) so I will tell you a little about them.

Basically, a GIS is a database that stores information about
things that are geographically related.  This data is often
used to produce graphical output (ie. maps).  These maps can
be very sophisticated, showing graphically certain characteristics
of the data (eg. what areas have oak trees within 500 metres of
a road, response times for ambulance calls in various parts of
a city, demographical relationships). 

GIS users thus tend to use a lot of graphics type equipment such
as hi-res plotters, UNIX workstations, scanners, etc..

A really *neat* application of GIS is to acquire (this is not
trivial, and may involve image processing) a dataset representing
the downtown core of a city, then render it for inspection.  In
this way planners can examine the visual impact of proposed
buildings, parks, etc.

Not all GIS/LRIS systems use geographic output for all operations;
sometimes textual output suffices.  Nonetheless, geography is
inherently 2D or 3D in nature.  This is supposed to be one of the
growth areas for the 1990's (think how much government and
industry data is geographically related).

Are there any other sites out in netland doing this sort of thing?
Are there any researchers working on the problems unique to GIS?
Is anybody interested in the stuff I have talked about?  If so,
what forum can we use to discuss it?



                                   Terry Ingoldsby
                                   Land Related Information Systems
                                   The City of Calgary

                                   ctycal!ingoldsb@calgary.UUCP
                                            or
                       ...{alberta,ubc-cs,utai}!calgary!ctycal!ingoldsb