Lecture 2 (Introduction: Systems, Science, and Studies) Flashcards
What is geography?
Geography is the science of place and space and an integrative spatial science that attempts to explain and to predict the spatial distribution and variation and physical features on the earth’
surface.
What do geographers study?
Geographers study how and why things differ from place to place,
as well as how spatial patterns change through time.
Geographic Information
Geographic information is information about places on the
Earth’s surface (buildings in a city, individual trees in a forest, climate
of large region, and population density of an entire country)
Geographic Information Systems (GISs)
Definition: GISs are computer-based systems for storing and processing geographic information. They are tools that improve the efficiency and effectiveness of handling information about geographic objects and events.
Three Ss of GIScience Technology
giS (Geographic Information Systems)
rS (Remote Sensing) - Use of satellites and aircrafts to capture information about the earth’s surface.
gpS (Global Positioning System) - a system of earth-orbiting satellites to provide precise location (< 30cm) on the earth’s surface.
Five Ms of Applied GIS
Mapping Measuring Monitoring Modeling Managing
GISystems
- Emphasis on useful technology and tools for both specialist and general-purpose applications.
- Information systems are used to manipulate, summarize, query, edit, visualize - generally, to work with information stored in computer databases.
How does a GIS user know that the results obtained are accurate?
What principles might help a GIS user to design a better map?
How can location-based services be used to help users to navigate and understand human and natural environment?
GIScience
- Illustrates the fundamental issues and science approaches raised by the use of GIS and related technologies (See Technical Box 1.7).
- Is the science needed to keep technology at the cutting edge.
- Coined by Michael Goodchild in 1992 (article).
GIStudies
- Systematic study of the use of geographic information (i.e., institution, standard, procedures).
Six Components of GIS
People, Software, Data/ Database, Procedures/ Management, Hardware NETWORK
Network
- Most fundamental part to communicate and share information among the other components.
- Internet becomes as a vehicle for delivering GIS applications.
- The Internet is core to most aspects of GIS use, and the days of standalone GISystems are mostly over.
Hardware
The device - users directly interact
with the GIS operations -> the device’s screen displays the returning information for allowing us to verify the outputs
Software
- It can run locally in the user’s machine.
- GIS software packages have become quite sophisticated and can capture and implements general knowledge to handle all the
requirements of standard GIS projects.
Data/ Database
- consists of a digital representation of selected
aspects of some specific data of the earth’s surface or near surface. - built to provide information to some problem-solving or scientific purposes.
Data
- GIS databases can range in size from a
megabyte to a petabyte or more. - 1 megabyte - 1 000 000 - Single dataset in a small project database.
- 1 gigabyte - 1 000 000 000 - Entire street network of a large city or small country.
- 1 terabyte - 1 000 000 000 000 - Elevation of entire Earth surface recorded at 30m intervals.
- 1 petabyte - 1 000 000 000 000 000 - Satellite image of entire earth surface at 1m resolution.
- 1 exabyte - 1 000 000 000 000 000 000 - A future 3-D representation of entire Earth at 10m resolution?
NOTE: bytes are counted in powers of two. One kilobyte is 1024 not 1000.
