GIS Basics

Shahab Fazal

In today’s world – the fl ow of information especially digital information has become the critical ingredient for success in any activity. That is why, the period we live in is often referred to as an information age. It is a simple fact that everything human beings do, do takes place at a certain location on the earth – it has a geographic component, although we tend not to think about it much. The digital information revolution of the late twentieth century has allowed this geographic information to be more easily accessed, analyzed and used than ever before. This led to the development of GIS as a discipline and emergence of GIS as a core of digital technology. The technology of GIS is spread over the domain of several disciplines such as Mathematics, Statistics, Computer Sciences, Remote Sensing, Environmental Sciences and of course Geography. Similarly, diverse is the list of its applications – Commerce, Governance, Planning and Academic Research. These application areas are also growing and expanding every day due to its power and vast possibilities. Traditionally, the discipline of Geography dealt with spatial description and analysis. Now in the era of multidisciplinary approach, students, researchers, professionals from different disciplines fi nd their way into the emerging discipline of GIS making it popular.