Handling Geographical Information: Methodology and Potential Applications

Geographical information systems (GIS) are computer-based systems for the collection, storage and presentation of spatial information. This book on geographic information management is concerned with how we think about developing geographic information systems (GIS) applications. The book centres on five key themes: spatial and analytical techniques; data integration; area transformation; error propagation and the design of user interfaces. Potential applications of GIS are reviewed including environmental monitoring and natural and technical hazard management. The book contains 12 commissioned contributions from specialists drawn from the findings of the Regional Research Library Initiative funded by Britain's Economic and Social Research Council. The issues discussed in this book, whether methodological or in application fields, are intended to have a bearing on how we collect and handle geographic data. They raise questions of standards, such as spatial units, definitiions of attributes, organizational issues where data are treated as a corporate resource and the technical knowledge of staff and decision-takers. It is a wide field and it is a field which will become increasingly important as the tools themselves, the GIS's, become cheaper and more widely used. The book is aimed at all users of GIS, including students of geography, surveying, town planning and real estate management as well as local authority planning officers and central government departments.