In the spirit of GIS Day, and for those of you that don’t know much about spatial or image analysis, we've broken down the basics of GIS.
GIS stands for Geographic Information System. A geographic information system (GIS) is a computer system for capturing, storing, analyzing and displaying geospatial data, or data that is geographically referenced to the earth’s surface. As this data is geographically referenced, different datasets or layers can be viewed, analyzed and interpreted to allow decision makers to see relationships and patterns within the data. This helps them answer questions about the landscape.
GIS can use any information that includes location. The location can be expressed in many different ways, such as latitude and longitude, address or postal code and can be in a variety of coordinate systems. Many different types of information can be compared and analyzed using GIS. The system can include data about people, such as population income or education level. It can also include information about the land, such as the location of streams, the sites of factories, farms and schools, different kinds of vegetation and even different kinds of soil.
GIS Day is an annual event celebrating the technology of geographic information systems (GIS). Since 1999, this day has provided the GIS community with an opportunity to increase awareness by hosting, sponsoring or participating in events at businesses, schools or in a public space. This day also provides an international opportunity for users of GIS technology to educate others by demonstrating real-world applications that are making a difference in our society.
Here at Silvacom, there is an element of GIS in almost everything that we do. Our GIS team includes experts in geospatial data management, cartography, data analysis and visualization and we invest heavily in industry-leading software, hardware and training. Our deep understanding of the intricacies of spatial data ensures that we provide the most accurate and cost efficient GIS solutions for our clients. Whether it’s architecting a new data design, visualizing complex data sets, manipulating data for use in a specific format/coordinate system or developing an integrated GIS solution for the web, our GIS services are scalable to always meet the needs of our diverse client base.