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GIS is a collection of computer hardware, software, and geographic data for capturing, managing, analyzing, and displaying all forms of geographically referenced information.

Why Geography?

Geography is a serious discipline with multibillion dollar implications for businesses and governments. Choosing sites, targeting market segments, planning distribution networks, responding to emergencies, or redrawing country boundaries—all of these problems involve questions of geography.

Here's an example of how Bank of America used GIS to show the geographic distribution of the bank's network in relation to deposit potential in the New York City market area. From this analysis, Bank of America can determine where their coverage is strong and where it is weak. Red dots symbolize strong coverage; no dots means coverage is nonexistent. Learn more.

Learn more about why Geography Matters [white paper, PDF-319 KB].

How Does GIS Use Geography?

With a geographic information system (GIS), you can link information (attributes) to location data, such as people to addresses, buildings to parcels, or streets within a network. You can then layer that information to give you a better understanding of how it all works together. You choose what layers to combine based on what questions you need to answer.

In this example, emergency medical service (EMS) call information, including call type, elapsed travel time, and which rescue unit was dispatched to the call's location, has been linked to addresses. With this GIS-linked database, questions such as "What percent of dispatched calls did each EMS unit respond to within its assigned zone?" can be answered. Learn more.

Three Views of a GIS

A GIS is most often associated with maps. A map, however, is only one way you can work with geographic data in a GIS, and only one type of product generated by a GIS. This is important, because it means that a GIS can provide a great deal more problem-solving capabilities than using a simple mapping program or adding data to an online mapping tool (creating a "mash-up").

A GIS can be viewed in three ways:

1. The Database View: A GIS is a unique kind of database of the world—a geographic database (geodatabase). It is an "Information System for Geography." Fundamentally, a GIS is based on a structured database that describes the world in geographic terms. Learn more.
   
   
2. The Map View: A GIS is a set of intelligent maps and other views that show features and feature relationships on the earth's surface. Maps of the underlying geographic information can be constructed and used as "windows into the database" to support queries, analysis, and editing of the information. This is called geovisualization. Learn more.
   
   
3. The Model View: A GIS is a set of information transformation tools that derive new geographic datasets from existing datasets. These geoprocessing functions take information from existing datasets, apply analytic functions, and write results into new derived datasets. Learn more.
   
   

In other words, by combining data and applying some analytic rules, you can create a model that helps answer the question you have posed. In the example below, GPS and GIS were used to accurately model the expected location and distribution of debris for the Space Shuttle Columbia, which broke up upon re-entry over eastern Texas on February 1, 2003. Learn more about this project.

Together, these three views are critical parts of an intelligent GIS and are used at varying levels in all GIS applications.