The Handbook of Geographic Information Science / Практическое руководство по географическим информационным системам

GIS, the acronym for Geographic Information Systems, has been around since the 1980s. Although one can impute a number of characteristics from the use of this acronym, at the heart of the term “systems” lies a computer software package for storing, displaying, and analyzing spatial data. Consequently, the use of the term GIS implies an object or tool which one can use for exploring and analyzing data that are recorded for specific locations in geographical space (see Cowen [1988] for an early article articulating this type of definition and Foresman [1998] for a rich and varied account of the history of Geographic Information Systems). Conversely, Geographic Information Science or GI Science, or more simply GISc, represents a much broader framework or modus operandi for analyzing spatial data. The term GI Science emphasizes more the methodology behind the analysis of spatial data (see Burrough [1986] for what was perhaps the first GIS text to promote such a framework and Chrisman [1999] for an article advocating an extended definition of GIS along these same lines). Indeed, one could define GI Science as: any aspect of the capture, storage, integration, management, retrieval, display, analysis, and modeling of spatial data. Synonyms of GI Science include Geocomputation, GeoInformatics, and GeoProcessing. <...>