Emerging Industry Overview: Geographic Information Systems
Industry Snapshot
Location, location, location. Once the exclusive motto of real estate agents, now location is a critical aspect of retailing, weather reporting, and even national security, thanks to geographic information systems (GIS). Geographic information systems allow geographic and land survey information to be combined with descriptive, nonspatial data and displayed in the form of a coded map. A simple example is a city map divided into political precincts and then coded to provide information detailing age, gender, and race of registered voters for each block. All of the information is merged and users...