Assignment 1 (Submission Date : 4 October 2011)

"GIS" has been defined from three different perspectives: "a toolbox", "an information system", and "an information science." Outline the emphasis of each perspective and elaborate your preferred definition of GIS.

GIS is a toolbox

 A powerful set of tools for storing and retrieving at will, transforming and displaying spatial data from the real world for a particular set of purposes. Automated systems for the capture, storage, retrieval, analysis, and display of spatial data. GIS is an information system An information system that is designed to work with data referenced by spatial or geographic coordinates. In other words, a GIS is both a database system with specific capabilities for spatially-referenced data, as well as a set of operations for working with the data" GIS is an information science Geographic Information Science is research both on and with GIS. Research on the generic issues that surround the use of GIS technology, impede its succesful implementation, or emerge from an understanding of its potential capabilities

I am preferred definition of GIS is an information science. It is because GIScience might take two essentially distinct forms research about GIS that would lead eventually to improvements in the technology and research with GIS that would exploit the technology in the advancement of science. Both of these themes are clearly evident in the way the term GIScience is used today. The concept of GIScience seems to have been adopted enthusiastically. Information science studies the fundamental issues arising from the creation, handling, storage, and use of information. The focus of GIScience needs to shift from representation and analysis of the form of the Earths surface to a much stronger concern for the processes that define its dynamics. A concern for process is therefore likely to change the landscape of GIScience dramatically, requiring much closer interaction with these sciences. The notion of research with GIS takes on different meaning, requiring that GIS be redesigned to support the process models of the sciences, rather than generic and simplistic representations of form. Besides that, the knowledge accumulated by the discipline of GIScience is applicable to varying degrees in any space, and not limited to the space of the Earths surface and near surface. Much of the GIScience research agenda can be motivated equally well by other spaces.