Geographic Information System (GIS)

Geographic Information System is a computer based system capable of storing, manipulating,

analyzing, modeling and displaying geographically referenced information i.e. data identified
according to their location.

The Geographic Information System is software packages used most widely throughout the
world is the Arc Info and Arc View system developed by ESRI in Redlands in, California. Arc
Info was originally developed in 1980 to use a combination of vector data with tabular attributes,
and was later extended to include surface modeling using square cells raster grids and
triangulated irregular networks. Arc View was developed in the early 1990s, initially as simple
viewing software for GIS data, and then later expanded to support spatial analysis and modeling.
Special programming languages, ARC Macro Language (AML) for Arc Info and Avenue for Arc
View, were used to permit customization of the GIS for particular applications, such as to create
GIS preprocessors modules for water resources simulation models.

ESRI recently reengineered its entire GIS software systems to construct a new GIS more closely
following current information technology and software engineering standards. This new product,
ArcGIS, is presently being distributed to the ESRI user community. ArcGIS comes in several
variants depending on the degree of functionality required by the users, with Arc View
remaining the entry-level version of ArcGIS for data viewing, querying, and analysis, and Arc
Info as the high-end version of ArcGIS for data creation and sophisticated operations. Microsoft
Visual Basic is the standard interface language for ArcGIS, just as Microsoft uses Visual Basic
as the interface language for Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Access, and other application programs.

As the part of the ArcGIS development efforts, ESRI initiated efforts to show how ArcGIS can
be customized for particular application of GIS using specially designed data models. The water
resources data modeling effort was under taken in association with the Centre for Research in
Water Resources (CRWR) of the University of Texas at Austin, and CRWR and ESRI together
formed a GIS in Water Resources Consortium to involve representatives from industry,
government and academia in the water resources data model development (Prajapati, 2011).