Pgis Notes PDF

A GENTLE
INTRODUCTION TO
GIS
CHAPTER 1
Principles of Geographic Information Systems

An introductory textbook
Nature of GIS
■ GIS – Geographic Information System
■ Tool for working with geographic information
■ Applications:- used by urban planner, biologist, natural hazard analyst,
geological engineer, mining engineer, geoinformatics engineer, forest
manager etc
■Professionals work with positional data(relative to earth’s surface) –
spatial data (where things are)
■ Challenge in GIS – “spatio-temporal problem”
■ The object of study has different characteristics for different locations
(spatial/geographic dimension) and these characteristics change over
time (temporal dimension)
Sudha Bhagavatheeswaran, Department of Information Technology,

SIES College of Arts, Science & Commerce (Autonomous)
Defining GIS
■ Computer based system
■ Produces four sets of capabilities to handle georeferenced data:-
– Data Capture and preparation
– Data management; storage and maintenance
– Data manipulation and analysis
– Data presentation
■ GISystems, GIScience, GIS Applications

■ El Nino – “little boy” –is an aberrant pattern in weather and sea water
temperature(every 4-9 years) in Pacific Ocean along equator.
Exampl ■ Makes weather hotter, has impact on global weather systems, comes
around Christmas
e ■ La Nina – “little girl” – pattern of colder temperature that occurs less
frequently.
■ Figure marked 1 & 2 – El Nino
■ Figure marked 3 & 4 – La Nina
■ SST – Sea Surface Temperature (oC) & WS – Average wind speed (m/s)
1997 1998
1 3
2 4
Data Capture
■ Collection of Sea Surface Temperature and wind speed
measurements.
■ This is achieved by placing buoys with measuring equipments at
various places in the ocean. ( buoy - an anchored float serving as a
navigation mark)
■ 70 buoys. A buoy measures:- i) wind speed & direction ii) air
temperature & humidity iii) sea water temperature at surface and
depth upto 500 m.

Data Management
01 02 03
Storage and Transfer data in Decision on how
maintenance of digital form to best to present
data begin analysis data (in terms
transmitted by of spatial
the buoys via properties and
satellites various
attributes)

Data ■ For each buoy, average SST for each month
calculated using daily SST measurements.
Manipulati ■ For each buoy, monthly average SST was taken with
geographic location to obtain georeferenced list of
on and averages.
■ From this georeferenced list, through a method of
Analysis spatial interpolation, the estimated SST of other
positions were computed. (Table below)
■ GIS function: deriving an
estimate value for a
■ Previous to the above steps, we obtained data
property for some location
where we have not about average SST for December for a series of
measured years. This is spatially interpolated to obtain a
normal situation for December data set.
■ Georeferenced: associated
with some position on
Earth’s surface by using
spatial reference system
(latitude longitude co-
ordinate system)
■ A statistical method of
deriving a simple function
from the given discrete data
set such thatSudha
the function
Bhagavatheeswaran, Department of Information Technology,
passes through the provided
Data Presentation
■ Message:- What message to portray? – to explain what is el nino and
la nina events.
■ Audience:- Who is the audience? – students, people in general,
analysts
■ Medium – What form to present it? – paper, book – formats, size
■ Rules of aesthetics – How will it look? – north –up, clear
georeferencing, use of symbols etc.
■ Techniques – color scheme, isolines etc.

Spatial Data and Geoinformation
■ Data
■ Spatial Data – Data with positional values
■ Geospatial data - Spatial data that is georeferenced.
■ Spatial data – synonymn - Georeferenced data
■ Geoinformation – information resulting from interpretation of spatial data
■ Components of spatial data
– Positional accuracy(horizontal and vertical)
– Temporal accuracy(data up to date)
– Attribute accuracy(labelling of features)
– Lineage(history of data including sources)
– Completeness(data set represents all related features of reality)
– Logical consistency(data is logically structured)

Modelling
■ Representation of a part of the world.
■ Make decisions effectively, predict
■ Helps us answer ‘what-if’ questions
■ Change/alter parameters of the model to investigate the changes.
■ ‘Real world model’- representation of a number of phenomena that we can
observe in reality, to enable some type of study, administration,
computation or simulation.
■ Maps – paper model
■ Databases – digital model
■ Both are static models
■ Process models are dynamic (emphasise changes)

Maps
■ Best known conventional model
■ Is a graphical representation at certain level of detail determined by scale
■ Disadvantage:- restricted to 2D static representation and display in a fixed scale.
■ Map scale determines the spatial resolution of graphic feature representation.
■ Smaller the scale, less detail a map can show.
■ Selection of a proper scale is important.
■ Have physical boundaries and is the data source for other applications.
■ Cartography – Art and Science of map making, interpreter that translates real
world phenomena into correct clear understandable representations for our use.
■ Digital Cartography with the advent of computers.

■ Repository for storing large amounts of data.
■ Concurrent use, data integrity – rules on stored data
Database ■ Number of techniques to store data(storage
s optimization)
■ Easy to use DML – query facility
■ Each query executed in the most efficient way –
query optimization
■ Spatial databases – to store spatial data
■ Representation in a spatial database may have a
point, line, area or image characteristics.

GEOGRAPHIC
INFORMATION AND
SPATIAL DATA
TYPES
CHAPTER 2
Principles of Geographic Information Systems

Models and representation of the real world
■ Real world – Complex ; Our models – Not perfect

■ Limitations:- Amount of data we can store, capture, time available for
a project.
■ Choice of representation depends on:- i) what original, raw data is
available?
ii) what sort of data manipulation is
required?
Geographic phenomena
■ Manifestation of a entity/process of interest that i) can be
named or described ii) can be georeferenced iii) can be
assigned a time(interval) at which it is/was present.
■ Eg 1:- To study water management:- objects of study are
ground water levels, irrigation levels, meterological data,
water budgets etc. (Do these follow the above properties?)
■ Eg 2:- El Nino project:- 3 geographical phenomena – SST, WS,
arrays of buoys
■ GIS assumption – spatial phenomena occurs in Euclidean 2D
or 3D space.
■ Euclidean space - i)locations are represented by co-ordinates
(x,y) in 2D and (x,y,z) in 3D ii) distance and direction can be
defined with geometric formulas.
Types of Geographic Phenomena
■ What it is? - name ; Where it is? – georeferenced
■ TYPES
– Geographic field – phenomena that manifest themselves
everywhere
Eg:- temperature, pressure, elevation – continuous in nature
– Geographic objects - phenomena that manifest themselves in
certain localities.
Eg:- land use and soil classifications, buoys
Geographic field
■ Has a value everywhere in the study area.
■ Field is a mathematical function that associates a particular value with any
position in the study area. f(x,y) – f is the value, x,y is the position
■ Continuous:-
– Field values change gradually
– Field is differentiable; we can determine a measure of change in the
field value per unit of distance everywhere and in any direction.
– Floating point values
■ Discrete:-
– Divides study space into mutually exclusive bounded parts with all
locations in one part having same field value.
– Makes use of bounded features
– Assigns a value to every location in the study area.
– Integer values
DISCRET
E
CONTINU
OUS
■ Continuous:-
– Field – Elevation, measure – slope i.e
change of elevation per metre distance
– Field – Soil Salinity, measure – salinity
gradient i.e change of salinity per metre
distance
01 02 03 04
NOMINAL ORDINAL INTERVAL RATIO
(Categorical (Low,Average, (Temperature) (Quantitative
Data) High) (Quantitative) )
(Qualitative) (Comparison) (Simple forms (Computatio
(No of ns possible)
(No Computation) computation)
Computation)
Ranking/
Hierarchy
Data types and values

Geographic Objects
■ Easily distinguished and named.
■ Their position is determined by a combination of location,
shape and size.
■ Eg:- in-car navigation system, objects are petrol stations, roads
■ Petrol stations – location, Roads – location, shape,
size,orientation
■ Factor of shape is dimension – point, linear, area,volume
■ petrol stations – point, roads – line
■ Viewed as a collection of objects – unit
■ Collection of roads – road network
■ Collection of SST buoys – SST sensor network
Characteristics of geographical
phenomena
■ Coverage – Which part of the road network is
within 5 km of a petrol station?
■ Connectedness – Which is the shortest route
between two cities via road network?
■ Capacity – How many cars can optimally travel
from one city to another in an hour?
Boundaries
■ Boundary – Shape and/or size of contiguous
matter
■ Can be used to determine location,shape and size
■ Crisp boundary – precise line ; man-made
■ Fuzzy boundary – not a precise line ; natural
Computer representation of geoinformation
■ Store as many observation pairs as possible – (location,elevation)
■ Problem:- to store all possible values
■ Find a symbolic representation of a function – (3.093x 2 + 4.73x –
2.51y); generally interpolation functions.
■ Problem:- difficult to derive a suitable function
■ Spatial correlation:- (used by interpolation) – locations that are
closer together are more likely to have similar values – “Tobler’s first
law of geography”
■ Eg:- SST – high degree of correlation between measures taken close
together.
■ Boundaries through line objects – require some degree of
generalization
■ Tessellation approach:- represent fields
■ Vector approach :- represent objects
Tessellations :- Regular
■ Tessellations:- (tiling) – partitioning of space into mutually
exclusive cells.
■ Value associated with each cell, cells are of same shape and
size
■ Represented in the computer as an array of n X m elements
■ Regular tessellations are square, hexagonal and triangular cells
■ Tessellations are also known as rasters
■ The size of the area that a single raster cell represents is called
raster’s resolution
Tessellations :- Regular
■ Issues related to cell based partitioning
– Value of the cell is the same for the complete tessellation cell i.e
discrete (continuity gaps)
– Value in the cell boundaries?
■ 2 things to deal with continuity gaps:- i) Make the cell size smaller ii)
Assume that a cell value represents elevation for one specific
location in the cell and provide a good interpolation function for the
other locations in the cell for the continuity characteristic.(too
computationally intensive)
■ Advantage of regular tessellation :- partition space created; leads to
fast algorithms
■ Disadvantage of regular tessellation :- cell boundaries are artificial
and fixed; so may not coincide with real
Tessellations :- Irregular
■ To make regular more adaptive, irregular was created
■ Partitions of space into mutually disjoint cells
■ Cells vary in shape and size
■ Reduction in the amount of memory to store data
■ Data structure used:- region quadtree
■ This data structure is based on regular tessellation of
square cells; but neighboring cells having the same field
value are represented as one big cell.
■ Quadtrees are adaptive since they apply the spatial
autocorrelation principle(i.e locations that are near in
space are likely to have similar values)
Tessellations :- Irregular
8 X 8 three valued raster (3 colours used) REGION QUADTREE

Triangulated Irregular Networks
Vector representations
■ Tessellations do not explicitly store georeferences; vectors

do
■ Associate georeferences with geographic phenomena.
■ A georeference is a co-ordinate pair; also known as vector

Point
representations
■ Points are single co-ordinate pairs(x,y)
for 2D and co-ordinate triplets (x,y,z) for
3D.
■ Used to represent objects that are
shapeless and sizeless, i.e 1D
■ For a tourist map, phone booth or petrol
pump may be a point representation,
whereas a park need not be a point.
■ For every point object, besides
georeference, attributes or thematic
data can be stored i.e additional
information about the point
Line Representations
■ Represent roads, rivers,

power lines etc
■ Straight line between two
consecutive vertices or nodes
– line segments; in GIS it is
called edge, polyline, arc
■ Collections of connected lines
– networks; extra values are
distance ,quality of link,
carrying capacity etc
AREA REPRESENTATION
General spatial topology
■ Topological relationships are built from simple elements to more

complex elements: nodes define line segments, line segments
connect to define lines, then they define polygons
TOPOLOGICAL
RELATIONSHIPS
(MATHEMATICA
L PROPERTIES
FOR THE
GEOMETRIC
SPACE)
Topology of two dimensions
■ 2 properties:- interior and
boundary
■ Interior of a region R – largest set
of points for which we construct a
disk-like environment around it
that falls completely inside R.
■ Boundary of a region R – set of
points that belong to R; but not to
the interior to R
■ Eight spatial relationships
Topology of two
dimensions
■ Set of rules defines the

topological consistency
of that space.
Topology of three dimensions
■ Depth and volume matters

■ A solid can be defined as a 3D object; polyhedral – planar facets.
■ A facet is a polygon shaped; flat-side that is part of the boundary of a
polyhedron.
■ Any polyhedron has at least 4 facets.
Scale and Resolution
■ Map scale can be defined as the ration between the
distance on a paper map and the distance of the same
stretch in the terrain.
■ 1:50,000 scale map – 1cm on the map = 500000cm i.e
500m in the terrain.
■ Large scale – Ratio is large – more detail – 1:1000
■ Small scale – Ratio is small - less detail – 1:25,00,000
■ Resolution – cell width of the tessellation
Organising and managing spatial
data
Representation of geographic
fields
■ Can be represented through tessellation (rasters),TIN or vector
■ Raster representation is shown below
■ Here, the raster represents a continuous field like elevation.

■ Different shades of blue indicate different elevation values; darker blues – higher
elevation.
■ Each cell has a value; shown in a shade of blue ; so that it is more legible.
■ Raster is a list of m X n values
CONTOUR ISOLINE
LINES S
Representation of geographic fields

■ Vector representation
■ Uses isolines (a linear feature that connects the
points with equal field value) and
■ contour lines (line that joins points of equal elevation)
Representation of geographic objects - Tessellations
■ Remotely sensed images - unprocessed images are converted to
Classified images.
CROP TYPES URBAN LAND

USE
An actual straight line and its representation

in a raster
Representation of geographic objects -
Vectors
Various objects like buildings, bikes, road lanes are

represented as area
objects in a vector representation
Temporal Dimension
■ Spatiotemporal data models – organizing representations of space and time in GIS
■ Discrete and continuous time
■ Valid time (World Time) and Transaction Time(Database Time); TT is later than VT.
■ Linear Time (Timeline), Branching and Cyclic time (Repeating cycles)
■ Time Granularity – precision of time value in GIS (year, month, day, second)
■ Absolute and Relative Time
■ Spatial domain fixed – examine attributes changes over time.
■ Attribute domain fixed – examine spatial changes over time.
■ Spatial and attribute domain variable – examine changes in fields and objects.
Change in land cover (1992-94) in Columbia
DATA
MANAGEMENT
AND PROCESSING
SYSTEMS
CHAPTER 3
Principles of Geographic Information

Systems
Hardware and Software Trends
■ Ability to manage and process spatial data – critical component of GIS

■ Data Processing systems – Hardware + Software components that
process,store and transfer data
■ Computers – increasingly portable, high performance, memory and
storage capacity
■ Affordable
■ Developments in computer networks; Fast and reliable exchange of
spatial data
■ Mobile phones (UMTS) Universal Mobile Telecommunication system
■ Combination of a GPS receiver, a portable computer and a mobile
phone Sudha Bhagavatheeswaran, Department of Information Technology,
GIS software
■ GIS – data store – a system that stores spatial data, a toolbox,
technology, an information source or data science
■ Characteristics of GIS software package – analytical functions – derive
new geoinformation
■ GIS packages – raster based functionality and vector based
functionality.
■ Eg:- ILWIS (raster processing), GeoMedia, ArcGIS, MapInfo

GIS Architecture/Components

Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI)
■ Organisations work in co-operative setting
■ Geoinformation is obtained from and provided to all
■ To pay attention to :- data dissemination, security, copyright, pricing
■ Therefore, need of SDI – Spatial Data Infrastructure
■ SDI defined as – “ the relevant base collection of technologies, policies
and institutional arrangements that facilitate the availability of and
access to spatial data“
■ Agreements between software systems on how to share geographic
information.
■ Standards exist in SDI; from data capture to data presentation in GIS.
■ Organisations for standards: ISO and OGC – Open Geospatial Consortium
■ GIS available through geo-webservices, software programs that act as an
intermediate between geographic databases and the users of the web
Stages of Spatial data handling
Spatial Data Capture and Preparation
■ Remote Sensing provides raw data in the form of photographs and

images
■ Manual digitizing and scanning

Spatial Data Storage and Maintenance
■ Spatial data is organized in layers by theme (land use, topography etc)
and/or scale
■ Raster/Vector Approach
■ 2D – Cells/pixels; 3D – voxels
■ Data value for each cell ; discrete/continuous
■ Storage of raster – in a file as a long list of values; one for each cell;
preceded by a header
■ Encoding scheme – row ordering ; header will contain number of rows and
columns
■ Maintenance of spatial data can best be defined as the combined activities
to keep the data set up-to-date; obtain new data; replace outdated
■ For eg:- After an earthquake; updating the road network

Spatial Query and analysis
■ Spatial queries and process models

■ Analysis of spatial data can be defined as computing new information
from existing, stored spatial data.
■ Key uses of GIS - Spatial Decision Support system (SDSS)
■ SDSS – contains database, GIS software and knowledge engine to deal
with locational problems
■ Eg:- road construction – GIS can help compute the costs (amount of
tunnels and bridges to be constructed, volume of rock and soil to be
moved) on the basis of an up-to-date digital elevation model and soil
map.

Spatial Data Presentation

DBMS
■ DB,DBMS
■ Reasons for using DBMS:-
– It supports the storage and manipulation of very large data sets
– It can be instructed to guard over data correctness
– It supports concurrent use of data.
– It provides high level declarative query language
– It supports the use of a data model

– It includes data back up and recovery.
– It allows control of data redundancy.

The relational data model
■ Relational model – attributes, tuples, relations

The relational data model

Finding tuples and link between
them

Querying a relational database
■ Three query operators:- Tuple Selection, Attribute Projection and Join

Querying a relational
database
Tuple Selection
Tuple selection has a

single
Table as input and
produces
another table with less
tuples with condition
that area size must be
greater than 1000

database
Attribute Projection
Sudha Bhagavatheeswaran, Department of

Information Technology,
SIES College of Arts, Science & Commerce
database
Join

database
All three query operators together

GIS and spatial databases
Linking GIS and databases
■ GIS provides support for spatial data and thematic/attribute data

■ Stores spatial and attribute data separately
■ Stores tabular data.
■ GIS had to link the spatial data represented with rasters or vectors,
and the attribute data stored in an external DBMS.
■ Raster cell values stored in the table- similar to key/foreign key
Linking and storing raster

data

Linking GIS and databases
■ For Vectors ,the spatial objects

– points,lines or polygons; are
automatically given an unique
ID by the system.
■ This is called object ID/feature
ID and is used to link the
spatial object with its attribute.
Sudha Bhagavatheeswaran, Department of Information

Linking and storing vector
Technology,
SIES College of Arts, Science & Commerce (Autonomous) data
Spatial Database Functionality
■ Designer of a GIS application can choose to store the application data

in GIS or in the DBMS
■ A spatial database (geodatabases)allows users to store, query and
manipulate collections of spatial data.

Spatial Database Functionality
■ The Open Geospatial Consotium(OGC) released a series of standards relating to
geodatabases; that define:
– Which tables must be present in spatial database (i.e geometry columns table )
– The data formats for point,line,polygon
– A set of SQL like instructions for geographic analysis
■ For spatial data; standard RDBMS + ability to handle geometry data + new set of
commands
■ Querying a spatial database :- A spatial query using SQL to find out all the ‘Thai’
restaurants within 2 km of a given hotel:

SPATIAL
REFERENCING
AND
POSITIONING
CHAPTER 4
Principles of Geographic Information

Systems
Reference Surface for mapping
■ Surface of the earth – not uniform
■ To approximate the surface of the earth, 2 reference surfaces are:-
– GEOID :- a hypothetical solid figure whose surface corresponds
to mean sea level and its imagined extension under (or over)
land areas.
– ELLIPSOID :- surface that may be obtained from a sphere by
deforming it by means of directional scalings, or more
generally, of an affine transformation.
Geoid and ellipsoid
The Geoid and the vertical
datum
■ Assumption:-
– Entire earth surface is largely covered by water
– Water surface is affected by gravity (ignoring tidal and current effects)
■ Therefore, direction of gravity (plumb line) is dependent on the mass distribution
inside the earth
■ The plumb line through any surface point is always perpendicular to it.
■ Geoid is used to describe heights
■ For this, the ocean’s water level is registered using tide gauges (mareographs).
■ The registrations are averaged and are called mean sea level.
■ For eg:- For Netherlands and Germany, the local mean sea level is realized
through the Amsterdam tide gauge (zero height).
■ The height of any point is determined through a technique called as geodetic
levelling,
■ The height determined with respect to tide gauge is known as orthometric
height.
The Geoid and the vertical
datum
■ The local vertical datum is implemented through a levelling
network.
■ A levelling network consists of benchmarks whose height above
mean sea level has been determined through geodetic levelling.
■ So, the surveyors need not start from the beginning everytime
they need to determine the height of a new point.
The ellipsoid
■ Reference surface for heights – geoid
■ Reference surface for horizontal co-ordinates – oblate ellipsoid
■ An ellipsoid is formed when an ellipse is rotated about its minor axis
Local and Global horizontal
datum
■ Local Horizontal Datum
– latitude and longitude
– Realised through a
triangulation network
– The angles in each triangle
are measured along with a
fundamental point in the
triangle
– The angle measurement
along with the point co-
ordinates are used to derive
the geographic co-ordinates
i.e latitudes and longitudes
■ Global Horizontal Datum – (X,Y,Z)
Co-ordinate Systems
■ Spatial :- are used to locate data either on the Earth’s
surface in a 3D space or Earth’s reference surface on 2D
space
■ Planar:- are used to locate data on a flat surface of a map
in a 2D space.
■ Latitude denoted by phi; Longitude denoted by lambda
■ Lines of equal latitudes – parallels; they form circles on the surface
of the ellipsoid
■ Lines of equal longitudes – meridians; they form ellipses on the
ellipsoid
■ The latitude of a point P is the angle between ellipsoidal through the
point P and the equatorial plane; Latitude is 0 on the equator; max
value is +90 degrees at North Pole and -90 degrees at South Pole.
■ The longitude of a point P is the angle between the meridian ellipse
which passes through Greenwich and the meridian ellipse containing
the point
■ It is measured in the equatorial plane from the meridian of
Greenwich (it is zero), eastwards +180 degrees and westwards -180
degrees.
■ A flat map has only two dimensions: width (L-R) and
length (B-T)
■ Also called planar rectangular coordinates.
■ X and Y Axis ; origin is x,y=0 and map grid is the
equally spaced coordinate lines
■ This is the distance d from the origin to the point
concerned and an angle between a fixed direction and the
direction to the point. It is given in length units.
■ This angle is called bearing and is measured in clockwise
direction.It is given in angular units.
■ Latitude,Longitude ,ellipsoidal height h
■ H of a point is the vertical distance of the point
above the ellipsoid
■ This coordinates can be used to define a position
on the surface of the earth
■ Also called 3D Cartesian Coordinates
■ Origin is the center of the earth; X-Axis passes
through the meridian of Greenwich;Y-Axis in the
plane of the equator; Z-Axis coincides with the
Earth’s axis of rotation
Map Projection
■ Is a mathematically described technique of how to represent
the Earth’s curved surface on a flat map.
■ The curved horizontal reference scale mapped onto a 2D
mapping plane
■ Reference surface for large scale mapping:- oblate ellipsoid
■ Reference surface for small scale mapping:- a sphere
■ Mapping onto 2D means transforming each point on the
reference surface with geographic coordinates to a set
of cartesian coordinates(x.y)
■ This is achieved through mapping equations
■ A forward mapping equation
■ An inverse mapping equation

Satellite Based Positioning
■ Importance of satellites in georeferencing
– Realize geocentric reference systems
– Increase the level of spatial accuracy
■ Need for developing positioning system
– Military Use
– Low cost equipment with low energy consumption at the
receiver’s end.
– Provision of real time results for unlimited number of
users concurrently
– Different levels of accuracy(military v/s civilian)
– Around the clock
– Weather forecast
– Use of single geodetic datum
Satellite Based Positioning
■ Requires implementation of 3 hardware segments

– Space segment (satellites and the radio signals they
emit)
– Control Segment (Ground stations that monitors space
segment)
– User Segment (Users with hardware and software who
conduct positioning)
■ Central problem:- To determine values (X,Y,Z) of the
receiver that receives satellite signals i.e to determine the
position of the receiver with stated accuracy and
precision.
Absolute Positioning
■ Working:-
■ A satellite equipped with a clock, at a specific moment sends a
radio message that includes i) the satellite identifier, ii)the
position in orbit and iii) its clock readings.
■ A receiver,also equipped with a clock, receives the message
slightly later, and reads its own clock.
■ From the time delay observed between 2 clock readings and
knowing the speed of transmission between satellite and the
receiver, the receiver can compute the distance to the sender,
called the satellite’s pseudorange.
■ Satellite clocks and receiver clocks are not synchronized.
■ Differences in time reading between receiver and satellite clocks
■ Variable: (X,Y,Z, t)
Time, Clocks and World Time
■ Position of sun in the sky
■ Time Zones – 24 geographic strips between certain
longitudes that are multiples of 15 degrees.
■ GMT – Greenwich Mean Time – a system based on mean
solar time at the meridian of Greenwich, UK – conventional
0-meridian
■ GMT replaced by UT – Universal Time based on the
meridian crossing of stars.
■ Co-ordinated Universal Time (UTC) – is used in satellite
positioning and is maintained with atomic clocks.
Errors in Absolute Positioning
■ Errors related to space segment
– Selective availability
– Incorrect information
■ Incorrect clock reading:- A clock reading that is off by
0.000001 sec causes an error in the satellite’s pseudorange
of approximately 300m
■ Incorrect orbit position:- The orbit is easy to describe if both
bodies are considered as point masses. In reality, they are
not stationary and there are disturbances due to solar and
lunar gravitation.
■ Control segment in the ground controls the errors
■ If unacceptable errors found, a satellite is labelled
unhealthy.
■ Errors related to medium
– Stratosphere and mesosphere are
harmless
– Troposphere:- approx. 14 km high
just above the surface of the
earth. It holds atmospheric
oxygen and delays radio waves.
– Ionosphere:- outward part of the
atmosphere that starts at an
altitude of 90 km. It holds many
electrically charged atoms, forms
protection against various forms
of radiation from space.
■ Errors related to receiver’s environment
■ Errors related to relative geometry of satellites and receiver – GDOP
error
Relative Positioning
■ Solution for errors in absolute positioning:- Perform many position
computations and determine the average over solutions
■ This will address random errors like signal noise, selective
availability,multipath to some extent; but not address systematic errors
like incorrect satellite data, atmospheric delays and GDOP effects.
■ Reference receiver and target receiver; 70-200 km apart
■ Reference receiver will determine its pseudorange error.
■ Target receiver will apply the corrections for each of the four satellite
signals that it uses for positioning.
■ Inverted relative positioning:- Target receiver does not correct the error,
but uses its data link to upload its positioning/timing information to a
central repository where corrections are applied. Not useful where many
target receivers are needed
Network Positioning
■ An integrated, systematic network of reference receivers
covering a large area like the whole globe.
■ Network of reference stations – each monitoring the signals and
their errors.
■ One/more control centers receive the reference station
data,verify the correctness and relay this information to a
geostationary satellite.
■ This satellite will retransmit the correctional data to the area it
covers.
■ Target receivers in that area correct the errors and obtain
accurate position fixes.
Positioning Technology
■ GPS
■ GLONASS
■ Galileo
GPS
■ NAVSTAR Global Positioning System – 1994 - American
■ Providing PPS (Precise Positioning System) to military and US
govt agencies and SPS (Standard Positioning System) to
civilians throughout the world.
■ Space segment - 24 satellites – each orbit our planet at an
altitude of 20200 km.
■ These satellites are organized in six orbital planes, with an
angle of inclination of 55-63 degrees with the equatorial
plane, normally having 4 satellites each.
■ This means the receiver on earth will have between 5-8
satellites in view at a point of time.
■ Control segment – master control in Colorado,US and monitor
stations in a belt around the equator.
■ The NAVSTAR satellites transmit 2 radio signals:- L1
frequency at 1575.42 MHz and L2 frequency at 1227.60 MHz
GPS
GLONASS
■ Global Orbiting Navigational Satellite System
■ Russian Space Force
■ GPS better than GLONASS due to its application for
civilians
■ Space segment – 24 satellites organized in 3 orbital planes
with an inclination of 64.8 degrees with the equator
orbiting altitude – 19130km, period of revolution of 11 hrs
16min.
■ Radio frequencies – L1 frequency – 1605 MHz ; L2
frequency – 1248 MHz
Galileo
■ European Union
■ 27 satellites, orbiting in 1 of 3 equally spaced circular
orbits at an elevation of 23222 km inclined at 56 degrees
with the equator.
DATA ENTRY
AND
PREPARATION
CHAPTER 5
Principles of Geographic
Information Systems
- An introductory textbook
Spatial Data Input : Direct data
capture
■ Data which is captured directly from the environment – primary data
■ Direct observation of relevant geographic phenomena
■ Through ground based surveys, remote sensors in satellites, airplanes
■ Images
■ Rasters
Spatial Data Input : Indirect data
capture
■ Data which is not captured
directly from the environment
– secondary data
■ Data derived from existing
paper maps through the
following processes
■ Digitizing : on-tablet and on-
screen manual digitizing,
semi-automatic or automatic
■ Scanning (dpi – dots per inch)
■ Vectorization: the process of
distilling points,lines ,polygons
from an image
Other sources of spatial data
■ Clearinghouses and Webportals – Spatial Data

Infrastructure
■ Metadata: Information on identity, Data quality,
entity and attribute
■ Data Formats and Standards:- ISO and OGC(Open
Geospatial Consortium)
Selecting a digitizing technique
■ Choice depends on the quality,complexity and contents of the input

document
■ Complex images – manually digitized
■ Simple images – automatically digitized
■ Detailed images – topographic maps and aerial photographs –
manually digitized
Data Quality – Accuracy and
Precision
Accuracy :- Mean close to the true value
Precision :- sufficiently small variance
Data Quality – Positional Accuracy
■ Human errors in measurement
■ Instrumental or systematic
errors (repetitive,accumulative)
■ Random errors – natural
variations
■ Measurement errors are
described in terms of accuracy
■ Accuracy – closeness of
observations, computations or
estimates to the true values
■ Absolute and relative accuracy
■ Locational accuracy is measured
as root mean square error
(RMSE)
Root mean square error (RMSE)
Data Quality – Attribute Accuracy
■ Accuracy of labelling - nominal or categorical data
■ Numerical accuracy – numerical data
Data Quality – Temporal
Accuracy
■ Difference in the values of its coordinates at two different
times
■ Accuracy and precision of time measurements
■ Temporal consistency of different data sets
Data Quality – Lineage
■ Describes the history of the data set.
■ Lineage information determines the ‘fitness for use’ of the
data set,
Data Quality – Completeness
■ Whether there are data lacking in the database as compared to what

exists in the real world.
■ Assess what does and what does not belong to complete data set.
■ May be incomplete(missing features) or overcomplete(extra features)
■ Completeness can relate to spatial, temporal or thematic aspects of
data.
Data Quality – Logical
consistency
■ Logical Rules
– Compatibility of data with other data in the
data set.
– Absence of any contradictions within a data
set.
– Topological consistency of the data set
– Attribute range values must agree for all
entities in the database.
Data Preparation – Data Checks and repairs
■ Data sets must be checked for quality in terms of

accuracy,consistency and completeness.
■ Clean-up operations to be performed.
■ Associating attributes
– Vector data – attributes directly assigned to features,
– Raster data – attributes are assigned to all cells that represent a
feature.
■ Vectorization and rasterization
■ Topology generation; What kind of topology?
Clean up operations for vector data
Combining data from multiple
■sources
4 fundamental cases to be considered
– They may be about the same area, but differ in accuracy.
– They may be about the same area, but differ in choice of
representation
– They may be about adjacent areas, and have to be merged into a
single data set.
– They may be about same or adjacent areas, but referenced in
different coordinate systems
■ Differences in accuracy; scale, sliver polygons
■ Differences in representation
■ Differences in coordinate systems
■ Merging data set of adjacent areas; edge matching
Point Data Transformation
■ Transform points to other representations in order to facilitate
interpretation or integration with other data.
■ Eg:- defining homogeneous areas, deriving contour lines
■ This is referred to as interpolation; calculation of a value from surrounding
observations (principle of spatial autocorrelation)
■ Nearest neighbor interpolation – assign nearest known value to the point.
(discrete data)
■ Discrete – represented as a classified raster or polygon
■ Continuous – represented as an unclassified raster, isoline,TIN
Interpolating discrete data
■ Nominal, categorical, ordinal data
■ Nearest neighbor interpolation – Each location is assigned the value of
the closest measured point
■ Construct zones around the points of measurement, with each point
belonging to a zone
■ Polygon layer – construct theissen polygons around the points of
measurement
Interpolating continuous data
■ Continuous geographic fields – elevation, temperature, salinity
■ Represented as rasters, polyline vector layer through isolines
■ The aim is to use measurements to obtain a representation of the
entire field using sample points
■ Techniques:-
– Trend surface fitting using regression
– Triangulation
– Spatial moving averages using inverse distance weighting
– Kriging
Trend surface fitting using
regression
Triangulation
Moving averages using inverse distance weighting
Moving averages using inverse distance weighting
■ The principle of spatial

autocorrelation suggests that
measurements closer to the cell
center should have greater influence
on the predicted value than those
further away.
■ A distance factor to be bought into
averaging function called IDW
functions.
■ Parameters
– Raster Revolution
– Shape/Size of Window
– Selection Criteria
– Averaging function
Kriging
■ Kriging assumes that the distance or direction between sample
points reflects a spatial correlation that can be used to explain
variation in the surface.
■ The Kriging tool fits a mathematical function to a specified number
of points, or all points within a specified radius, to determine the
output value for each location.
■ Kriging is a multistep process; it includes exploratory statistical
analysis of the data, variogram modeling, creating the surface,
and (optionally) exploring a variance surface.
■ Kriging is most appropriate when you know there is a spatially
correlated distance or directional bias in the data.
■ It is often used in soil science and geology.
■ Originally developed mining geologists attempting to derive
accurate estimates of mineral deposits
■ Semi-variance is a measure of the spatial dependence between
two observations as a function of the distance between them.
■ Semivariogram - a graph of how semivariance changes as the
distance between observations changes.
SPATIAL DATA
ANALYSIS
CHAPTER 6
Information Systems
Classification of Analytical
capabilities of GIS
CLASSIFICATION, OVERLAY NEIGHBOURH CONNECTIVIT

RETRIEVAL AND FUNCTIONS OOD Y FUNCTIONS
MEASUREMENT FUNCTIONS
FUNCTIONS
Classification, Retrieval and
Measurement Functions
■ Measurement
■ Spatial selection queries
■ Classification
Measurement
■ Geometric measurement on spatial features includes counting,distance and area size
computations
■ ON VECTOR DATA
– Primitives – point,line,polygon
– Geometric measurements – location, length, distance, area size
■ Location:- Single co-ordinate pair for a point, list of pairs for line/polygons
■ Length:- associated with polylines
■ Area Size:- associated with polygons
■ Minimal Distance:- 2 locations
■ Minimal Bounding Box:- Applies to lines and polygons and determine minimal
rectangle.
Measurement
■ ON RASTER DATA
– Simpler due to regularity of cells
– Area size of a cell is constant
– Location:- derived from rater’s anchor point,cell resolution
and position of the cell in the raster.
– The anchor point is fixed by convention to be lower left or
upper left location of the raster
– 2 conventions:- cell’s location can be its lower left or the
cell’s midpoint
– Area Size:- No.of cells X cell area size
– Distance:- Standard distance function applied to the
locations of their respective mid points(after taking into
account cell resolution)
Spatial Selection queries
■ Interactive spatial queries:- Define the selection conditions by pointing at or
drawing spatial objects on screen display – called selection objects.
■ By Attribute Conditions & Composite Conditions
■ Selecting features that intersect, based on the distance, adjacent to the selection
objects.
Spatial Selection using
topological relationships
■ Selecting features that are inside selection objects
■ Selecting features that intersect
■ Selecting features adjacent to selection objects
■ Selecting features based on their distance
Classification
■ Technique of purposefully removing detail from input data set to
reveal important patterns.
■ Assign a characteristic value to each element in the input set –
collection of spatial features
■ Classification parameter, reclassification, merging/aggregation
Classification
■ User-Controlled Classification
– User selects an attribute that will be used as a classification
parameter and defines the classification method.
– Classification table
Classification
■ Automatic Classification
– Equal interval technique
– Equal frequency technique (quantile
classification)
■ Which of the above techniques to use depends
upon the purpose of the analysis as well as the
characteristic of data
Classification
Overlay Functions
■ Vector overlay operators
– Polygon intersection operator :- Standard overlay operators for 2

layers of polygons. It is a collection of all possible polygon
intersections; the attribute table result is a join. (spatial join)
– Polygon clipping operator:- It takes a polygon data layer and
restricts its spatial extent to generalized outer boundary
obtained from all(selected) polygons in second input layer.
– Polygon overwrite:- Polygon layer with polygons of the first layer,
except polygons in the second layer
– The last two operators are based on polygon intersection
operator.
Overlay Functions
■ Raster overlay operators
– Raster calculus is used to express operations on rasters(Map Algebra)
– They allow GIS to compute new rasters from existing ones, using range
of functions and operators.
– Output_raster_name:=Map_algebra_expression
Neighbourhood Functions
■ Find characteristics of the vicinity, called neighbourhood of a location.
■ Find what is at the location; and also what is near the location
■ To do this, we must
– State which target locations are of interest to us and define their
spatial content
– Define how to determine the neighbourhood for each target
– Define which characteristics must be computer to each
neighbourhood.
■ Determining the neighbourhood extent - distance
– Proximity computation – (geometric distance function)
■ Buffer Zone Generation
■ Thiessen Polygon Generation
Buffer Zone Generation
Thiessen Polygon Generation
■ Determining the neighbourhood extent – direction and differences in
terrain
■ Target location contains a source material that spreads over time;
DIFFUSION.
■ Source material – air, water, soil, commuters exiting from a train
station
■ Local Resistance Raster
■ Minimum total resistance
■ FLOW COMPUTATION –determines how a phenomenon spreads over

the area
Connectivity Functions
■ A network is a connected set of lines,representing some geographic

phenomenon, typically transport.
■ Analysis mostly performed on vector data layers rather than raster layers.
■ Vector – line features can be stored and hence can be assigned typical
transportation characteristics such as capacity and cost per unit.
■ Directed and Undirected Networks
■ Planar Networks – 2D
■ Spatial analysis functions on the network:- Optimal path finding, Network
Partitioning
Optimal Path Finding
■ Least - Cost Path between the two nodes (origin and destination) to be
found.
■ The aim is to find the sequence of connected lines to traverse form
the origin to destination at the lowest possible cost.
■ Factors:- length, capacity, maximum transmission rate, approximate
travel time.
■ Some particular nodes visited will increase the cost – turning cost
■ Ordered and Unordered Path Finding
Network Partitioning
■ Network allocation – part of a network to assign to a service centre
■ To take into account – capacity at which centre can produce resources,
Consumption of resources
Trace analysis
■ Performed to understand which part of the network is conditionally
connected to the chosen node on the network, known as the trace
origin.
■ For a node to be conditionally connected, a path exists from the
node/line to the trace origin and that the connecting path fulfils the
condition set.
GIS and Application Models
■ Five characteristics of GIS based models
– The purpose of the model:-
Descriptive – “What is”, Prescriptive –”What should be”
– The methodology underlying the model
Stochastic – use statistical or probability functions
Deterministic – well-defined cause effect relationship
Rule Based – use spatial rules
Agent Based – model movement and development of multiple
interacting agents
– The scale at which the model works :- components are individual or
aggregate
– Its dimensionality; static/dynamic, spatial/aspatial
– Its implementation logic; deductive/inductive approach
Error propagation in spatial analysis
■ How errors propagate?
■ Quantifying error
propagation
(Unavoidable Errors)
– Testing the accuracy of
every state
– Modelling error
propagation
DATA
VISUALISATIO
N
CHAPTER 7
Information Systems
GIS and Maps
■ Maps are used as input to GIS.
■ Maps can deal with the Q/A related to the basic components of spatial or
geographic data: location(geometry), characteristics(attributes) & time ;
combination of these.
■ Maps can be aerial photograph/satellite image
■ Map Scale - Ratio between a distance on a map and corresponding
distance in reality
■ Large scale maps – maps that show much detail of a small area.
■ Small scale maps - maps that show less detail of an area Eg:- world map
■ Scale indicators to be given on the map
GIS and Maps
■ Map – definition
■ Maps – topographic maps and

thematic maps
■ Both are stored as separate layers
■ Topographic maps – conventional
colours used
■ Thematic maps - follow
cartographic rules
Topographi
c maps
and
thematic
maps
Visualisation Process
■ Factors:- Scale of the map, topographic/thematic map,
Quantitative/Qualitative data.
■ Cartographer – functions (algorithms) , rules (proportional symbols)
and habits (conventions)
Visualization Strategies
Cartographic Toolbox
■ What kind of data do I have?
– Qualitative/Quantitative data
Cartographic Toolbox
■ How can I map my data?
– Point symbols, line symbols, area symbols, text
– Points can vary in form or colour (can be one or
more values)
– Lines can vary in colour and in shape
– Visual variables :- size,value (lightness),
texture, colour,orientation and shape
– Visual variables influence the map user’s
perception in different ways.
– Relationship between nature of the data to be
mapped and perception of visual variables.
Visual
Variables
How to map qualitative data?
How to map quantitative data?
Absolute
data
Relative
data
How to map….terrain elevation?
■ Collection of elevation data set
■ Contour map – where lines connects points of equal
elevation
■ To visually improve the information content, the space
between contour lines can be filled with colour following a
convention.
Eg:- green for low elevation and brown for high elevation.
This technique is known as hyposometric or layer tinting
■ Add effects by using a shaded relief map.
How to map time series?
MAP
COSMETIC
S

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A GENTLE

Principles of Geographic Information Systems

Sudha Bhagavatheeswaran, Department of Information Technology,

Sudha Bhagavatheeswaran, Department of Information Technology,

Sudha Bhagavatheeswaran, Department of Information Technology,

Sudha Bhagavatheeswaran, Department of Information Technology,

Sudha Bhagavatheeswaran, Department of Information Technology,

Sudha Bhagavatheeswaran, Department of Information Technology,

Sudha Bhagavatheeswaran, Department of Information Technology,

Sudha Bhagavatheeswaran, Department of Information Technology,

Sudha Bhagavatheeswaran, Department of Information Technology,

Principles of Geographic Information Systems

■ Real world – Complex ; Our models – Not perfect

Data types and values

8 X 8 three valued raster (3 colours used) REGION QUADTREE

■ Tessellations do not explicitly store georeferences; vectors

■ Associate georeferences with geographic phenomena.

■ A georeference is a co-ordinate pair; also known as vector

■ Represent roads, rivers,

■ Topological relationships are built from simple elements to more

■ Set of rules defines the

■ Depth and volume matters

■ Here, the raster represents a continuous field like elevation.

Representation of geographic fields

CROP TYPES URBAN LAND

An actual straight line and its representation

Various objects like buildings, bikes, road lanes are

Principles of Geographic Information

■ Ability to manage and process spatial data – critical component of GIS

Sudha Bhagavatheeswaran, Department of Information Technology,

Sudha Bhagavatheeswaran, Department of Information Technology,

■ Remote Sensing provides raw data in the form of photographs and

Sudha Bhagavatheeswaran, Department of Information Technology,

Sudha Bhagavatheeswaran, Department of Information Technology,

■ Spatial queries and process models

Sudha Bhagavatheeswaran, Department of Information Technology,

Sudha Bhagavatheeswaran, Department of Information Technology,

– It supports the use of a data model

Sudha Bhagavatheeswaran, Department of Information Technology,

■ Relational model – attributes, tuples, relations

Sudha Bhagavatheeswaran, Department of Information Technology,

Sudha Bhagavatheeswaran, Department of Information Technology,

Sudha Bhagavatheeswaran, Department of Information Technology,

Sudha Bhagavatheeswaran, Department of Information Technology,

Tuple selection has a

Sudha Bhagavatheeswaran, Department of Information Technology,

Sudha Bhagavatheeswaran, Department of

Sudha Bhagavatheeswaran, Department of Information Technology,

Sudha Bhagavatheeswaran, Department of Information Technology,

■ GIS provides support for spatial data and thematic/attribute data

Linking and storing raster

Sudha Bhagavatheeswaran, Department of Information Technology,

■ For Vectors ,the spatial objects

Sudha Bhagavatheeswaran, Department of Information

■ Designer of a GIS application can choose to store the application data

Sudha Bhagavatheeswaran, Department of Information Technology,

Sudha Bhagavatheeswaran, Department of Information Technology,

Principles of Geographic Information

■ An inverse mapping equation

■ Requires implementation of 3 hardware segments

■ Clearinghouses and Webportals – Spatial Data

■ Choice depends on the quality,complexity and contents of the input

■ Whether there are data lacking in the database as compared to what