Introduction to Analyses in Geographic Information Systems (GIS)

This chapter answers questions, such as why do geographic information system (GIS) matter? What is a GIS? The chapter defines the GIS from both geography and information system perspectives. This chapter also provides a great number of real‐world practical examples to illustrate the necessity to study GIS. The chapter briefly reviews the development history of GIS both from the database creation and software development perspectives. The popular applications of the GIS are presented in the end of this chapter.