GEOG 469
Energy Industry Applications of GIS

Characteristics or Components of a GIS

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A GIS consists of five components or characteristics:

  1. hardware
  2. software
  3. data
  4. people
  5. applications

The combination of these five characteristics makes a GIS. Without all these components, a GIS would have limited value as a tool for analyzing and characterizing spatial information.

Reading Assignment

  1. Read "What are the Parts of a Geographic Information System?" to learn more about these five components.
  2. Learn more about data representation at Wikipedia, including the sections titled "Raster," "Vector," "Advantages and Disadvantages," and "Non-spatial Data."
  3. Use of GIS for Efficient Transmission Line Siting.