Putting geographic software on the map

Copyright 2004 American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc.;
All Rights Reserved
Aerospace America

For original reprints (with graphics) available http://www.rsicopyright.com/ics/prc_main/prs_request.html/

October, 2004

SECTION: SYSTEMS AND SOFTWARE; Pg. 18

LENGTH: 1804 words

BYLINE: John D. Binder, jbinderaero@rcn.com, OnePIN: 2447-6000-4391

BODY:
With the latest military activity taking place in Iraq and Afghanistan, many Americans have been driven to view maps and learn more about geography. The military itself has spent enormous quantities of time, money, and effort on refining its maps and uncovering more details on those embattled regions. The geography of a region and the features on a map often hold huge amounts of data that, if read properly, can provide detailed, critical information. This is one software area that is getting quite a bit of attention lately.

Geographic Information System (GIS) is computer software that links geographic information (where things are) with descriptive information (what things are like). Unlike a flat paper map, where "what you see is what you get," a GIS can have many layers of information.

To use a paper map, all you do is unfold it. Spread out before you is a representation of cities and roads, mountains and rivers, railroads and political boundaries. The cities are represented by little dots or circles, the roads by black lines, the mountain peaks by tiny triangles, and the lakes by small blue areas.

A digital map is no more difficult to use than a paper map. As on paper, dots or points represent features such as cities, lines represent roads, and small colored areas depict features such as lakes.

All this information -- where the point is located, how long the road is, and even how many square miles a lake occupies -- is stored in digital format and can be viewed in a variety of ways. Think of this geographic data as layers of information underneath the computer screen. Each layer represents a particular theme, or feature, of the map.

One theme could consist of all the roads in an area. Another theme could represent where all the area's military assets are. Yet another could represent all the cities. These themes can be laid on top of one another, creating a stack of information about the same geographic area. They can be turned off and on, as if the user were peeling a layer off the stack or placing it back on.

GIS enables spatial information to be created, queried, analyzed, visualized, and tailored to the user's specific application. Spatial data can be readily integrated with other defense-relevant data, enabling the user to consider the impact of geography, terrain, and weather in all decisions. With GIS, spatial data can be shared and refreshed readily, ensuring that all concerned have the benefit of current, accurate information.

ESRI: The company

A number of GIS products are commercially available today. One of the leaders in this field is ESRI [http://www.esri.com], headquartered in Redlands, Calif. The company was founded as Environmental Systems Research Institute in 1969 as a privately held consulting firm that specialized in land use analysis projects. It now has offices throughout the nation; a business partner program with more than 1,500 developers, consultants, resellers, and data providers; and a network of more than 75 international distributors with users in more than 220 countries. Each year, ESRI invests nearly 20% of its revenues in R&D.

ESRI's early mission focused on the principles of organizing and analyzing geographic information. The firm's projects included developing plans for rebuilding the city of Baltimore, Md., and assisting Mobil Oil in selecting a site for the new town of Reston, Va. From these early projects emerged concepts for processes and tools that could be applied in an automated environment.

During the 1980s ESRI devoted its resources to developing and applying a core set of application tools that could be used in a computer environment to create a geographic information system. This is what is known today as GIS technology.

In 1981 ESRI launched its first commercial GIS software, called ARC/INFO. It combined computer display geographic features, such as points, lines, and polygons, with a database management tool for assigning attributes to these features. Originally designed to run on minicomputers (Prime, Digital Equipment, and Data General), ARC/INFO offered the first modern GIS. As the technology shifted to UNIX and later to the Windows operating systems, ESRI evolved software tools that took advantage of these new platforms.

The 1990s brought more change and evolution. ESRI's global presence grew with the release of ArcView, a desktop mapping tool that shipped 10,000 copies in the first six months of 1992. That program has since evolved into the Geography Network, a collaborative, multiparticipant system for publishing, sharing, and using geographic information on the Internet. ArcCAD software, also released in 1992, made GIS tools available in the CAD environment.

Today, ESRI GIS products are poised for even greater growth. Innovations in computer technology allow sophisticated GIS operations to be performed in the field on a PDA (personal digital assistant), on desktops, and throughout an organization. Businesses as well as the military are adopting GIS technology as a key decision support tool.

The products

ESRI's framework product is called Arc-GIS. It consists of several modules that provide reading, viewing, and editing capabilities from the desktop and the server. The desktop modules include ArcMap, ArcCatalog, ArcToolbox, ModelBuilder, and ArcGlobe. The server modules include ArcSDE, ArcIMS, and ArcGIS.