Application Fields of GIS

Application Fields of GIS

　　Geographic Information Systems have achieved remarkable development over the past 30 years, and are widely applied in almost all fields, including resource surveys, environmental assessment, disaster prediction, land management, urban planning, postal and telecommunications, transportation, military and public security, water conservancy and electric power, public facility management, agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, statistics, commerce and finance. (Also including surveying and mapping, emergency response, petroleum and petrochemical, and other sectors of the national economy.) The following application fields of GIS respectively address the roles it plays in each field.

◆ Resource Management Mainly applied in agriculture and forestry, addressing issues such as the distribution, classification, statistics, and mapping of various resources (e.g., land, forests, grasslands) in these fields. It primarily answers two types of questions: "location" and "pattern."

◆ Resource Configuration The allocation of various public facilities in cities, the distribution of materials for disaster relief and reduction, nationwide energy security, food supply, and the configuration of institutions in various locations are all resource configuration issues. The goal of GIS in such applications is to ensure the most rational allocation of resources and maximize their benefits.

◆ Urban Planning and Management Spatial planning is an important application field of GIS, with urban planning and management being its main content. For example, in large-scale urban infrastructure construction, how to ensure the proportion and rational distribution of green space, and how to ensure that schools, public facilities, sports venues, and service facilities can achieve the maximum service coverage (urban resource configuration issues).

◆ Land Information System and Cadastral Application Land and cadastral management involves many aspects, such as changes in land use nature, changes in parcel boundaries, and changes in cadastral ownership relationships. With GIS technology, these tasks can be completed efficiently and with high quality.

◆ Environmental Management and Modeling Regional ecological planning, environmental status assessment, environmental impact assessment, decision support for pollutant reduction allocation, decision support for environmental and regional sustainable development, management of environmental protection facilities, and environmental planning.

◆ Emergency Response Addressing the issue of how to arrange the optimal personnel evacuation routes and equip them with corresponding transportation and support facilities in the event of major natural or man-made disasters such as floods, wars, and nuclear accidents.

◆ Application in GeoScience Terrain analysis, watershed analysis, land use research, economic geography research, spatial decision support, spatial statistical analysis, and mapping can all be accomplished with the aid of GIS tools.

◆ Business and Marketing The establishment of commercial facilities should fully consider their market potential. For example, if the distribution of other shopping malls and the distribution and population of residential areas around the site to be developed are not considered when building a large shopping mall, the expected market and service coverage may not be achieved after completion. Sometimes even the product mix and market positioning of the mall must be considered in conjunction with the population structure (age composition, gender composition, education level) and consumption level of the area to be developed. The spatial analysis and database functions of GIS can solve these problems. GIS functions can also be used for decision-making and analysis in real estate development and sales.

◆ Facilities Management Above-ground and underground infrastructure in cities (telecommunications, water supply, road traffic, natural gas pipelines, sewage facilities, electric power facilities, etc.) is widely distributed across every corner of the city, and these facilities clearly have geographic reference characteristics. Their management, statistics, and summarization can all be accomplished with the aid of GIS, greatly improving work efficiency.

◆ Site Selecting Analysis Based on the characteristics of the regional geographic environment, comprehensively considering factors such as resource configuration, market potential, transportation conditions, terrain features, and environmental impact to select the optimal location within a region is a typical application field of GIS, fully reflecting the spatial analysis functions of GIS.

◆ Network System Analysis Establishing computer models of transportation networks, underground pipeline networks, etc., to study traffic flow, conduct traffic regulation, and handle emergency responses to underground pipeline incidents (pipe bursts, line breaks). Route optimization for police and medical rescue, and vehicle navigation are also examples of GIS network analysis applications.

◆ Visualization Application Based on digital terrain models, establishing three-dimensional visualization models of cities, regions, large construction projects, or famous scenic spots to achieve multi-angle browsing, which can be widely applied in publicity, urban and regional planning, large-scale project management and simulation, tourism, and other fields.

◆ Distributed Geographic Information Application With the development of network and Internet technologies, this type of GIS application runs in Intranet or Internet environments, with the goal of achieving distributed storage and information sharing of geographic information, as well as remote spatial navigation.