GEOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION SYSTEM (GIS) RELATED SITES

What is GIS?

An excellent description is available at www.geo.ed.ac.uk A brief description in given here quoting from this site.

Geographical Information Systems (GIS) is the high-tech equivalent of the map. An individual map contains a lot of information, which is used in different ways by different individuals and organizations. It represents the means of locating ourselves in relation to the world around us. Maps are used in diverse applications from locating telephone wires and gas mains under our streets, to displaying the extent of de-forestation in the Brazilian Amazon.

The map has been in existence in much the same form for thousands of years. In the traditional form it suffers from a number of problems. First maps are static and therefore difficult and expensive to keep up to date. The second problem is that they are static and lose their flexibility, for example maps exist as discrete sheets and inevitably your area of interest lies on the corner of four adjacent sheets. In addition maps are often very complex and may require an expert to extract the particular data which are of interest.

GIS provides the facility to extract the different sets of information from a map (roads, settlements, vegetation, etc.) and use these as required. This provides great flexibility, allowing a paper map to be quickly produced which exactly meets the needs of the user. However, GIS goes further, because the data are stored on a computer, analysis and modelling become possible. For example, one might point at two buildings, ask the computer to describe each from an attached database (much more information than could be displayed on a paper map) and then to calculate the best route between these.

GIS Programs Available for Downloading

collinssoftware.com

teleport.com GeoSpatial Home

world.std.com

www.bentley.com

www.esri.com

www.gdscorp.com

http://www.cecer.army.mil/grass/GRASS.main.html

http://www.intergraph.com/

http://www3.baylor.edu/grass/

Map Information in GIS Format

toronto geography FTP server

xerox FTP server

http://sun1.cr.usgs.gov/sast/dslist.html

http://www.cadgis.lsu.edu/geoscipub

yrkes.mit.edu/UrbanRing/RingViewSampler

http://www.ncg.nrcs.usda.gov/geocp.html

http://www.blm.gov/gis/nsdi.html

ftp://ftp.uu.net/graphics/maps

ftp://alum.wr.usgs.gov/pub/map

ftp://sepftp.stanford.edu/pub/World_Map

http://www.horizons.com/suremaps

Environmental Data in GIS Format

EPA telnet server

EPA Forest Inventory

EPA gopher server

earth.eps.pitt.edu ftp server

Available Government Data for Use with GIS

http://www.coastalo.com/

http://www.acc-gis.com/

telnet://nodis@nssdca.gsfc.nasa.gov/

ftp://charon.er.usgs.gov/pub/PROJ.4

http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/gdbc/fmebc/

ftp://ftp.census.gov/pub/tiger/

http://www.fgdc.gov/FGDP/title.html

ftp://camelot.es.anl.gov/pub

ftp://ftp.its.nps.gov/pub/park_boundaries

http://greenwood.cr.usgs.gov/

http://www.bts.gov/gis/

ftp://nmdpow9.er.usgs.gov/public

ftp://edcftp.cr.usgs.gov/pub/data/DEM/250

http://waisqvarsa.er.usgs.gov/wais/

Other Miscallneous Data for Use with GIS Packages

opac@geoinfo.gsc.emr.ca

ggrweb: FIRM-Harrison

csn.net/gis/

powernet.co.uk/mkmarina

pacific.net/~cbrooks/gis1

ftp.csn.org/COGS/MOSS

tycho.usno.navy.mil

ncardata.ucar.edu

opac@canlib.emr.ca

Pennwell Publishing

alexandria.sdc.ucsb.edu/

Geosim at Virginia Tech

Soest at Univ. of Hawaii

unidata.ucar.edu

www.viewport.com

nsdi.usgs.gov/nsdi/products/dlg

jupiter.drev.dnd.ca

lpac.ac.uk/SEL-HPC/Articles/DBArchive

cuiwww.unige.ch/meta-index

telnet://info.cern.ch/