Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are "an organized collection of computer hardware, software, geographic data, and personnel designed to efficiently capture, store, update,manipulate,analyze, and display all forms of geographically referenced information" (from "Understanding GIS" by ESRI) Carleton has a number of GIS resources available for students and faculty involved in projects which require a GIS.
There are a number of MS-Windows based sofware packages available in the CMC DOS Lab which allow manipulation of geographic data. Atlas GIS is a vector-based program which represents geographic information as a series of polygons with associated attribute information. Idrisi is a raster-based program which represents geographic features as values on a uniform spatial grid. While both these programs are fairly powerful as PC software goes there is a need for even more powerful software and hardware. To this end Carleton has invested in a UNIX workstation that is capable of running ARC/INFO, the leading high-end, vector-based (and raster capable) GIS. This workstation currently resides in CMC 106. Next to this workstation is large-format digitizer which allows paper map to be "traced" directly into digital form.
If you'd like to know more about GIS or the GIS equipment in CMC 106 please contact me: Sean Fox, x4037 email sfox@carleton.edu
Maintained by Sean
Fox, sfox@carleton.edu
Last updated: Thursday, 31-Aug-2000 12:26:08 CDT