All language subtitles for 04_defining-gis.en

So, one way to define a geographic information system is what it can do.

So, GIS is a computer system for capturing, storing,

filtering, analyzing, visualizing, geospatial data.

So, those are basically all the things that

Roger Tomlinson described when he was coming up with

the computer system for the Canada Land Inventory and they still apply today.

So, like I said, this is a definition based on what a GIS can do.

So what do we mean by geospatial data?

That is data that's been geographically referenced.

So, a second ago I was talking about

spatial data saying that that's within some spatial reference system.

Geospatial data would more specifically refer

to data that's geographically referenced in relation to the surface of the earth.

Another way to define a GIS is based on its components.

So, what's it made up of?

With this definition, we can say that it's made of hardware, software,

geospatial data, procedures, so these are things

like data management and analysis, and people.

So, this is what a GIS is made up of.

Often people just think of a GIS in terms of the software and I tend

to do that myself but really technically it's not just the software,

it's all of these things combined,

that you have to have all of these components in order for

a GIS to function properly and correctly.

This is what I would call a very traditional definition of a GIS.

It's literally a textbook definition and as we'll see though,

things in the world of GIS are evolving and changing rather

rapidly and so this traditional definition

needs a little bit of updating, we'll talk about that.

The traditional definition of a GIS really at least the way I would

think of it was in the last say 20 years as a desktop GIS.

So, we would have the hardware that you had to buy,

you had to buy software which was usually really,

really expensive, you had to somehow get data for that that you could use.

So, that would either be data that you would buy or collect in some way.

You have to develop your own procedures in order to know how to use this stuff correctly,

and altogether we would refer to this as a desktop GIS.

So, because of course the idea being that it's running on

a desktop computer or now of course it could be a laptop.

So, this worked really well for many years but it does have its limitations.

If you have a lot of data or you want to do a lot of complex analysis,

then the faster your computer the faster you can get your work done.

Big surprise, fast computers are relatively expensive and the software is expensive.

The software is expensive because it has an amazing number of tools and

other functionality that can be used for just about any map analysis you can imagine.

So, that's a good thing but you need to know you need someone who knows how to use

that complex software and they can manage all of

that data and what you end up with is a rather big,

expensive, complicated, geographic information system.

So, what if there was a better way to do this?

What if you didn't always need the big expensive powerful desktop GIS?

What if we just use someone else's computer instead?

We could run the software on their computer,

store all the data and procedures there too if we wanted to.

Instead of just having one computer,

what if we could use thousands of

computers and treat them as if they were one big fast computer?

So, here we have,

I think you can see where I'm going with this,

is that we have hardware-software data and procedures by

the thousands and this is what we do when we use what we call the cloud.

So, there's great advantages to the cloud.

It's maintained by someone else,

you just rent the space and processing from whomever owns it when you need

it and because there are thousands of

computers acting together they're much more reliable,

they're centralized, so they use less electricity which is better

for the environment as well as being cheaper to operate.

So, this is what we would refer to as the cloud.

So, now that we've moved everything into the cloud,

all you need is a way to access

the software data and procedures remotely from wherever you are.

This can be done with nothing more than a regular browser

on any computer or depending on what you need to do you may want

to use apps that are installed on a phone or

a tablet or perhaps just one inside a web browser with nothing to actually install.

So, what we have now would be

a web GIS or a web platform that provides much more power and flexibility for you

the user and we can transfer whatever we need to our browser or device and we can

send from our device data we've collected for example using the GPS on our phone.

So, at this point the main limitation is that a web GIS does not

have all the powerful tools that are still found in a desktop GIS.

It's not to say that it'll never happen,

but at this point in time though there is still

a need for desktop GIS for more advanced work.

So, I'd say that the great thing about

a desktop GIS is that you can keep control of whatever you have,

you can work on your own,

you can from a desktop GIS upload it into the cloud,

and then interact with it from there through

a web browser or a phone or a tablet if you want.

So, this is really going beyond the

traditional what I would think of as textbook definition of GIS,

is to think of it in terms of what's happening now,

the cloud and web-based versions of GIS software are

really having a huge influence on how we all

operate with GIS and companies like Ezri has been very forward thinking

about this and have really encouraged their users to embrace the cloud.

So, let's start by going through each of

these components and we'll begin with the hardware.

Why are we going to start with that? Well, because it's the easiest,

and why is it the easiest?

Well, because hardware actually in a weird way has become largely irrelevant.

If you're using a desktop GIS,

the average laptop or desktop computer is so powerful that it

can easily run the software and handle most typical datasets.

If you're using a web GIS like RTS online,

almost all of that hard work that's being done for

processing is being done somewhere else in the cloud,

meaning a hardware that someone else is maintaining and

paying for and that you don't really need to think about or know much about at all.

I suppose we should consider the client device such as

your phone or tablet or laptop as hardware,

but really as long as you can access an internet browser,

it's pretty much irrelevant.

So, you need an internet connection and a way of being able to access a browser.

There's certain situations where it's helpful to have a built-in GPS on your phone for

collecting data but most phones have this

now and not everyone will even want to be able to do that.

In otherwise, the main factors are the same as they would be for most other apps.

So screen size, speed of the device but these are more preference than limiting factors.

The only time hardware is still a factor is if you're using a desktop GIS and you're

working with very large datasets and are doing really complex analysis.

Then really the only guideline you really need to know is the faster the

better which usually translates into how much data can you afford.

There's no point in even mentioning

specific specifications because they're constantly changing.

One thing I will mention is

that Ezri desktop software only works on the Windows operating system.

This is yet another great benefit of working with web GIS

and the cloud is the operating system doesn't matter.