UNIVERSITY OF NAIROBI
DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL AND BIOSYSTEMS ENGINEERING FEB 503: GEOINFORMATION SYSTEMS
2014/2015 ACADEMIC YEAR
COURSEWORK: ASSIGNMENT
ASSIGNMENT TITLE: HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF GIS
SUBMITTED BY:OMUFISI O MILDRED F21/1104/2010
HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF GIS
GIS basically deals with the creation of maps which for now are far more advanced than they have ever existed. However, the early stages of this process can be traced back as far as 500 B.C. when, artifacts such as clay tablets from Assyria were made with maps of certain northern Mesopotamian regions. recognized evidence of maps and mapping in the western world exist from as far back as 12 B.C. when the Roman map was executed by Emperor Augustus’ son-in-law, M. Vipsanius Agrippa. Man has only made leaps in the forward direction since. Subsequent discoveries, such as the spherical shape of the Earth, also affected the mapping process
positively. While cartography continued to develop through conducting of tests in the course of the ensuing centuries, newer technologies also came to be developed all together, significant among them being the invention of the computer and its astounding capabilities. It was when the two were brought together that the groundwork for modern day GIS was laid.
The development of GIS was a result of several initiatives taken in a range of different quarters to solve or question specific problems all of which resulted in knowledge that led to the overall construction of GIS. Here are the most significant events that occurred from the 1950s to the present that determined the steady development of GIS:
In the 1950s, William Garrison a distinguished geographer and analyst of transportation issues, worked at the University of Washington and came up with a brilliant idea to make use of statistics and computers to study and better identify with spatial problems. This idea launched what was referred to as the quantitative revolution in the field of geography. Waldo Tobler, a student of William Garrison and contestant in the Quantitative Revolution, devised a model called Map In – Map Out (MIMO) in 1959 which was to apply computers to cartography. This model was the basis for GIS and contained all the prime features of GIS software available and in use today.
During the 1960s, first in the year 1960 saw the development of the world's first true operational GIS in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada by the federal Department of Forestry and Rural Development. Developed by Dr. Roger Tomlinson, it was called the Canada Geographic System (CGIS). CGIS was an improvement over computer mapping applications as it provided capabilities for overlay, measurement, and digitizing/scanning. It supported a national coordinate system that spanned the continent, coded lines as arcs having a true embedded topology and it stored the attribute and locational information in separate files. As a result of this, Tomlinson has become known as the "father of GIS", particularly for his use of overlays in promoting the spatial analysis of
convergent geographic data. This process gave dawn to many GIS aspects. The same year saw the formation of URISA – The Urban and Regional Information Systems Association – in the US that sought to solve problems related to public works, planning, emergency services,
Independent Map Encoding system of data , in the same year David Bickmore- ECU
(Experimental Cartography Unit) at London’s Royal College of Art, 1967 saw the development by the CIA of an Auto Mapping System, in 1968 Robert Tweedie based in Albany and working for the New York State Department of Transportation invented a Transportation Information System, in 1969, Jack Dangermond established the Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI), Jim Meadlock established Integraph Corporation, Laser-Scan was founded by 3
academics from Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratories in UK and the publishing of Ian McHarg’s book Design With Nature which popularized overlay map techniques.
In the 1970s; the start of the 70s was marked by four significant events that shaped the history of GIS. The Roger Tomlinson led Canadian project began to make full use of the Canada
Geographic Information system (CGIS) developed, E.L. Amidon an employee of the Berkley based American Department of Agriculture developed a grid manipulated Map Information and Display System that was able to tabulate data for single as well as overlaid maps; Arie Shachar, working at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem generated “The Urban Atlas of Jerusalem” by applying the grid manipulation system to a block inventory data bank, Dieter Steiner of
Switzerland created the Geographic Mapping Program (GEOMAP) which was grid manipulation based and similar to Howard Fisher’s SYMAP and could produce shaded maps; The first ever symposium on GIS took place in Ottawa, Canada.
In 1971, Roger Tweedie made use of a database that contained such information as physical attributes of roads, traffic volumes, bridge records, and road inventories to create the Highway Inventory Information System for the state of New York. The following year marked the launch of the first Landsat satellite which provided a wealth of information about our planet’s
geography. IBM began developing a Geographic Information System called GFIS the same year while, in the UK, the Department of Environment created the GISP to aid planning. In 1973, Maryland became the first state to initiate state-wide projects under the MAGI (Maryland Automated Geographic Information). The USGS (United States Geological Survey)began to create a large database of land resources and also began developing GIRAS (Geographical Information Retrieval and Analysis System) to analyze and effective manage their geographical resources. The first International Symposium on Computer-Assisted Cartography also took place the same year followed by the first AUTOCRATO conference in 1974.
By the early 1980s, M&S Computing (later integraph) along with Bentley Systems Incorporated for the CAD platform, Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI), CARIS (Computer Aided Resource Information System), MapInfo Corporation and ERDAS (Earth Resource Data Analysis System) emerged as commercial vendors of GIS software, successfully incorporating many of the CGIS features, combining the first generation approach to separation of spatial and attribute information with a second generation approach to organizing attribute data into database structures. In parallel, the development of two public domain systems (MOSS and GRASSGISS) began in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
The early 20th century saw the development of photozincography, which allowed maps to be split into layers, for example one layer for vegetation and another for water. This was particularly used for printing contours – drawing these was a labour-intensive task but having them on a separate layer meant they could be worked on without the other layers to confuse the draughtsman. This work was originally drawn on glass plates but later plastic film was
introduced, with the advantages of being lighter, using less storage space and being less brittle, among others. When all the layers were finished, they were combined into one image using a large process camera. Once color printing came in, the layers idea was also used for creating separate printing plates for each color. While the use of layers much later became one of the main typical features of a contemporary GIS, the photographic process just described is not considered to be a GIS in itself – as the maps were just images with no database to link them to. By the end of the 20th century, the rapid growth in various systems had been consolidated and standardized on relatively few platforms and users were beginning to explore viewing GIS data over the internet requiring data format and transfer standards. More recently, a growing number of free open-source GIS packages run on a range of operating systems and can be customized to perform specific tasks. Increasingly geospatial data and mapping applications are being made available via the World Wide Web.
The Future of GIS: GIS technology has only gotten more user-friendly with time, in terms of both its usage and the costs involved. The continuous developments taking place in this field, it is forecasted, will result in the increased usage of this technology in fields like science, industry, government, public health, archeology, urban and rural planning, logistics, transportation, environmental sustainability, defense, etc.
REFERENCES
GIS Development by JRB Dein Techblog.htm
