2. What is geographic information?

The only rule governing geographic information is that it contains a location. Location can be captured in many different ways including relative location (eg. a building is east relative to another) or absolute (eg. your postcode that can be used to uniquely identify the position of your property with a map coordinate location). For example, you may take a photograph of an area and use it to locate features shown on the photograph relative to one another. Aerial photographs are a great way of achieving this and are often used as a data source in geographic information systems. An example of aerial photography as a data source can be found on Multimap. Here you can toggle between aerial photographs and maps of an area to find locations. You can also input town names and postcodes, another form of location, to find specific locations on the Earth’s surface. Similar location information can be entered at Mass Means Business. Here the location is used to search for photographs, aerial photographs and maps of building plots. Ordnance Survey provides a huge variety of products based on national mapping of the UK, all of which have location at their core.