Question 9: What can the GIS software do with the information stored in the computer?
GIS software has a large variety of tools of varying levels of complexity. Listed below are core standard functions that are common to most GIS software packages.
-
Mapping and cartography: Visualize features and manipulate symbology and colours to create an output map with title, scale bar, north arrow etc.
-
Query: Ask questions of feature attributes such as: where is…? What’s the nearest…? What intersects with…?
-
Select: Identify features and their attributes that meet some criteria.
-
Distance: Calculates the distance between features.
-
Buffers: Rings drawn around features at a specified distance from the features.
-
Overlay: The display of multiple layers of information at one location.
-
Clip: Cuts an input layer to the size and extent of a selected layer.
-
Merge: Combines multiple layers into one layer.
-
Raster analysis: There is a whole separate suite of tool for raster analysis that includes classifying cells, deriving aspect and slope, mosaicing and calculating new cell values among many others.
-
3D: Data can be viewed with ‘height’ in 3-dimensions for powerful visualization.