ABSTRACT
This section provides the reader with descriptions of representative geographic information systems currently in use as well as examples of how geographic information systems are and have been used as practical data management tools for analysis and decision-making tasks. Many geographic information systems have been built in the past twenty years for various applications. New systems continue to be introduced at an increasingly rapid pace, and systems are now available for all types of computers from mainframes to microcomputers, although publicly available descriptions of specific systems remain scarce. Nevertheless, there is a growing body of literature describing the use of geographic information systems in real-world applications. Given the limitations of space, we have attempted to compile a balanced sampling of both.
