ABSTRACT
Most definitions of GIS characterize the technology as a computerized system that is designed to capture, store, manipulate, analyze, and display georeferenced data. These definitions highlight major components and functions of a traditional GIS, operating either as stand-alone systems or in a networked computing environment. Since GIS gradually transitions from desktop to distributed computing environments revolving around the Internet, this book emphasizes issues and topics more related to the latter. To some extent, the emergence of distributed computing environments has altered some of the traditional ways to capture, store, manipulate, and display spatial data, but it has not significantly changed the fundamental methodologies of analyzing and extracting information from spatial data. This chapter is one of the few places in this book to address the issue of deriving information from spatial data.
