What is a GIS?

The U.S. Geological Survey offers an excellent introduction along with several clear examples of GIS applications.

The U.S. Bureau of the Census provides an index of frequently asked questions (FAQ) about Geographic Information Systems along with answers to these questions.

The University of Colorado provides overviews of

• Coordinate Systems
• Map Projections
• The Global Positioning System (GPS)

Examples of C. S. Papacostas' work at the University of Hawaii on the application of GIS to civil engineering problems.

These are GIS and related starting points:
City & County of Honolulu Geographic Data
State of Montana Geographic Database
Hawaii Geographic Information Coordination Council
FHWA Technology Transfer
ArcInfo by Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI)
Atlas GIS (ESRI)
Intergraph Online
Manifold System
GRASS(Geographic Resources Analysis Support System)
The Virginia On-Line Map
The GIS Portal
U.S. Bureau of the Census
TIGER Map Generation
National Wetlands Inventory
DeLorme Mapping
Xerox PARC PubWeb Server
MapInfo
U.S. Geological Survey
EPA EnviroMapper
San Diego (SANDAG)

• by Racoosin Solutions
• by Greg Hendrick s
• by W. J Gilmore
• by Mike Chappel
• by Ian Gillfilan
• by Barry Wise

• State of Washington DOT
• Iowa DOT
• Federal Geographic Data Committee
• Paper by Bill Elliotti, Exor Corp.

• A few words about NAVSTAR GPS
• Global Positioning System Basics
• A local AVL Application

• A few words about longitude
• Pictures of Harrison's Clocks

From the university of Colorado

• Coordinate Systems
• Map Projections

• Multihazards
• Geotechnical
• Transportation
• Hydraulics
• Hydrology
• Military

• Example of GIS/External Model Integration. If enabled, you may try the Javascript version.
• Demos: Attribute and Spatial Queries

• Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC)
• National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI)
• Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing (TIGER) Sndard (SDTS)
• SDTS FAQs
• FIPS County Codes
• SDTS Topological Profiles

Explore two government "enterprise-level" GIS operations:

• Honolulu's Holis
• State of Montana

Please play special attention to their "metadata" files.

Please visit the U.S. Geological Survey GIS Site and read the "Poster" included there.

Jot down any questions you may wish to discuss in class.

Please visit the web page GIS.COM and read the document "whatisgis.pdf" by following the link entitled What is GIS?