Advantages of GIS over manual maps
Topic: Remote Sensing, GIS and GNSS · NCERT: Class 12, Ch 4 "Spatial Information Technology"
Meaning
A paper map is fixed. It shows one theme in one design, and it must be redrawn to show anything new. A GIS (geographic information system) keeps the data separate from the way it is shown. So users can ask questions about features, draw new maps from the stored attributes, and run analyses such as overlay (stacking layers) and buffering (drawing distance zones). Different tables can also be joined through a shared location code. This makes GIS faster and more flexible for planning.
Example
NCERT overlays Aligarh's urban land use of 1974 and 2001 in a GIS to show urban sprawl. Doing the same by hand would mean tracing paper maps on a light table, a method called sieve mapping.
Don't confuse with
- Computer-assisted cartography: it only draws maps by computer. It cannot analyse the data the way a GIS can.
Related concepts
- Database management system
- Computer assisted cartography
- Spatial information technology
- Geographic information system
- Spatial data
- Attribute data
- Point, line and area features
- Components of GIS