What is GeoIT?

"GIS is a way of working in order to handle, work with and present all geographically related information, e.g. information about everything that can be localized to a place (a position), about everything that exists somewhere.

It could be just about any type of information; (relatively durable) data concerning water ducts, roads, roadbeds, ownerships, building permits, taxation values, addresses, buss stops, crime statistics, customers of the home help service, work sites, day care centres and also (more changeable) data about humans, environmentally hazardous effluents, traffic flows – i.e. everything that has a defined position.

At least 75 % of all information an organisation uses in its business and in its decisions has geographical connections, i.e. one could attach a kind of address to the phenomenon that the information concerns.

GIS could thus affect a very large part of the information handling as an aid in almost all planning, operation and follow-up.

Take for instance the planning of a new day care centre. Then, you would need information about everything from land owners to where the little kids live. There, GIS is used to create, prepare, present and store information with a position-relation – immediately information, stored in databases, can be presented against a mapped background. The information is then easy to make available, for instance via Internet / Intranet, so that everybody can always work with the same material, which is continually being updated whenever changes occur.

Another example – where there is an acute requirement of up-to-date information – is to use GIS to enable the rescue service to speedily find the nearest vehicle and the shortest way to an accident.

GIS streamlines the information handling as well as make the information easy to understand and available - simultaneously, for many different users. With GIS, one could handle everything, as long as the information has any reference to a geographically defined place.

To express it simply, one could say that GIS is a IT-system where one uses the trick of the geographical position in order to bring together and co-use all information about something, disregarding who produced this information, when it was produced, how it was produced, etc. The important thing is that the information is stored digitally in such a manner that one can bring it out in the course of one’s treatment of a matter, as well as use and interpret it together with other information.

GIS has been in Sweden since around 1985. These systems were, during a long time, mostly a concern for a relatively small number of experts. GIS has mainly been used in order to produce maps, administrate road networks or municipality-owned sewer networks. With support from CAD-software, railroads and roads have been projected.

Many groups have long been interested in using GIS, but there has only been advanced and expensive systems available, requiring high technical knowledge. For that reason, the number of users has been comparatively few. During the last few years the situation has changed. The software has become considerably cheaper and easier to use. The computers have been radically cheaper. The general IT-development with local networks and powerful personal computers on everyone’s desk has provided new opportunities. The concept of Geographical Information Technology, GIT, has become more common.

The Geographical Information Technology is now becoming every man’s property.

In combination with the satellite-supported Global Positioning System, GPS, 'digital maps’ are being used by owners of small boats, cab companies and also individual car owners. The number of new areas of use is grows very quickly in public activities as well as in private companies. GIS-applications on the Internet are becoming more common. The individual citizen’s use of GIS is a fact. GIS-applications can today be found together with traditional office tools for word processing, counting and presentation.” Fetched from ESRI-Sweden AB’s definition of GIS.