From The American Surveyor Magazine… Geographic Information Systems–the powerful combination of visualization tools and spatial data–are ubiquitous today. People use GIS for many applications such as online searches for retail sources of products and services, as navigational aids in cars, planes, and boats, for hiking and hunting, health care services, and a myriad of industries.
Many GIS software are now easy to use and the supporting data are now more available with sufficient standardization to be useable in many applications. In fact some GIS software, such as Google Maps work that works in a web browser, or TomTom navigation products that work in a car or on an iPod (GIS in the palm of your hand!), are so simple to use that people may not even realize that they are using GIS.
Because location is what surveying is all about, GIS is a great tool for land surveyors as it provides easy access to information in a spatial context.
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