What is the second powerful benefit of GIS?
As mentioned above, the first powerful benefit of a GIS is to represent your spatial data correctly as a graphic. The second powerful benefit has to do with the information about a location. All locations, or features, can or will contain additional characteristic information like the type of feature or other descriptive qualities (or quantities), these are called “attributes” in a GIS. Examples include: Feature Type: Point Tree Common Name: Monterey Pine Scientific Name: Pinus Radiata Diameter: 16″ Condition: Good Region: Coastal California Feature Type: Point Store #: 101 Store Name: M’s Doughnutz Store Type: Food Employees: 150 Daily Sales: $55, 950 Feature Type: Line Type: Utility Subtype: Water Diameter: 8″ Material: Concrete Condition: Poor (Number of families by neighborhood and attributes for West of Twin Peaks neighborhood. Source: SFGIS – Planning Neighborhoods) In a GIS the location and attribute information are linked. This linking is the second powerful benefit of a GIS as
