Fundamentals of Geographic Information Systems

by Michael N. DeMers

Learning objectives at the beginning of each chapter helps to define concepts and outline the goals that the reader should be accomplishing.
* Review questions at the end of each chapter isolate key material for effective self study.

Genres: Geography, Nonfiction

480 pages, Hardcover

First published November 6, 1996

Reviews

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am tempted to put this book under humor; it suggested both that GIS was glamorous, and, that GIS practitioners should, for a good time, dim the lights and spend an evening matching contours on adjacent topo maps (from the Introduction). ::sporfle:: But, alas, the rest of the book did not live up to the humor quotient of the Intro, and I have to give it an OK rating. Informational, but dull.

[Bhola · Rating 5 out of 5]

it is best book for learning GIS

[Sarah Sammis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fundamentals of Geographic Information Systems by Michael N. DeMers is another of the GIS books I read early on in my research for a term paper I had to write this semester. I had been working with a couple of GIS sites when I was working for the Census so I picked GIS as my topic to learn more about the tools I had been using with no training.

The book does exactly what it says, it outlines the fundamentals of GIS. It has the theory behind the tool, the history and the physical demands of setting up such a system (computers, software, networks and so forth).

There are also discussions of making and using maps, layers, themes and other data that can be stored in such a system. The book is a little dry in parts and a little basic in others but it just what I needed when I was first narrowing down my topic from GIS to disaster response using GIS.

[Karl · Rating 2 out of 5]

OK. I have no idea how to rate this book because I'm not trying to become a GIS professional; rather, I'm a data scientist trying to figure out how all this mapping/geography stuff works and what I've discovered is that these folks are alien to me - they don't think about data/math/stats/computing the way tech people, or I do, at all.

Maybe that's the lesson to learn.

Anyway, it's readable, but skimmable if you're just trying to pick up culture, like I was.