GIS and Geovisual Analysis

The term ‘Geographic Information Systems’ (GIS) defines those computerised systems designed to gather, store, manage, visualise and analyse data with a spatial component. While GIS is generally used to refer to software applications created to manage geographic information, in truth GIS are also defined by other key components such as the spatial data being analysed, the hardware and the human component defined by users’ training, experience and decisions (Ballas et al., 2018). All these are key parts of what is known as GIS, and it is why many argue that GIS should be described in terms of a conceptual and methodological framework rather than software in isolation. As such, researchers have developed an academic discipline, Geographic Information Science, aimed at examining and developing data organisation models and computational mechanisms for GIS, including geovisualisation and spatial analysis techniques (Goodchild, 2009).