Geographic Information Systems
Roger Tomlinson's Canada Geographic Information System (1963-68) stores maps as computer layers that can be overlaid and measured: the first operational GIS.
Open in the interactive tree →The Canada Land Inventory mapped land use and the capability of land for farming, forestry, recreation and wildlife. Tomlinson, working in Ottawa, proposed converting the paper maps into computer data in 1962-63; the system was developed and brought to full operation by 1968, and he coined the term 'geographic information system' that year. Layers could be overlaid and measured automatically, which made large-scale land-use planning feasible. Esri released ARC/INFO in 1983, and GIS now underlies planning, disease mapping and the analysis of satellite data; free software such as QGIS and GRASS GIS is widely used.
Prerequisites
- Earth Measurement and Maps~240 BCMap layers and survey methods supplied the content.
- Programmable Computer (Zuse Z3)1941Maps were turned into data a mainframe could store and compute on.
Unlocks
- Precision Agriculture2020sField maps and yield maps are GIS layers.