Managing Geographic Information Systems

摘要

Among the relative plethora of books that focus on particular applications of GIS in areas such as health, crime, land-use planning and transport, and those that describe GIS-based techniques, there are relatively few that are concerned with what might be perceived as the 'drier' end of the GIS literature spectrum. Nevertheless these texts cover vitally important background material on the types of factors that help determine the success or otherwise of GIS implementations within public and private sector organizations. Furthermore, given current trends in the industry towards distributed GIS, the growth in open-source GIS software and on-going research into Grid-enabled GIS, for example, it could be argued that such factors are becoming even more influential in GIS projects, where we are often concerned with the implementation of GIS in multi-organizational frameworks. The second edition of Managing Geographic Information Systems follows on from the generally well-received 1994 original by updating previously presented material to take into account such trends. While some of the issues covered in the first edition are stubbornly still important today (such as organizational politics, ethical issues and barriers to data sharing), the authors also incorporate the impacts of new developments that have taken on more importance in the last decade. These include the growth of GIS in public participation exercises (PPGIS), technical developments in metadata standards and societal concerns about the privacy and security of data as well as legal issues in GIS.