Affiliation:
1. University of Minho, Portugal
Abstract
The emergence of technological systems with computerized cartographic application allowed the resolution of certain military problems between the 1950s and 1960s. The first GIS was created in Canada Geographic Information Systems in 1964 for Tomlinson. At this time, GIS was in a consolidation phase in multiple areas and for various purposes. The geographical science growth with the development of GIS were in connection to the subject of the new geography, justified by the application of the methods of quantitative analysis in various spatial nature of research. In this context, the GIS feature a number of operational advantages and have allowed the proliferation of new fields of endeavor in open access systems across multiple forms of acquisition, management, interpretation, and spatial information analysis. The main goal of this chapter is to underwrite the concept of GIS, as well as distinguish the diversity of applications from the past until the present, and to identify new paths to accommodate recent scientific approaches with extensive range of application possibilities.