A geographical information system for the Big South Fork area

The Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area has identified their need for a Geographical Information System (GIS). The planned use for the GIS is to reduce the time necessary to answer inquiries and make decisions concerning the natural resources in the Big South Fork area. A GIS has four generic components: data definition and acquisition, data input and storage, data retrieval and analysis, and report generation and display. A GIS can analyze data either in a polygonal or raster, or combination, format. Nine stages in the design of a GIS can be identified, the most important of which is the pilot study. Pilot programs were written to implement the latter three generic components of a GIS for the Big South Fork area. This was done using a combination of the BASIC and PASCAL languages with the dBASEII relational database software and an IBM Personal Computer with associated peripherals. The following was accomplished: geographical entities may be input and stored in a polygonal format (as points, lines, and polygons with associated descriptor data) with editing capabilities, single-theme and multi-theme analysis (the latter through the use of polygon to raster conversion schemes) may be performed, and tabular and graphical outputs may be produced. More work needs to be done to ensure the following for the final product: that the techniques for computing areas and lengths, storing boundary data points, and converting polygonal information to raster format are most efficient for the available hardware/software combination and that the developed software is user friendly.