GIS software is on the move

'|'SPECIAL TO GCNGeographic information systems are moving from mainframes to desktop PCs with a vengeance.With low-cost, high-octane clients readily available and a growing awareness of the value of geographic information, the powerful software tools are turning up at just about any organization with a PC and a desire to analyze spatial relationships with snazzy graphics and moveable 3-D images.Today, you can buy an out-of-the-box GIS program for under $1,000. Full-featured suites cost more but contain modules that can be tailored to meet the needs of a wide variety of interests, including economic development, health care, crime prevention, real estate, tourism and municipal, county and state planning.Though you may not know it, you've probably already seen a GIS in action. A local TV station might use it for satellite-based weather reports. On the CBS television show 'The District,' the show's fictional police chief uses Environmental Systems Research Institute's ArcView GIS to instantly map the sites of murders, robberies and other criminal activities in Washington.GIS software can run on handheld computers and even wireless phones'you can use a digital phone to find your way around traffic on the interstate.Until recently, GIS products have been targeted mainly at high-end users with deep pockets, such as public utilities, telecommunications companies and large government users such as the Geological Survey, Agriculture Department, Environmental Protection Agency, Federal Emergency Management Agency, and National Imagery and Mapping Agency.At the heart of a GIS is the ability to map'that is, to graphically depict relationships between such things as geographical features, animal populations, roads, water tables, telephone pole locations or toxic waste dumps. By using specialized databases that hold information about these and other items, the software illustrates spatial relationships in a wide variety of ways.Used correctly, it can be a critical aid to decision-making in everything from optimum wildlife habitats to national security.For example, you can use a GIS to develop a database containing geographic information such as maps of highways, rivers and public utilities; aerial photographs and satellite images, and other data such as demographics, school locations and tax maps. All this information is stored in the database in separate map layers that can be superimposed on each other to provide a single visual image.This guide lists desktop PC GIS programs representing a wide variety of interests and user concerns. Although there are dozens of specialized GIS packages available, a few of which are listed here, the full-featured PC-based GIS programs or suites from manufacturers with high name recognition may be of most interest to general GIS users.Caliper Corp.'s GIS+ 3.5 and Maptitude 4.2, Caris Ltd.'s LIS/GIS Suite, Erdas Inc.'s Imagine 8.4, ESRI's ArcView series, Intergraph Corp.'s GeoMedia 4.0 and Mapinfo Corp.'s Mapinfo Professional 6.0 all represent this category of software. Readers should contact these and other vendors directly or through their Web sites for more information about the full range of their products.Web products represent the latest development in GIS technology, and developers are rushing to provide even nontechnical users with software that lets them search GIS databases via the Internet or private intranets using simple Web browsers.To a large extent, this is the result of open standards being created by the OpenGIS Consortium (), a 200-member organization of developers, government agencies and commercial organizations headquartered in Wayland, Mass. OGC is creating a single standard for Internet-enabled GIS applications called the Web Map Server specification. WMS-compliant software will let users with a browser search for geospatial data anywhere on the Web and integrate it into their maps regardless of origin or formats.OGC has completed several phases of the Web Mapping Testbed to create specifications that will help developers write software that lets users open up views of digital thematic map data from different online sources, regardless of which vendor's software is serving that data. In effect, once users begin an online search, the GIS software will return data from various sources as separate layers of a map. The users can then combine these layers in various configurations to build a single image.Last month, OGC also released Geography Markup Language 2.0, a specification that defines the features and syntax needed to encode geographic information in Extensible Markup Language. Even pending its formal approval, GML-2 is already being widely accepted by government and commercial organizations. Intergraph has designed its GeoMedia 4.0 product suite to support the OGC specifications and test-bed demonstrations. Other developers have built similar designs into their products, and more will appear in the near future.A good online source of Web mapping products is .Meanwhile, GIS programs are going mobile, too. A fleet of products such as PDA devices, Microsoft Windows CE-based handhelds and wireless phones already integrate GIS mapping software, and a subset of GIS called location-based services is moving into the market fast. LBS technology lets users send and receive location-sensitive geographic information via handheld PCs, mobile phones and automobiles.Tadpole-Cartesia's Conic suite uses portable pen computers to collect information from the field. ESRI's ArcPAD performs mobile mapping on touch-screen PCs. Autodesk's Onsite delivers interactive map and design information to mobile work forces.Along with LBS possibilities, though, come the usual concerns about interoperability.'This renewed interest in geography is most gratifying to those of us involved in spatial technology,' OGC president David Schell said. '[But] the blinding speed with which [mobile] platforms and devices are developing worries me from an interoperability standpoint.'Schell said OGC aims to develop interoperability specifications through the OpenLS Initiative, slated to begin later this year.XXXSPLITXXX-