Mapping Hacks

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Chapter 6

CHAPTER SIX

Mapping on Your Desktop

Hack 64–77

As geographers... crowd into the edges of their

maps parts of the world which they do not know

about, adding notes in the margin to the effect

that beyond this lies nothing but sandy deserts

full of wild beasts, and unapproachable bogs.

—Plutarch, The Life of Theseus

At the far frontier of the world of maps, we find the province of Geographic

Information Systems. Geographic Information Systems, better known as

GIS, come in a number of shapes and sizes, but they all focus on the acquisi-

tion, management, analysis, and presentation of data with a spatial compo-

nent. GIS tools are used by local and national governments around the

world to collect and analyze the demographic patterns of their citizens and

to plan roads, parks, and other civic infrastructure; by public utilities to

record and plan telephone, power, water, gas, and sewer-line deployment

and maintenance; by scientists to gather and interpret experimental data

about our planet and the multitude of creatures that live on it; and by com-

mercial enterprises for sales analysis and to plan the manufacture, ware-

housing, and shipping of goods all around the world.

It used to be the case that GIS tools were only available to academics and

professionals at great expense, but the explosion of personal computing on

commodity hardware and the revolution of open source software have com-

bined ...