Summarize in two or three sentences:
The early development of GIS started in the 1960s in Europe and North America when newly emerging computer technology was used to improve the work efficiency in natural resource management, land surveying, mapmaking, and census taking (Lo & Yeung, 2006; Longley, Goodchild, Maguire, & Rhind, 2011). The Canada Geographic Information System (CGIS), developed in the mid-1960s, is believed to be the first real GIS. The CGIS was initially designed as a supporting system for the Canada Land Inventory Project. At that time, it was very difficult to accurately measure areas from a map. The CGIS’s computerized map measuring tool provided an effective solution to this problem. In the late 1960s, the United States Bureau of Census developed a GIS system named the Dual Independent Map Encoding program (DIME). The DIME included digitized records of all US streets and was designed to streamline tabulation of the 1970 Census. The main function of this system included automated geo-referencing and aggregation of census records. Beginning from the late 1960s, cartographers and mapping agencies in many countries began to use computers in the mapmaking process. The Experimental Cartography Unit of the United Kingdom published the world’s first computer-generated map in 1968. During the same period, Great Britain’s Ordnance Survey, the United States Geological Survey, and the Defense Mapping Agency also experimented using computers to streamline mapmaking, editing, and updating. By the late 1970s, computer-aided mapping had been adopted by most major cartographic agencies around the world.
Although the early GIS systems were all specialized computer programs designed for specific purposes, they shared a considerable amount of similarities in terms of geographic data structure, map coordinate systems and projections, data management, and analytical workflow. Researchers at the Harvard University’s Laboratory for Computer Graphics and Spatial Analysis were the first ones who recognized the generalizability of the various early GIS systems. This led to the development of the first general-purpose GIS – the ODYSSEY GIS – in the late 1970s. ODYSSEY GIS included a suite of programs connected by a common computer user interface. The system allowed users to manage and manipulate geographic data files for the purposes of mapmaking, measurement, and spatial analysis.
The development of GIS really started to take off in the 1980s. A software industry focused on GIS emerged during this period. The Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc. (ESRI), the Intergraph Corporation, the MapInfo Corporation, and some other software companies developed general-purpose commercial GIS software. At the same time, GIS’s user base grew well beyond its early adopters. Many public sectors and private companies incorporated GIS into their work. To a large extent, the rapid development of GIS in the 1980s can be credited to the advances in computing hardware. By the 1980s, the price of computing hardware had fallen low enough to make a GIS software industry economically viable. The falling cost of hardware, the increasing computing power, and the availability of more sophisticated GIS software made GIS a cost-effective application. As GIS became more and more accessible to customers, the market demand for GIS software continued to grow. This drove the further expansion of the GIS software industry. Remote sensing also played an important role in the rapid development of GIS in the 1980s. The civilian remote sensing systems, such as the Landsat, made a vast amount of satellite imagery available for public use. These images provided a rich source of geographic data suitable for a wide range of GIS applications. Further, the analysis of satellite imagery, including image classification and pattern recognition, helped propel improvements in the GIS software.
The rapid development of GIS continued throughout the 1980s and the 1990s. During this period, GIS evolved from its initial offering, as a simple off-the-shelf commercial package, to a very complex software system. A suite of products, designed to serve a variety of needs, replaced the general-purpose one-size-fits-all GIS software developed in the early 1980s. For example, ESRI, the leading vendor of commercial GIS software, now offers a family of GIS products, including ArcGIS desktop, ArcGIS mobile, ArcGIS server, and ArcGIS online (ESRI, 2012). ArcGIS desktop alone, designed for GIS applications on desktop computers, includes three different packages – ArcView, ArcEditor, and ArcInfo – each offering different functionality. Specialized GIS software that caters to niche markets also emerged during this period. For instance, the HAZUS-MH is a GIS-based computer system developed by the United States Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for estimating potential losses from earthquakes, floods, and hurricanes (Federal Emergency Management Agency, 2010). Along with the commercial GIS, the open-source GIS community also grew rapidly during this period (Caldeweyher, Zhang, & Pham, 2006; Kresse & Danko, 2012). Numerous GIS programs were developed by self-organized volunteer programmers and made available to the end users free of charge.
As the price of hardware continued to drop, GIS became more affordable and accessible to potential customers. Smaller public agencies and private companies joined the quickly expanding pool of GIS users. In response to the increasing demand for GIS, many universities started to include general and specialized GIS courses in their curriculum. GIS training and GIS service emerged as a fast-growing industry (Longley et al., 2011). Numerous magazines, Websites, and scholarly journals dedicated to GIS research and applications were launched. Around the world, consortiums of GIS user groups were formed to foster collaborative GIS solutions. The MidAmerica GIS Consortium, also known as MAGIC, was first found in 1988 and is one of the earlier examples (MidAmerica GIS Consortium, 2012). Other GIS consortiums focused on geographic information science, research, and education. The University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS) is the best-known consortium of this kind (University Consortium for Geographic Information Science, 2012).
The more recent developments in GIS are closely intertwined with the increased use of networking and the decentralization of computing power. The Internet has revolutionized the delivery of information and computer applications. GIS has benefited greatly from adapting to the network paradigm and protocol standards. The GIS server and Web-based applications with user-friendly interfaces (e.g., Google Map) have made GIS accessible to a very broad customer base. GIS is no longer a software system only reserved for professionals. Users with a network connection can use Internet-enabled GIS applications without having to install specialized software or download large amounts of data to their computers. With the proliferation of wireless technology, the Internet has become increasingly portable. This has caused the use of GIS to become further decentralized, as basic GIS capacity is now available in many mobile and handheld devices.