Introduction
At least some of the current interest in space in social science, and in other areas of science that deal with the earth's surface, has to do with the emergence over the past three decades of a class of software known as geographic information systems (GIS). Like many other classes of software, this one owes its success in part to the economies of scale that result from integrating computer functions that operate on a particular class of information, in this case geographic information. Similar scale-economies obtain for word-processing software. Although geographic information seems particularly well defined, as information about phenomena on the earth's surface, the large number of ways of creating digital representations of such information has ensured that GIS is a particularly complex computer application (Goodchild & Janelle 2004).
Nevertheless it has become popular, in areas ranging from resource management to marketing, and from academic research to the operations of utility companies. A modern GIS contains functions for the creation, acquisition, editing, and storage of geographic information; for query, analysis, and modeling; and for visual display, report generation, and other forms of output. It supports geographic features represented as points, lines, or areas, defining their locations with the use of coordinates in so-called vector representations, and also continuous geographic variation over regular grids known as rasters. It supports the easy integration of tabular data with representations of reporting zone boundaries and thus, the preparation of maps and other more sophisticated forms of data display, such as exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA) (Goodchild & Janelle 2004).
GIS is grounded in geographic space and treats the boundaries of reporting zones as features super imposed on the geographic continuum. Standard tools allow data from neighboring zones to be compared and aggregated, and aerial interpolation tools allow statistics for one set of reporting zones to be estimated from known values for a second, incompatible set of reporting zones GIS has made tools for mapping and many of the methods of spatial analysis readily accessible to researchers. GIS courses and programs are now taught on almost all university campuses, in community colleges, and even in high schools, and courses and programs are readily available over the World Wide Web. In effect, a GIS is to spatial social science as a word processor is to writing, or a statistics package is to statistical analysis an indispensable modern tool for working with a particular type of information (Goodchild & Janelle 2004).
Geographic information systems are becoming valuable tools for law enforcement agencies. Their use, however, has been mainly restricted to crime analysis. Geographic information systems, automated mapping and spatial analysis are becoming valuable tools for policing. These tools have been mainly employed in crime analysis and are functionally linked with police computer-aided dispatch and records management systems (Bowers & Hirschfield 2001). These systems routinely capture a wealth of data about the specifics of crimes and calls for service including precise information about location. This mass of data contains useful information for crime analysis, but from this information we can also find out about the details and locations of incidents or calls where police officers are injured, use force, request immediate help, and are dispatched to potentially dangerous situations. Combining these hazardous incidents and mapping out their geographic attributes allows one to visualize the spatial variation of hazardous incidents (Bowers & Hirschfield 2001). The paper will discuss about GIS, its benefits and use.
Information Integration
The information management challenges are not unique to the digital infrastructure, and a variety of approaches to address these challenges exist in the computing literature. These include information integration, including knowledge extraction and mediation, personalization and user modeling, and information security. It is important to note, however, that the problems posed by the information environment for digital infrastructures are complex, requiring robust solutions. While promising approaches exist, they generally represent partial solutions. The demands of the information environment will likely prove a fertile ground for research and development in academia and industry. At the same time, the approaches detailed hold promise for rapid application to deployment of the digital infrastructure. Information integration among the various computer systems that make up the information environment is an essential component of a fully realized digital infrastructure. A fundamental problem is that the various agencies and actors in the information environment are likely to have computer systems with different means of representing information. The panoply of legacy systems poses a particularly pernicious problem as every implementation must be customized (Horan & Zimmerman 2004).
To speed implementation, new, semi-automatic approaches to information integration are required. With respect to leveraging information resident in a broad range of computer systems, the problem can be divided into knowledge extraction and knowledge composition. Knowledge extraction refers to identification of information in a given source, and involves technologies such as data reverse engineering, schema matching, program analysis and data mining. Each of these techniques attempt to automatically infer meaning about underlying data, and it is likely that a combination of techniques will form the basis of a toolkit for semi-automatic identification of knowledge (Horan & Zimmerman 2004).
Knowledge composition refers to making use of the extracted data for use by other applications. Mediation is a common approach to knowledge composition. The services of mediators broadly include: assembly or fusion of information from distributed data sources; transformation of that data into another form and cleansing the data to improve its reliability or accuracy. Each of these mediation services is necessary in the broad information environment of the digital infrastructure, which is likely to include multiple information sources that contain different levels of detail and often partially conflicting and/or incomplete information. The basic challenges of information integration are well understood, and various commercial knowledge extraction and composition tools exist. That said the current state of the art largely consists of tools that help expert programmers speed their work on individual implementations. Semi-automatic tools remain very much in research status, limiting wide-scale deployment of an integrated digital infrastructure (Horan & Zimmerman 2004).
There are various forms of context and challenges and examples of potential context mediation services, such as data semantics acquisition, data quality attributes, and evolving semantics, quality, global systems, information superhighway, information integration, intelligent integration, context interchange, mediators, data semantics, and data quality Increased information integration is important to business in order to improve inter-organizational relationships, increase the effectiveness of intra-organization coordination, and provide for much more organizational adaptability (Madnick 1995).
Information Analysis
When people interpret data in a context, they convert that data into information that has some meaning. When they categorize and elaborate on that information with explanations, then they have added more value and the information can now be considered knowledge. Thus, knowledge management is the management of data and information so that a firm can optimally capture, process, and utilize its knowledge for effective decision-making and operation. Customer knowledge management is the management of the acquisition, processing, and utilization of customer information for effective customer-focused decision making (John 2003).
Knowledge management practice has been studied in the context of how organizations learn. Before they discuss the methods of managing customer knowledge, it would be useful to understand knowledge management and, specifically, information processing from the perspective of organizational learning. Organizational learning can be broadly depicted as a three-stage process. The stages of process includes information acquisition or generation; information transmission or dissemination and information analysis or interpretation Especially in service firms and in the service component of manufacturing firms, where there is a significant opportunity to interact with the customer and to customize value, firms have used customer information in a number of ways (John 2003).
When the data from these interactions are systematically documented and analyzed, patterns in customer data can detect the dynamics in consumption behavior. When aggregated, customer data provides an opportunity to analyze customer segments for anything from price sensitivity to demand patterns to why, when, and how customers behave in the various activities within each of the consumption stages. Firms can divide their customer base into segments based on profitability. When customer purchase information is mapped onto capacity utilization data, for example, a deeper analysis of the firm's value-creation and delivery processes can help determine which of the firm's marketing and operations practices contribute to its profitability. Which frequent customer promotion programs are most/least effective? Where are the low and peak demand periods? A yield analysis of the utilization levels at the various price levels would help determine the most effective pricing decisions. Each customer has a value to the firm, and that information is also valuable to the firm to determine the right customer. The lifetime value of the customer to the firm is a function of what they bring to the firm as revenues over the lifetime of the customer (John 2003).
By the same token, it is also important to know what it costs the firm to serve that customer. Loyal customers with a favorable disposition toward the service provider are also likely to engage in favorable word-of-mouth behavior. They are valuable in trying new products being offered by the firm. They are also less costly to serve because they are familiar with the firm and are socialized into the procedures of the firm that they encounter in their consumption. As customers' loyalty with the firm grows over time, the firm also has a better knowledge of the customer and is more efficient and effective in serving that customer. Technology has revolutionized customer information management. Information technologies allow firms to gather, store, and interpret demographic and behavioral data so that each subsequent interaction with the customer is customized. (John 2003).Information Integration and analysis is a big part of a local government’s operation. Information integration and analysis are also used as a reason for GIS.
Use of GIS
Computerized geographic information systems (GIS) are increasingly used by public and private organizations as tools for storage, selective retrieval, and manipulation of spatial and non spatial data. Among many possible adopters of GIS technology, individual users are considered the ultimate and most important adopters. Both systematic research and anecdotal evidence point to a high significance of human factors for successful development of computerized information systems. Computer systems problems are traceable primarily to human factors and that information systems failures are rarely merely of a technical nature. Similarly, researchers in the GIS field find that obstacles to implementation are mainly non technical. It is said that the organizational, political, and human aspects of implementing GIS are far more difficult than the technical aspects. After GIS technology is acquired by an organization, decisions on its use are made by or for each employee individually. Employees may either volunteer or be assigned to work with GIS. Within an organization employing GIS, there are different types of GIS users such as direct users who are hands-on daily GIS users, indirect users who rely on GIS output produced by other employees, and nonusers who do not employ GIS in their work (Godschalk & Nedovic-Budic 1996).
Depending on the tasks performed by the staff, the level of GIS use ranges from simple data conversion and mapping to data analysis, synthesis, modeling, or integration with other systems or technologies. Individual adoption is a function of the type, level, and intensity of utilization of the technology by staff members for organizational purposes. Although an outsider would see an agency rather than individual employees applying the technology, organizational adoption of GIS is a cumulative reflection of the relationships established between the employees and the technology. The diffusion of innovations occurs through the collective, yet individually based decisions of individual level adopters. People define organizational adoption as use of the technology for performing organizational tasks, that is, its internalization into organizational processes and functions (Godschalk & Nedovic-Budic 1996). GIS is used for different purposes. The intentions of its use vary from the goals of the people using it.
Benefits of GIS for the local government
Geographic information systems are thought to enhance organizational productivity and performance through the automation of a variety of government tasks. Trade journals cite the use of geographic information systems in areas related to health and safety, public works, recreation and culture, urban development, administration, finance, and management. Since as much as 80 percent of service demands at the local level are spatial in nature, geographic information systems can aid the production and provision of governmental services. The technology provides a comprehensive tool for storing, updating, retrieving, and integrating information quickly for easy access throughout the organization. Government organizations can realize gains in productivity as high as 75 percent over manual methods and savings in personnel time between 50 and 100 percent in certain areas of operation (Brown & Brudney 1998).
By providing access to more complete, accurate, and timely information, and by facilitating the use and interpretation of these data, geographic information systems can also enhance organizational decision making. For example, some school systems employ the technology to monitor and project residential development to aid decisions in allocating staff and prioritizing new construction. Similarly, police departments rely heavily on geographic information systems to map areas of criminal activity and victimization in order to support decisions concerning personnel deployment and the determination of appropriate options and responses. Finally, the technology allows governments to respond more quickly, effectively, and comprehensively to customer demands for information. One northeast city has made geographic information systems available in public kiosks to offer adolescents a variety of information on demand about the locations and services of nonprofit and public organizations. Geographic information systems can also benefit entrepreneurs and developers by integrating information regarding such factors as building permits issued, construction starts, market characteristics, and infrastructure conditions throughout a jurisdiction. The empirical analysis below focuses on the attainment of these three advantages by local governments (Brown & Brudney 1998).
GIS and Information Integration and Analysis of the government
GIS application in the local government begins with the establishment of a centralized database which includes data regarding the locality such as housing locations, service facilities, and road networks as well as various information from the engineering, finance, business, and public services sectors (Wilson 1995). GIS helps the government and public institutions to gather important data from different sectors and using this to create an action plan that can give benefits to the local people in a particular sovereignty. Local authorities employ two database models in the analysis of data gathered from the GIS: raster GIS which divides the world into a series of pixels or cells, and vector GIS which portray the world as a series of nodes, lines and areas. Either of the models performs spatial processes such as address matching, and overlays in data analysis (Harvey 2003). GIS converts different geographical images into readable lines and areas. This helps in making the analysis of information clear and organized. The different geographical lines serves as a guide in determining what part of the data has been noted and analyzed. It also helps in examining more the geographical changes that occurred. The geographical changes will help the public institution on deciding the next step it will take.
Conclusion
GIS has made tools for mapping and many of the methods of spatial analysis readily accessible to researchers. GIS courses and programs are now taught on almost all university campuses, in community colleges, and even in high schools, and courses and programs are readily available over the World Wide Web. Like many other classes of software, this one owes its success in part to the economies of scale that result from integrating computer functions that operate on a particular class of information, in this case geographic information. It is said that the organizational, political, and human aspects of implementing GIS are far more difficult than the technical aspects. After GIS technology is acquired by an organization, decisions on its use are made by or for each employee individually. Employees may either volunteer or be assigned to work with GIS.
GIS is very useful in the local government as the primary point of access for judicial needs of the citizens. It is used as a basis on how the public institution will act on certain situations faced by the public. The local government makes use of GIS to arrange and store data relative to road networks, housing locations and other community details to ensure convenient and easy access to information in cases that the community needs it. This information is vital so that the government can plan for the betterment of people. GIS needs coordination as local governments are required to coordinate with state and federal offices for integration of geographical information.
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