430 REMOTE SENSING/GIS Table Commercially available GIS software suites, their manufacturers and application fields Manfacturer Professional Palmtop mapping Internet mapping Free viewer ESRI Leica Geosystems MapInfo Autodesk Intergraph ArcInfo, ArcGIS, & ArcView ERDAS Imagine MapInfo AutoCAD/World GeoMedia & GeoMedia Pro ArcPAD ArcIMS ESRI MapXtreme MapGuide GeoMedia Web Map ArcExplorer Mapsheets Express ProViewer AutoCad LT GeoMedia Viewer MapXtend OnSite IntelliWhere (http://www.bgs.ac.uk/geoindex/index.htm) These allow the user to search, view, and in the case of NIMA, actually download free any globally available geological, image, and map data (see Geological Field Mapping) Software The GIS software suites now commercially available provide a dazzling choice of functionality to suit all applications and budgets The following table (Table 2) provides a brief overview of the main software products and their variants, as designed for different markets and applications Conclusions GIS provides a very convenient framework for mapanalysis and modelling functions which can be applied in many areas of the geosciences It is expected that there will be continuing demand for GIS functionality to become faster, cheaper, and more complex, with continuing open standards There will also be demand for the worlds national authorities to release more GIS data, free of charge, to the public The vision of OGC is ‘‘a world in which everyone benefits from geographic information and services made available across any network, application or platform’’ Geoscience represents an expanding application area for GIS, both for research and commercial development A minor, but general, failing of standard GIS software functionality is its inability to properly deal with geological structures in three dimensions There are, however, other software suites on the market, which are specially designed for this purpose and so the focus of GIS’s contribution in geology lies in data integration, management, and spatial analysis There are more automated techniques for solving complex, spatial, multicriteria problems, such as neural networks and data mining, but these are in some respects at a disadvantage, compared with GIS, as they require very large and homogeneous datasets for training the systems Data mining involves the development and use of effective tools for direct access and extraction of appropriate datasets and patterns from very large volume databases and represents a logical step in the evolution of effective data supply and analysis Both data mining and neural networks have some overlap with GIS in functionality and objectives, and are anticipated to have some impact on GIS in the coming years Commonly though, the geoscientist prefers a more intuitive, graphical, and less formal approach, so that even in complex analysis, interpretive skills are still important GIS owes its power and success to its flexibility and potential for cross-disciplinary application GIS (and other related technologies) enable the analysis of vast and expanding datasets, allowing a better understanding of terrestrial and anthropogenic processes, the development of economic sustainability, and the improvement of environmental quality See Also Geological Field Mapping Remote Sensing: Active Sensors; Passive Sensors Sedimentary Processes: Landslides Tectonics: Earthquakes Volcanoes Further Reading Bonham Carter GF (1994) Geographic Information Systems for Geoscientists Pergamon Bonham Carter GF (1996) Geographic Information Systems for Geoscientists: Modelling with GIS, 2nd edn Pergamon Burrough PA (1986) Principles of Geographical Infor mation Systems for land resources assessment Oxford: Clarendon Press Eastman JR, Jin W, Kyem PAK, and Toledano J (1995) Raster Procedures for Multi Criteria/Multi Objective Decisions Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing 61(5): 539 547 Illife JC (2000) Datums and projections for remote sensing, GIS, and surveying Caithness, Scotland: Whittle Pub lishing Isaaks EH and Srivastava RM (1989) An Introduction to Applied Geostatistics New York, Oxford: Oxford Univ Press Knox Robinson CM (2000) Vectoral fuzzy logic: a novel technique for enhanced mineral prospectivity mapping, with reference to the gold mineralisation potential of the Kalgoorlie terrane, Western Australia Australian Journal of Earth Sciences 47(5): 929 941