GIS Acronyms

Wednesday August 27th 2003
Filed Under Reference 

ACSM
American Congress on Surveying and Mapping

ASCII
American Standard Code for Information Interchange

ASPRS
American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing

CAD
Computer-Aided Design

DEM
Digital Elevation Model

DO(Q)Q
Digital Ortho(quarter)quads

DRG
Digital Raster Graphic

DSS
Decision Support System

DTM
Digital Terrain Model

EIA
Environmental Impact Analysis

EIR
Environmental Impact Report

EOS
Earth Observing System

EPA
Environmental Protection Agency

ERP
Enterprise Resource Planning

ESRI
Environmental Systems Research Institute

FGDC
Federal Geographic Data Committee

GOES
Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite

GIS
Geographic Information Systems

GITA
Geospatial Information and Technology Association

GML
Geography Markup Language

GOES
Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites

GPS
Global Positioning Systems

IEEE
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.

IGUG
Internation Intergraph Graphics User Group

IT
Information Technology

LBS
Location-based Services

LIDAR
Light Detection and Ranging

MAPPS
Management Association for Private Photogrammetric Surveyors

MERLIN
Maryland’s Environmental Resources and Land Information Network

MIS
Management Information System

NEPA
National Environmental Policy Act (1969)

NMAS
National Map Accuracy Standards

NOAA
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

NSDI
National Spatial Data Infrastructure

NSPS
National Society of Professional Surveyors

NTF
Neutral Transfer Format (former National Transfer Format), which is used by the Ordnancy Survey in Britain.

OGC
Open GIS Consortium

OS
Operating System

PARC
Public Access Resource Center

PDA
Personal Digital Assistants

QA/QC
Quality Assurance/Quality Control

RDBMS
Relational Database Management Systems

SGI
Silicon Graphics Inc.

SPOT
Système Pour l’Observation de la Terre

TEC
Topographic Engineering Center, U.S. Army Corp of Engineers

TIFF
Tagged Image File Format

UMAC
Upper Midwest Aerospace Consortium

URISA
Urban and Regional Information Systems Association

USGS
United States Geological Survey

UTM
Universal Transverse Mercator

VRS
Virtual Receiving Station

WWW
World wide web

XML
eXtensible Markup Language

Overview of Elevation Data

Wednesday August 27th 2003
Filed Under Data, Features 

Hypsography, topography, elevation, TINS, and contours. There are many different terms for data relating to elevation. This article reviews some of terminology and types of elevation based datasets available to GIS. Digital elevation data are sets of elevation measurements for locations distributed over the land surface. Read more

Guest Contributor Bio - Marco Morais

Wednesday August 27th 2003
Filed Under Features 

My career in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) began in a user environment that was far less friendly than the systems in use today. I remember displaying wellhead locations on the green monitor of a PRIME minicomputer at the New Jersey Geological Survey and, despite the cartographic limitations, I appreciated the power to visualize spatial data on a computer. Eventually the systems became more user-friendly and my experience since then has confirmed the utility of a GIS for data exploration and visualization. Read more