Book: Geographic Information Systems and Science
This week I spent a couple days reading through Geographic Information Systems and Science (Paul Longley, Michael Goodchild, David Maguire, David Rhind).
The book is an excellent introduction to GIS — covering everything from basic principals and vocabulary to statistical analysis and project planning. In this, I’d place the book up there with Data Modeling Essentials or Applied Cryptography in giving comprehensive treatment to a complex field.
I found the section on uncertainity to be the most interesting — in measuring the physical world, uncertainity is inevitable. There is no possible perfect representation, and uncertainity can not be eliminated. In GIS, it is your responsibility to account for these uncertanties in data, avoiding misrepresenting your certainity, and manage uncertainity introduced through aggregation of imperfect data.
The book reads like a text book, and can be incredibly tedious in explaining programming topics and business planning (in this, it’s not very different from Data Modelling Essentials). While this may detract from your reading enjoyment, the book remains an excellent introduction and reference source.
