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September 2007

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Drug abuse is the habitual misuse of a drug. This includes the use of illegal drugs or the use of prescription medications for non-prescribed purposes. It can also include the use of substances such as nicotine and/or alcohol. Some people who abuse drugs become addicted. This involves the uncontrollable craving and misuse of drugs, as well as other self-destructive behaviors. Some of the most commonly abused drugs are marijuana, prescription medications (such as sedatives), cocaine and heroin. Alcohol abuse, in contrast, is characterized by a problematic pattern of drinking in which drinking causes recurrent and significant adverse consequences. Those consequences may include: failure to fulfill major responsibilities such as work, school or domestic tasks, recurrent drinking in hazardous situations (such as while driving), recurrent drinking-related legal problems (such as arrests for disorderly conduct while drinking), continued drinking despite persistent or recurrent social or interpersonal problems caused or worsened by drinking (such as fights or marital arguments)

INFO BY MZEKE.

THE HISTORY OF GIS

Introduction

Geographical-information system (GIS) is a computerized system which refers to analysis that combine relational database with spatial interpretation and outputs often in the form of maps. A more elaborate definition is that of using computer programmers for capturing, arrangement for storing, analyzing, checking & integrating and displaying spatially linked information. The system allows us to view, understand, question, interpret and visualize data in many ways that reveal relationships, patterns and trends in the form of map, globes, reports and charts. GIS is an important tool in the natural, social, medical and engineering sciences as well as business planning since it can include physical, biological, cultural, demographic or economic information. GIS components involve; data, software, hardware, skilled-people and the procedures which are used to produce final hardcopy map.

Remote-sensing refers to processes of obtaining information about land, water or an object, without physical contact between sensors and the object. It also deals with the art and science of observing and measuring items on the earth’s surface from a distance. In remote sensing, information transfer is captured using electromagnetic radiation (EMR). EMR is a form of energy that reveals its presence by the observable effects it produces when it strikes the matter. There are two types of remote sensing namely passive sensors and active sensors.

Passive sensors are those which are designed to detect naturally occurring energy while active sensors are those which are used to direct a burst of radiation at the target and use sensors to measure how the target interacts with the energy. These sensors are positioned away from the object of interest by using helicopters, planes, and satellites. Further-more it is highly acknowledged that, remote-sensing encompasses the field of aerial photography. In this assignment, our main emphasis is on the history and the development of geographical information system and remote sensing.

The history and the development of GIS

Early GIS commenced in 1854, when John Snow depicted a cholera outbreak in London using points to represent the locations of some individual cases, possibly the earliest use of the geographic method. His study of the distribution of cholera led to the source of the disease, a contaminated water pump within the heart of the cholera outbreak. E. W. Gilbert's version (1958) of John Snow's 1855 map of the Soho cholera outbreak showing the clusters of cholera cases in the London epidemic of 1854. While the basic elements of topology and theme existed previously in cartography, the John Snow map was unique, using cartographic methods not only to depict but also to analyze clusters of geographically dependent phenomena for the first time. In the early 20th century the development of photo lithography where maps were separated into layers.

Figure1.1 John Snow's map showing distribution of cholera in London in 1854

Computer hardware development spurred by nuclear weapon research lead to general purpose computer mapping applications by the early 1960s. The world’s first true operational geographic system was developed in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada by the federal

Department of Forestry and Rural development. Developed by Dr roger Tomlinson, it was called Canada geographic information system(CGIS), and was used to store, analyze and manipulate data collected for the Canada Land Inventory- an initiative to determine the land capability for rural Canada by mapping information about soils, agriculture, recreation, wildlife, forestry and land use at a scale of 1: 50000.

Figure 1.2 showing the Canadian information system in early 1960s and 1970s

Canada geographic information system was the world’s first system and was an improvement over mapping applications as it provided capabilities for overlaying, measurement and digitizing or scanning. It supported a national coordinate system that spanned the continent, coded lines as arcs having embedded topology, and it stored the attribute and locational information in separate files. As a result of this Roger Tomlinson become the father of GIS, particularly for his use of overlays in promoting the spatial analysis of convergent geographic data. It lasted into the 1990s and built the largest digital land resource database in Canada. It was developed as a mainframe based system in support of federal and provincial resource planning and management. Its strength was continent-wide analysis of complex data sets.

Howard T Fisher formed the laboratory for computer graphics and spatial analysis at the Harvard graduate school of design, where a number of important theoretical concepts in handling data were developed and which by the 1070s had distributed determining software code and system such as SYMAP, GRID and ODDESY which served as literal and inspirational sources for succeeding commercial development to universities, research centers, and corporations worldwide in 1964.

By the early 1980s Environmental System Research Institute (ESRI) and Computer Aided Resource Information System (CARIS) emerged as commercial vendors of GIS software and successfully incorporating many of the CGIS features, combining the first generation approach to separation of spatial and attribute information with a second generation approach to organizing attribute data into database structures. GIS Dominated in 1982 by the U.S. Army Corp of Engineering Research Laboratory (USA-CERL) in Champaign, Illinois, a branch of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to meet the need of the United States military for software for land management and environmental planning. The later 1980s and 1990s industry growth were spurred on by the growing use of GIS o on UNIX workstations and the personal computer (pc). By the end of the 20th century, the rapid growth in various systems had been consolidated and identical on relatively few platforms and users were beginning to export the concept of viewing GIS data over the Internet, requiring data format and transfer standards.

GIS can be viewed as a software package, the components being various tools used to enter, manipulate, analyze, the components of a GIS include; computer system (hardware and operating system), software, spatial data, data management and analysis procedures and the people to operate GIS. In GIS, all this components (shown below) are related in such way that they all takes place if there is capital (money) and time, e.g. without capital there will be no people (skilled labors) and without people, there will be no data because data (both geographical and attribute data) is collected by people and without a specific given time there will be no project. In GIS, we represent real world objects (roads, land use, elevation) with digital data. Real world objects can be divided into two abstractions: discrete objects (a house) and continuous fields (rain fall amount or elevation). There are two broad methods used to store data in a GIS for both abstractions: Raster and Vector.

Figure 1.2 showing how components of GIS are related. Raster data type consists of rows and columns of cells, with each cell storing a single value. Raster data can be images (raster images) with each pixel (or cell) containing a color value. Additional values recorded for each cell may be a discrete value, such as land use, a continuous value, such as temperature or a null value if there is no data. Vector data type involves the use of geometrical shapes such as lines, polygons and points (they are all referred to as cartographic symbology).

Figure 1.3 showing how raster and vector models are used to map real world. The history of remote sensing

Remote sensing began with invention of photography in 1839. As early as 1840, the director of the Paris Observatory advocated the use of photography for topographic surveying, and from that time balloon photography flourished. The Frenchman Arthur Batut pioneered the development of kite aerial photography. Kites were used to obtain aerial photographs from about 1882. The most famous kite photographer was American G.R. Lawrence, who used batteries of kites to suspend huge cameras for aerial views over cities. Kites are being used even today by hobbyists for obtaining aerial photographs. The next technological leap was to use rockets to carry the camera high up which later returned to the ground by a parachute. This was pioneered by none other than Alfred Nobel in 1897 when the first rocket photo was obtained over a Swedish landscape.

Figure 1.4 showing the kite which was used to obtain Figure 1.5 showing the first photograph taken in 1827

Photographs.

The technology of modern remote sensing began with the invention of the camera more than 150 years ago. Although the first, rather primitive photographs were taken as "stills" on the ground, the idea and practice of looking down at the Earth's surface emerged in the 1840s, when pictures were taken from cameras secured to tethered balloons for purposes of topographic mapping. The zest for viewing the terrain as a bird would lead man to think of rather novel ways, since the first airplane was still to be successfully flown. In 1903 probably a few months before the success of the Wright brothers, Julius Neubronner from Germany patented a breast-mounted aerial camera for carrier pigeons. The results were not very spectacular, but it was still an attempt at aerial photography. In remote sensing, information is obtained using satellites. There are seven different types of land satellite of which each is categorized in terms of where it is found. Those land-satellites were introduced in 1972 in USA and are used to obtain different types of information which is used in remote sensing.

Figure 1.6 showing how satellites operate to obtain different information in remote sensing. In remote sensing, different land-satellite are used for obtaining information on agricultural and forestry resources, geology and mineral resources, hydrology and water resources, geography, cartography, environmental pollution, marine resources and meteorological phenomena. The primary goal of using land-satellite is to provide a global archive of satellite photos which are used in remote-sensing.

Conclusion

This assignment may be served as the most important tool which explains the history and the development of GIS and remote sensing (RS) in the simplest form. We have presented details about the basic characteristics of geographical information system (GIS) and remote sensing. As geographical students we have learned that GIS is a greatly exciting area of geography to be involved in at the present geographical world because, in comparison with other systems such as CAC and CAD, GIS addresses total reality by its ability to integrate spatial and non-spatial characteristics of entities.

The fields of Geographic information systems and remote sensing can provide a flexible, interactive, and adaptable means of providing estimates based on the specific requirements of independent users around the world. Providing a means of acquisition, management, analysis, and display of system data, modern GIS packages are available for a variety of hardware platforms. Drives (both Hardware and software) are available for hundreds of input and output devices which help to make the life very easier. The rate of technological development and the speed at which research is progressing ensure that new ideas and techniques are being presented almost daily.

In conclusion we conclude by saying when the concepts and ideas involved in geographical information system become more widely used, remote sensing and image analysis are become more closely integrated with other area of geographical computing. Therefore a geography students, we can say GIS and RS are interrelated.

References

1. http://www.edc.uri.edu/criticallands/raster.html

2. http://employees.oneonta.edu/baumanpr/geosat2/RSHistory/HistoryRSPart1.htm —Preceding unsigned comment added by 196.21.218.142 (talk) 01:51, 18 September 2008 (UTC)