GISmatters provides data development and database solutions tailored to the information and business demands of your enterprise, whether location-sensitive or not. We work closely with you through every stage of design, planning, development, installation, and training to ensure the result fits seamlessly into your operation to enhance your workflow, productivity, and ability to fully utilize your information resources.

Database

Data & Database: Data Development

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The foundation of all GIS and database systems is data — without complete and accurate data, the rest of the tools and methods are useless. Building a functional GIS or other information technology system means developing the necessary data through one or more steps of data capture, data conversion, data entry, data processing, and data validation. With geographic data, these steps apply to both the spatial and attribute components of the data.

This example shows a typical data development task: converting paper maps into GIS format. Steps include scanning the paper maps, geo-registering the scanned image to known coordinates, converting the scanned features (streets, streams, buildings, etc) to GIS elements (points, lines, polygons), and assigning attributes to the GIS features. The maps here are FEMA Flood Insurance Rate Maps (FIRMs), being converted to digital format as part of FEMA's Map Modernization program.