Document Type : Research Paper

Author

• Khosro Khajeh (Translator)

Abstract

In recent years, the developments in creating and extracting spatial data have led to emergence of operational tools in the form of geographic information systems. It is these developments that have opened our eyes to infrastructural issues about the manner and reasons of these systems’ operation. What is a geographic information system? A tool? A piece of a software? Or a complex system involving software, hardware, people and organizations?
What is the difference between the newly coined terms of “geomatics” and “geo-automatics”? do they have the same meaning or are they different? Some of these questions have been answered clearly. Some of them raise more fundamental issues. Nevertheless, the common aim of all these discussions is spatial data and information.
Today, geo-informatics, geomatics and GIS are frequently applied, but they should be viewed in light of developments in creation and extraction of spatial data over the past three decades.