Government

National Government

Government agencies trust GIS technology to establish and regulate policy and to strengthen the welfare of their citizens. GIS is also an intelligent means for agencies to provide public information. The U.S. government relies heavily on GIS to evaluate the results of U.S. Census 2000. The city of Madrid, Spain, uses GIS to create its Plan General de Ordenación Urbana to link documents and image files to map features for an integrated view of information. Learn more.

Local Government

Revenue collection, economic development, and public information are just a few opportunities that GIS affords municipalities. The cities of Madrid, Geneva, and Paris all use GIS for providing many city services. Bregenze, a small township in Austria, uses GIS to meet the needs of its 12 government departments. Learn more.

Homeland Security

GIS assets at local, regional, and national levels are used in emergency response in the areas of detection, risk assessment, mitigation and prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery. Utilized in both natural and human-induced disasters, GIS has merged into the common operating procedures for public safety and emergency response activities. City, county, state, and federal-level agencies use GIS as a common framework for organizing and sharing data in a digital world. Learn more.

Military Defense

Military defense uses GIS for intelligence, terrain analysis, mission planning, and facilities management. Geographic analysis is critical in military operations, tactical or logistical planning, and infrastructure management. Sweden integrates global positioning systems (GPS) into its mobile GIS for a mine-clearing management system in Bosnia. Learn more.

Fire/Emergency Medical Services/Disaster

GIS allows public safety personnel to effectively plan for emergency response, determine mitigation priorities, analyze historical events, and predict future events. Wilson Fire/Rescue Services in Wilson, North Carolina, uses GIS to get critical information to incident responders upon dispatch or while en route to an emergency to assist in tactical planning. Learn more.

Law Enforcement

GIS is an effective crime-fighting tool. Police analysts use GIS for planning and event modeling, tactical and strategic planning, and incident mapping. The Chicago Police Department Informative Collection of Automated Mapping (ICAM) gives all police officers access to information about crime throughout the city. Learn more.

Health

Effective health care services management uses GIS not only to show what resources and needs exist but also where to find them. Health experts also put GIS to work in epidemiological and public health monitoring. They can geographically track public health indicators, identify disease clusters, and explore sites of environmental risk. For example, public health departments use GIS for mosquito abatement programs. The state of Pennsylvania offers an online Web site for its West Nile Virus Surveillance Program. Learn more.

Transportation

GIS serves three distinct transportation needs: infrastructure management, fleet and logistics management, and transit management. GIS offers insight for network planning and analysis, vehicle tracking and routing, inventory tracking, and route planning analysis. The city of Budapest, having 20,000 to 30,000 unexpected road repairs a year, relies heavily on its GIS to help plan, coordinate, manage, and complete repair work in a timely fashion.
Learn about GIS for Transportation Systems and Networks.
Learn about GIS for Distribution and Fleet Management.