Table Of ContentUK
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Principles of Geographical
Information Systems
Peter A. Burrough and Rachael A. McDonnell
V
Spatial Information Systems and Geostatistics
Principles of Geographical
Information Systems
Spatial Information Systems and Geostatistics
General Editors
P. A. Burrough
M. F. Goodchiid
R. A. McDonnell
P. Switzer
M. Worboys
Other books in the series
Anthropology, Space, and Geographic Information
M. Aldenderfer and H. D. G. Maschner
Spatial and Temporal Reasoning in Geographic Information Systems
M. J. Egenhofer and R. G. Golledge (eds.)
Environmental Modeling with GIS
M. Goodchiid, B. O. Parks, L. Steyaert (eds.)
Managing Geographic Information Systems Projects
W. E. Huxold and A. G. Levinsohn
GIS County User Guide: Laboratory Exercises in Urban Geographic Information Systems
W. E. Huxold, P. S. Tierney, D. R. Turnpaugh, B. J. Maves, and K. T. Cassidy
Introduction to Disjunctive Krigingand Non-linear Geostatistics
J. Rivoirard
Principles of
Geographical
Information
Sy st e m s
Peter A. Burrough
Rachael A. McDonnell
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
1998
Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford 0x2 6dp
Oxford New York
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Oxford is a trade mark of Oxford University Press
Published in the United States
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© Peter A. Burrough and Rachael A. McDonnell 1998
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First published 1998
Reprinted with corrections 1998
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Burrough, P. A.
Principles of geographical information systems / Peter A. Burrough
and Rachael A. McDonnell.
p. cm. — (Spatial information systems)
Rev. edn. of Principles of geographical information systems for
land resources assessment.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
I. Geographic information systems. I. McDonnell, Rachael.
II. Burrough, P. A. Principles of geographical information systems
for land resources assessment. III. Title. IV. Series.
G70.212.B87 1997 910'.285—dc21 97-25863
ISBN 0-19-823366-3
ISBN 0-19-823365-5 (Pbk)
10 98765432
Printed in Great Britain
on acid-free paper by Butler & Tanner Ltd, Frome, Somerset
To Joy, Alexander, Nicholas, and Gerard
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2018 with funding from
Kahle/Austin Foundation
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Preface
As with the first edition (Burrough 1986), this book describes and explains the theor¬
etical and practical principles for handling spatial data in geographical information
(GI) systems. In the mid-1980s these computer tools were being developed from com¬
puterized aided design packages and computer-aided manufacturing packages (CAD-
CAM), from automated mapping systems, and from programs for handling data from
remotely sensed images collected by sensors in satellites, and there was a need to pro¬
vide a text that covered the common ground. Since then, sales of GIS as commercial
products for the mapping and spatial sciences and for the inventory and management
of spatial resources of cities, states, or businesses have increased phenomenonaily.
People have become fascinated by the power of immediate interaction with electronic
representations of the world. The development of the cheap, powerful personal com¬
puter has facilitated this process and the current ability to link computers by electronic
networks across the globe has provided a ready source of all kinds of data in electronic
form, including maps and raster images taken from all kinds of platforms from satel¬
lites to hovercraft to deep-sea vehicles.
Today, not just maps are made using GIS, but the infrastructure of utilities (cables
and pipes) in the streets of your town will be held in a GIS, your taxis and emergency
services may be guided to their destinations using satellite-linked spatial systems, the
range of goods in your shops may be decided by systems linking customer preferences
to neighbourhood and socio-economic status, the foresters and farmers will be mon¬
itoring their stands and crops with spatial information systems, and a whole range of
scientists and technicians will be advising governments, the military, and businesses
from local to world scale how best to deal with the distribution of what interests them
most.
The ready provision of powerful computing tools, the increasing abundance of
spatial data, and the enormous diversity of applications that are not just limited to
map-making or scientific enquiry, make it even more important today than in 1986
to understand the basic principles behind GIS. Everyone thinks they understand GIS
because they think they understand maps. But to understand a map is to understand
how a person once observed the world, how they formulated imperfect, but plausible
models to represent their observations, and how they decided to code these models
on paper using conventional semiology. All these processes depend strongly on cul¬
ture, on age, on discipline, and on background. With GIS we go even further down a
path in the labyrinth that leads from perception to presentation of spatial informa¬
tion, because though computers can mimic human draughtsmen, they can do so only
according to the ways they are programmed. The basic tenets of spatial interactions
needed to describe a given spatial process or phenomenon may or may not be shared
by the ground rules of the GIS you would like to buy. But electronic GIS provide an
enormous wealth of choice not possible with conventional mapping. Whereas with
conventional mapping (and even the earliest digital mapping) the map was the data¬
base, today the map is merely an evanescent projection of a particular view of a spatial
database at a given time. On the one hand this gives us enormous power to review
an unlimited number of alternatives and to make maps of anything, anyway we like,
including dynamic modelling of spatial and temporal processes; on the other hand
it may leave us swimming in the dark.
This book aims to provide an introduction to the theoretical and technical prin¬
ciples that need to be understood to work effectively and critically with GIS. It is based
on the 1986 volume, but is much more than a simple second edition. The text examines
the different ways spatial data are perceived, modelled conceptually, and represented.
It explains how, using the standard ‘entity’ and ‘continuous held’ approaches, spatial
data are collected, stored, represented in the computer, retrieved, analysed, and dis¬
played. As with the first edition, this material is accompanied by a critical evaluation
of the sources, roles, and treatment of errors and uncertainties in spatial data, and
their possible effects on the conclusions to be drawn from analyses carried out with
GIS. Also included is a discussion of the principles and methods of dealing with
uncertainty in spatial data, either through the probabilistic medium of geostatistics,
or the possibilistic route using fuzzy logic. The principles of the latter are juxtaposed
with the crisp concepts underlying the entity and field models so commonly used.
Frequently encountered, specialist terms are explained in the glossary.
Spatial analysis and GIS are nothing without computer software, and the material
in this book could not have been produced without recourse to many different pro¬
grammes. Large, commercial systems may be unsuitable or unusable for teaching or
scientific enquiry, and in Appendix 2 we provide information about sources of cheap
or free software that have been used in preparing this book and which may be used
to support training courses and research.
GIS is truly interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary, and the literature is spread over
a range of journals. Trade journals such as GIS World, and GIS Europe, provide monthly
coverage of technical and organizational developments; trade shows and conferences
and scientific journals such as the International Journal of Geographical Information
Systems, Computers and Geosciences, Computers, Environment and Urban Systems,
Geoinformation, and Transactions in GIS, cover the core of the field, though much is
published in discipline-specific journals, and also in ‘grey’ literature reports from con¬
ferences, institutes, and commerce. We have not covered everything in this volume:
that is impossible, but we aim to provide a basic technical and scientific introduction
to an important scientific and business activity, so that readers will better understand
how GIS are being used to transform the ways in which much of our world is per¬
ceived, recorded, understood, and organized.
P.A.B. & R.A.McD.
Utrecht
February 1997
