Write a brief history of Geographical Information System (GIS).

Computer-based GIS have been used since at least the late 1960s. Early examples of GIS that related work from the late 1960s and 1970s include: a) Computer mapping at the University of Edinburgh, the Harvard Laboratory for Computer Graphics, and the Experimental Cartography Unit (Coppock 1988; Chrisman1988; Rhind 1988). It was established by Howard Fisher. This laboratory had major effect on the development of GIS until early 1980s (Brovelli, 2010). b) Canada Land Inventory and the subsequent development of the Canada Geographic Information System (Tomlinson 1984) c) Publication of Ian McHargs Design with Nature and its inclusion of the map overlay method for suitability analysis (McHarg 1969) d) Introduction of an urban street network with topology in the U.S. Census Bureaus DIME (Dual Independent Map Encoding) system (Broome and Meixler 1990). This system led to the production of the Census TIGER files, one of the most important socioeconomic spatial data sets in use today (Using topologically integrated geographic encoding and referencing system) (Chang, 2010) History of GIS in this wolrd can be summarized as follows: 2000 ArcGIS is released by ESRI 1992 ESRI releases ArcView, the companys first desktop GIS software. 1982 ESRI releases ArcInfo, the first commercial GIS software package. 1981 First annual ESRI International User Conference was held with 19 attendees. 1969 Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI), a GIS software company that makes ArcGIS is founded by Jack Dangermond. 1960s Roger Tomlinson, the widely acknowledged Father of GIS coins the term Geographic Informations Systems. Data for decision is a three part video that overviews the Canada land Inventory Geo-Information Systems where Tomlinson worked.

In the past years, GIS was considered to be too difficult, expensive, and proprietary. The advent of the graphical user interface (GUI), powerful and affordable hardware and software, and public digital data broadened the range of GIS applications and brought GIS to mainstream use in the 1990s. History of GIS in Malaysia can be summarized as follows: Period Database Name/System
1986 Digital Cadastral Dabase (DCDB) National Topographic Database DOAs GIS-Based Land Resource Database

Objective/Purposes
Managements of countrys natural resources Land and land use investigation, creation and maintenance of a spatial and attribute database and the storage, processing and management of this information for the purpose of producing land use maps Provide timely access to land information, eliminate/reduce duplication of data capture and promote effective data sharing among related agencies. Creation of digital data for all land-related administration Integrating the diverse datasets through the internet to create an effective, consistent and inexpensive GIS infrastructure Digitizing all its land use distribution maps at a scale of 1:25,000 Land use/resource management and planning

Person In Charge
Department of Survey and Mapping Malaysia (DSSM)

1990

Department of Agriculture

1992

National Infrastructure for Land Information System (NaLIS). Penang Geographic Information System (PEGIS) Darul Ehsan GIS (DEGIS)

Ministry of Land and Cooperative Development

1992

Penang Development Corporation The State of Selangor

1992

Sabah GIS for agriculture 1993 'AGISWlk' (stand for Aplikasi GIS Wilayah Lembah Klang).

Sabah DOA Bahagian Kemajuan Wilayah Persekutuan dan Perancangan Lembah Klang, Jabatan Perdana Menteri

1995

1995

GIS for forest resources

2002

Malaysian Cadastral Digital Data Infrastructure

To establish an efficient and operational Forest Management Information System using GIS as a tool to support and strengthen the department to carry out its mandate as the custodian of the state's forest resources Provide the technology, policies and standards necessary to acquire, distribute and improve the utilization of land information.

Forest Department of Sarawak

MaCDDI