GIS in Public Policy

Since the late 1980s, geographic information systems, or GIS, have become almost ubiquitous in public organizations and throughout the nonprofit sector. Over this period, geospatial capability has become essential. The powers of GIS, including the assimilation, analysis, and graphical display of large volumes of geographically coded (geocoded) information, are widely recognized. They are typically used for purposes such as managing planning and zoning, geodemographic service management, emergency response system optimization and path selection, targeted-facilities location, and many others. Much of the innovation has been driven by the use of GIS for private sector marketing and spillover functionality that public organizations have capitalized on. At the same time, some functional areas, such as more reflexive data capture for GIS using Internet applications, are being targeted by ...