Data Integration

Data integration is the process of combining data of different themes, content, scale or spatial extent, projections, acquisition methods, formats, schema, or even levels of uncertainty, so that they can be understood and analyzed. There is often a common display method used with integrated data sets, which, although they are not fully processed, allows information to be passed between them. Integrating different types of data in a GIS often provides more information and insight than can be obtained by considering each type of data separately. It also aids in the detection and removal of redundancies or inaccuracies in the data (in both location and attribute). The layer stack concept that is so illustrative of GIS (often implying the overlay of maps) helps one to understand ...