Geographic information system (GIS) design refers to a process of developing a spatially explicit computer information system to provide a simplified representation of geographical entities and phenomena and support relevant spatial analyses. Since its formative years in the 1960s, GIS has experienced rapid progress in its capacity to handle spatial information, and it has become a powerful research tool for various study fields inside and beyond the discipline of geography. For example, GIS has been widely used in agriculture and land use planning, natural resource management, transportation, geology, municipal applications, and business, among others. These application domains have quite different requirements in spatial modeling and analysis. A GIS design process aims at helping system developers identify unique data needs and develop an effective model to ...