Geospatial & GIS: What’s the difference

“Geo” is a prefix that comes from a Greek word meaning earth. “Spatial” means relating to space. “Geospatial” is a recently coined terms which is often confused and mixed with GIS (Geographic Information Systems). Both the terms Geospatial & GIS are quite popular and their use is increasing at a significant rate. People often use Geospatial & GIS similarly. There are many other terms which are popular in the industry which include remote sensing, LIDAR, Geospatial Data, Elevation Maps, Contour Lines, Digital Elevation Model etc. The difference in Geospatial & GIS is explained below to bring more clarity on this topic.

What is Geospatial?

Geospatial, as mentioned is relatively new term. The increasing interest in this term is because of rise in similar other associated terms. The increasing importance and use of Geospatial data is driving the search for term “Geospatial” too. Any data attributed to a geographic location is commonly referred as Geospatial. The rise in use of this terms is significant from 1990s as viable through Google Ngram Viewer

Increase in use of term Geospatial

What is GIS?

GIS is a system to store geographical information in different layers by means of various specialises GIS softwares. These softwares allows to create, store, manipulate, analyse and visualise the stored geospatial data. The peculiar feature and need of having GIS is making use of geospatial information which is gaining much importance now.

What is Geospatial Data?

Geospatial data is any data which is related to geographical location. It can be any data which is linked to a specific location. In GIS, this data is attributed in form of a table thus storing the geospatial information along with other spatial data. This attributed data is usually in form of table and contains various data such as Pincodes, Area, Size, Address or coordinates.

What is Geospatial Technology?

Geospatial technology is making use of hardware and softwares or a combination of two, this enables us to generate, collect, analyse and use the spatial data.

Geospatial technology refers to equipment used to measure and analyze Earth’s land and features. Systems such as Global Positioning System (GPS) and Geographical Information System (GIS) are used in geospatial work. Today, GPS and GIS are used for many different things. GPS can be used to for navigation purposes such as for Aircrafts, Ships & cars.

You can refer to other similar topics:

  1. Applications of Remote Sensing
  2. Types of Remote Sensing
  3. Application of GIS in Smart Cities
  4. Remote Sensing & GIS
  5. Who used GIS
  6. What is a GIS Software
  7. What is Remote Sensing & How it Works
  8. What is satellite mapping & Imaging
  9. What is LIDAR
  10. Differences between ArcGIS & QGIS

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