L'ambiguïté des systèmes d'information géographique en géographie appliquée
Laboratoire SURFACES, Université de Liège,
Place du 20-Août, 7
4000 LIÈGE, BELGIQUE
(chargé de recherches F.N.R. S.)
Laboratoire SURFACES, Université de Liège,
Place du 20-Août, 7
4000 LIÈGE, BELGIQUE
Abstract
The notion of Geographical Information System (G.I.S.) is ambiguous. Often G.I.S. is considered as a piece of software and sometimes as a data base or a data base management system (D.B.M.S.). Those meanings particularly are conveyed by the academic circles dealing with education and abstract research. When it is a matter of designing a real-size application, as applied geography gives a great many examples, this shortened view of hat a G.I.S. must be for the most part leads to a failure. In such context of application, G.I.S. must be seen as an information system (the acronym says nothing else) and its design and realization corne under the systemic theory and methodology. However these must be severely adapted to fit the peculiar characteristics of the geographical information.