What are Geospatial Technologies?

• Geospatial Information Systems (GIS) - ability to manipulate geographic/spatial data using desktop and web-based intelligent mapping tools. GIS provides a visual interface to database records. Because the map is intelligent, the user can interact with the map to determine attributes, or select a database record and view it on a map. GIS includes many spatial analysis tools.
  
  
• Global Positioning System (GPS) - locating device based on orbiting satellites and triangulation
  
  
• Spatial Database Technologies - ability to store spatial/coordinate information natively in the database
  
  
• Automatic Vehicle Locator - tracking of GPS-enabled vehicles on a map in real-time (e.g. State Police vehicles)