The use of geographic information in decision-making tends to go unnoticed, but it is actually present in many of our daily activities. By unconsciously selecting the route to work, the vacation route, going to meet a friend, going to a store using a smartphone and more, decisions are made that involve analyzing geographic information without being aware of it. When this type of analysis or decision making is carried out using computers, it is usually done through what is known as Geographic Information Systems (GIS).
According to López Trigal (2015), a GIS is a set of tools made up of hardware, software, data and users, which allows us to capture, store, manage and analyze digital information, as well as make graphs and maps, and represent alphanumeric data. According to Burrough (1994) a GIS can also be seen as a computer model of geographic reality to meet specific information needs, i.e., create, share and apply useful information based on data and maps.
For decades, GIS have been applied to land and natural resource management problems, environmental issues, military logistics or in contexts directly linked to Earth sciences, such as geography, geology, etc. In addition, GIS is of potential use for other relatively unpublished fields and disciplines, particularly in research related with Human and Social Sciences (Del Bosque González, Fernández Freire, Martín-Forero Morente, & Pérez Asensio, 2012).
ArcGIS Desktop (hereafter ArcGIS) is the main component of ESRI’s ArcGIS application suite, and the software that contains the classic desktop GIS functionalities. ArcGIS is a set of tools that allows the visualization and management of geographic information, and also has an extensible architecture through which new functionalities can be added (Olaya, 2011). These are the well-known extensions, among which are Spatial Analyst (raster analysis), 3D Analyst (3D and relief analysis) or Geostatistical Analyst (geostatistics).
The purpose of this technical paper is to introduce basic GIS concepts through the development of case studies that involve the entire mapping process. There are literally hundreds of tools in ArcGIS, but it is not possible to work with all of them, although you can familiarize yourself with them. This document is designed so that, as you progress, you can acquire skills or improve those you already have in order to create maps, search for geographic information, and finally publish a well edited map.
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