Geographical Information Systems

Geographic information systems (GIS) are computer-based systems for editing and displaying spatial data. GIS tools allow users to create interactive queries, analyze spatial relationships, patterns or trends and visualize the output of all these efforts.

The academic community has since long discovered the advantages working with GIS, be it still mainly within the spatial and beta sciences. Not only do these disciplines, in general, have a longer history with GIS techniques, they have also made the creation, maintenance and sharing of geodata an integral part of their research applications. Other scientific fields, however, have become increasingly aware of the benefits that a GIS approach can provide to their research. This development is fueled even more by demands of research funding organizations (such as the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, NWO) in regards to the public availability of research data. 

Over time, the Centre for Digital Scholarship intends to provide support, training and resources for spatial research and bring together GIS users from all disciplines within Leiden University.