Advantages and Shortcomings of GIS

Advantages and Shortcomings of GIS

**Shortcomings

Prior to reading this, I assumed that there would be many advantages to GIS. And while I was right in that way, I was wrong in another. My prior knowledge of GIS and my Westernized POV led me to believe that GIS’s cartographic methodological approach would be the reigning pro of this technology. However, after looking at GIS from a humanistic POV, I now understand how that approach was instead a shortcoming. An inherent shortcoming of GIS is that it disallows for Non-Western viewpoints. It does so by favoring institutional or official databases as the primary sources of knowledge about the world. It also has diffculty managing different cultural viewpoints of space due to its Euclidian geometric lens. It’s metaporical assumption that the world is flat offers a view of physical space that is seemingly stripped of all cultural assumptions.

**Advantages

On the other hand, GIS could manage the logical overlay technique that allowed for the overlay of data on a map of the Earth’s surface. And GIS’s ability to manage quantitative spatial datasets would eventually create spacial infrastructures, such as Censuses. GIS can also be used in conjunction with the internet to bring spatial and archival evidence together and give readers a fresh view of this digital history evidence. GIS’s flexibility in this arena would eventually lead to intense data visualizations, mainly used by Archaeologists.