Modern Surveying Techniques

The use of aerial photography and remote sensing has made it possible to map large areas with greater accuracy for producing thematic maps of large areas, for resource exploitation and management. Handling of large volumes of data for quantitative spatial variation of data requires appropriate tools to process the spatial data using statistical methods and time series analysis. With the introduction of computer assisted cartography, many new tools were developed to perform spatial analysis of the data and to produce maps in desired formats. These operations required a powerful set of tools for collecting, storing, retrieving, transforming, and displaying spatial data from the real world for a particular set of purposes. This set of tools constitutes a Geographic Information System (GIS). (from nptel.ac.in)