Contents: Preface. 1. Principles of GIS/P.S. Ilangovan. 2. GIS and its applications/S. Vasudevan. 3. Choosing the right digital terrain model/R. Narayanakumar and K. Kumaraswamy. 4. Spatial data exploration and geostatistical interpolation/K. Banukumar. 5. Analysis of map overlay function in GIS/K. Lakshmi. 6. Application of geospatial technology for wasteland development/G. Bhaskaran. 7. Watershed delineation and characterization/A. Ganesh and S. Aruchamy. 8. Application of GIS in hydrological analysis/K. Rutharvel Murthy and A. Ganesh. 9. Creating topology for surface water features/P. Sundararaj, R. Narayanakumar, K. Kumaraswamy and K. Sasikala. 10. Application of GIS for delineation of functional zones in an urban area/G.R. Parthasarathy. 11. Land use change detection using GIS/G.R. Parthasarathy. 12. GIS applications in market and competitive intelligence/P.S. Vijayalakshmi. 13. Geospatial technology for monitoring of development plan/Sulochana Shekhar. 14. GIS applications in integrated rural development/N.D. Mani. 15. GIS for micro level planning/N.D. Mani. 16. Crime modeling and GIS/K. Banukumar, P. Ramu and A. Ganesh. 17. Role of GIS in combating crimes/O.M. Murali. 18. Principles of global positioning systems and its applications/A. Ganesh and R. Narayanakumar. 19. Integration of GPS and GIS/R. Narayanakumar and A. Ganesh. 20. Distributed GIS-static map publishing for Bharathidasan University/K. Subadevi and A. Ganesh. Index.

"The applications of geospatial technologies are playing an ever-increasing role in conservation and natural resources management. Advances in the science and technology behind remote sensing are making it more practical to conduct large-scale inventories and provide monitoring and evaluation of natural resources. Coupled with recent advances in GIS and spatial decision support systems, geospatial technology is taking resource conservation planning and management to a new level. Applied geospatial technology covers the fundamentals of techniques for acquiring, processing, classifying, visualizing and analyzing spatial-referenced data of the earth, and their application to study of the earth's surface features. Included are techniques such as land survey, photogrammetry, global positioning systems (GPS), airborne and satellite remote sensing, digital image processing, GIS and geovisualisation. In 2004 the US Department of Labour identified geotechnology as one of the three most important emerging and evolving fields, along with nanotechnology and biotechnology. Keeping this in mind, an attempt has been made in this book to analyze the various facets of geospatial technology." (jacket)