A constellation of twenty-four satellites, 11,000 miles up, circling the globe every twelve hours . . . monitoring stations on remote atolls . . . and radio receivers, some small enough to be held in the palm of your hand: that's the Global Positioning System, an explosively growing technology that's changing the way we know where we are, where we're going, and where we've been. Coupled with a GIS (geographic information system), with its virtually limitless layers of data and graphics and histories--it's nothing short of revolutionary.

GPS technology is helping researchers keep elephants from the brink of extinction, mapping mazes of oil and gas pipeline, locating the sources of a highly infectious disease, keeping armchair sailors on the edge of their seats as they chart the progress of a race across the Atlantic--the ways GPS is being used range along an astonishingly broad spectrum of activities, personal and public, commercial and educational, business and pleasure.

Integrating GIS and the Global Positioning System is a comprehensive introduction to the subject. It covers the basics of the system--what the components are, how they work in theory and in practice, how accuracy can be improved almost to a pinpoint--and presents several case studies that illustrate some of the ways in which the power of GPS is being harnessed to the depth of GIS: accuracy in measurement and completeness of coverage.