Fundamentals of Spatial Information Systems (Apic Studies in Data Processing)

Rating:
Summary: Not the greatest introduction to spatial information systems
Review: I am a Ph.D candidate in GISs and when I was an undergraduate this book was the first one recommended to me as the "bible" on the topic. Well...it definitely is a commendable effort from the authors (especially considering it was written circa 1990) but absolutely not the bible.

The book tries to cover most aspects, theories, and topics that come together to comprise a GIS and does not have a particular focus on any of the sub-disciplines. There are many examples and figures which enhance understanding of some difficult concepts, however, there also major weaknesses.

The primary one, at least to me, is the lack of structure and organization. One would expect the provision of some fundamental theoretical starting points at the beginning and then incremental building and expansion on those concepts as chapters progress. Unfortunately this is not the case as many topics are interweaved and repeated at several parts of the book and the chapter-structure does not seem to have a well-thought rationale. There is in general an abrupt and rapid introduction to many different topics without some provision for allowing the readers to consolidate and digest the incoming knowledge incrementally. In the end this might leave novice gis readers more confused than informed.

Another problem is the omission of precise definitions for many terms commonly used in GISs or their substitution with descriptive narratives instead.

Finally, this book is old and hence, outdated. As such it does not include references to significant advances in the field that took place in the 90's. For example, two important topics not addressed are uncertainty and qualitative reasoning. In addition, the examples often refer to software implementations of the era, which now might be completely ouf of play.

There are much better and newer introductory books for GIS and spatial information systems and two that I would recommend are Michael Worboy's "GIS: a computing perspective (second edition)" complemented with Nicholas Chrisman's "Exploring Geographic Information Systems". This book serves to me only as a quick reference on certain topics and it does so only in very rare occasions.

If you are a collector of GIS literature you might want to buy it. If you are looking for a good introduction to the field, buy another book instead.