Campus licence for the Geo-information system (ArcGIS)
Since the beginning of 2004, there has been a supraregional campus license for all products of the company ESRI. This includes, among other things, the geo-information system ArcGIS. In addition to the TU Braunschweig, the University of Hannover and the University of Lüneburg with its Suderburg site participate in the license. Geoinformation systems (GIS) are considered an essential technology of the future.
Co-contractor for the campus license is the University of Hanover. The main contact there is the GIS center.
All employees of the participating institutes are entitled to use the software for research and teaching purposes. The software may not be passed on to students, not even in the context of diploma theses or student research projects.
Annual maintenance costs are incurred for the license agreement. The financing on Braun's side is mainly borne by the institutes interested in it; these are up to now:
- Institute of Geoecology,
- Leichtweiß-Institute for Hydraulic Engineering and
- Institute of Geodesy and Photogrammetry.
- A small contribution to the costs is made by the Gauß-IT-Zentrum
Institutes that are also interested in using ESRI's GIS software and would like to participate in this university program should contact Dr.-Ing. Helmut Schuck.
At the participating universities, GIS technologies have already been successfully used in research and teaching for several years. Contact persons at the TU Braunschweig are:
- Prof. Dr.-Ing. Marc O. Löwner
- Dr. Gerhard Riedel
GIS market leader ESRI
ESRI (Environmental Systems Research Institute), headquartered in Redlands, California, is considered one of the first providers of standard software in the GIS sector and has since become the global market leader.
ESRI's portfolio provides a scalable GIS solution that meets all the requirements of spatial information processing.
For the processing, analysis and visualization of geodata on the workstation computer, the desktop products are available with a staggered range of functions (ArcView, ArcEditor, ArcInfo) and special extensions, e.g. for raster or 3D data.
Data processing is carried out locally or integrated in a multi-user environment, for which special server software (ArcSDE) is then used as a gateway to the common database management systems available on the market (e.g. Oracle, SQL-Server, DB2).
The provision of data or interactive maps via the Internet (so-called WebGIS) can be realized using the server software ArcIMS.
ArcPAD also provides a solution for mobile applications (navigation, data collection in the field).
An extensive programming interface (ArcObjects) allows the development of own solutions based on the standard functionality of ESRI.
Further information on ESRI products can be found at https://www.esri.de/de-de/arcgis/produkte/uebersicht
Spatial data
According to a widely accepted theory, around 80 percent of all data has a spatial reference. Spatial data (also: geodata) describe objects in the real world to which a position can be assigned on the basis of a reference system (e.g., by Gauss-Krüger, UTM or GPS coordinates). Examples are buildings, supply and disposal lines and roads as well as watercourses, arable land, groundwater bodies or breeding grounds of protected bird species.
The importance of spatial reference is recognized by a steadily increasing number of users or disciplines: Nearly all human activities take place in "space" or make use of it, thereby interacting with the environment in a variety of ways or requiring mutual coordination.
In order to deal with complex issues of this kind, tools are needed with which geodata can be efficiently managed and evaluated.
Geo-Information Systems
Geo-Information Systems (also: Geographic Information Systems; abbreviated: GIS) are used to collect, manage, analyze and visualize spatial data.
Their development dates back to the early 1980s and since then has followed the goal of combining data of different origin or subject matter via a uniform spatial reference (i.e. to overlay or "intersect" them geometrically) and to generate new types of information from such integrated data sets by means of diverse analysis functions.
Broad spectrum of applications
The spectrum of potential applications is almost limitless. For example, GIS can be used to
- identify conflicts of use or compare planning alternatives in planning disciplines (e.g. urban, regional or traffic planning),
- for infrastructure management purposes (e.g., real estate and operating technology of the TU), all relevant parcels of land, buildings, and supply and disposal facilities can be recorded with their properties and evaluated for planning and maintenance tasks,
- in hydrology, coupling models, e.g. for rainfall-runoff or groundwater simulation, with a GIS by serving their data needs from the GIS and integrating their results back into the GIS for visualization and further analysis,
- in the environmental sciences (including geoecology, environmental geology, biology) - also using models - to estimate the effects of human actions on the environment and to investigate their spatial relationships.
Other GIS application areas are in economics and social sciences (geomarketing, causal research on the occurrence of crime, diseases or accidents, etc.), disaster management (e.g. flood, fire) or traffic navigation.
Available as part of the campus license (PDF download) are:
Latest information on ArcGIS 9.0 (PDF download):
