What is GIS in 100 words or less?

These are the submissions orginally posted on GeoReport's GeoPoll at GeoPlace.com:


GIS allows two-way communication between a database and a map. It lets you "see" the data on a map, and allows you to ask questions about the data using the map.
- Dave FritzkeCity of Crystal, Minnesota

A software system that ties geographic data (maps) and non-geographic data together, allowing for map-based display of data relationships. Without the map component, it's called data mining.
- Kerry Maloney

Almost everything has a location. GIS is a way to store that information and see how things are related to each other, from pipelines underground to the streets to the trucks driving on top of them.
- Barry Waite

Nearly everything in the world exists in a physical space. From the chair you’re sitting in, to the way you drive home, to the boundary of your city, to the events you saw on the news last night. GIS allows us to store information about these locations and examine relationships with other location information to gain a better understanding of our world.
- David Brand

GIS is a tool that allows data and information to be displayed visually on a map.
- Richard Hoiland

GIS is a computer based means of precisely locating and identifying a specific location along with the ability to gather, use, and disseminate data about the location resulting in much better understanding and knowledge than otherwise would be possible.
- Marcus Wood

GIS is the practice of integrating data or information about a place on a map so that a user has the combination of features to fully describe that place in terms that they understand and use regularly in their job or personal activities.
- Gary W. KerrAllstate Insurance Company

GIS is when you know the location of something in, on or above the earth and putting that location into context with things around it at a known point in time. Data about that point and things surrounding it can be combined, compared and analyzed. This information may be viewed or heard in a medium best suited for the user to utilize that knowledge. The combined knowledge about the position of things is used for everything from guiding the end of a laser during eye surgery, intercepting an incoming missile to providing a map to your closest grocery store.
- Erv Rehman

An organized collection of computer technology, geographic data, and personnel designed to efficiently capture, store, update, manipulate, analyze, and display geographically referenced information.
- Hassan

A GIS is any data set that includes a geographical tag or attribute that enables that data to be analyzed and presented geographically to enhance the quality of decision making.
- Kevin Davies

GIS is a computer-based mapping of landscape features of a known geographic location that allows integration of the non-geographics characteristics of these features to describe the event over landscape at time.
- Meshack Nyabenge

GIS can be thought of as a type of computerized or digital mapping where the maps are spatially accurate and interactive in the sense that they may be used to perform spatial analysis or communicate information about a location in an easily customizable manner. For instance, data about multiple different phenomena are easily brought together to reveal new information from which conclusions may be drawn or decisions made, or the data may be reflected in a variety of different styles to communicate information about a location.
- Mike Espey

GIS is a representation, dissemination and integration of data or information by defining its attributes. When working with GIS, it involves data, various software’s and human resources. The GIS data can be in tabular, map etc. The following activities are involved to achieve a working GIS; these are data capture, input, conversion, database design and management. Any data can be represented using GIS. Our every day-to-day activities can be represented in a GIS.
- C. Disang

GIS is people applying technology to the acquisition and use of spatial information for some desired benefit.
- Paul J. DeFrancisco, Data Services Specialist, New York State Senate Research Service