An introduction to GIS use cases

More data is being generated than ever before, and much of it is location-based.
In order to fuel important business processes, businesses need to be able to access and make sense of this data quickly and with minimal hassle.
Here are a few examples of how geospatial data can be put to use in a wide variety of situations, and how an open source approach enhances the benefits.

1. Precision agriculture

Food shortage is a serious global issue. Precision agriculture is an approach to farming designed to find smarter, better ways to produce more food using fewer resources.

Precision agriculture relies on GPS data to help farmers boost their efficiency and incomes by making better-informed decisions on everything from seed choice and crop location to when and how much to water and fertilise.
An open source GIS lets farmers scale their technology as needed and to integrate location-based data into their existing farm IT environment.
When not locked into a single GIS vendor, the farm staff can gain flexibility and attain well-rounded expertise by becoming proficient in more than one type of software.

The farm can swap out technology as needed for newer, more cost-effective, or more full-featured systems—and the staff can migrate to the new technology without extensive retraining.
With an open source approach to Precision agriculture, farms can choose the best geospatial tools for their jobs, change or update those tools at will, and integrate their GIS with other technology tools.

2. Site selection

Selecting the best site for a brick-and-mortar facility is a complex process.
Maybe the facility is a hospital or medical office, or a retail clothing or home goods store, or a financial services or law office. Similarly, maybe the site being selected is for marketing purposes, such as what region or neighbourhood to run ads or promotions.
In each case, site selection means overlaying lots of different sets of information about the people and the location itself.