2007 Volume 2 Issue 1 Pages 1-6
Geographic Information System (GIS) is a tool for managing, processing and analyzing the spatial digital data and one of the new information technologies. It has the possibility of solving various difficult problems. Considering the future development of rock engineering, it still remains a lot of problems such as social and environmental engineering problems, which can not be solved using the current technology. In this paper, the state of arts of GIS technology is introduced, and then some advanced application examples in the rock engineering field are shown. Finally, the possibility of GIS applied in the rock engineering is discussed and the future vision of utilizing GIS technology in rock engineering field is mentioned. It is concluded that the environmental impact assessment, the protection of life and properties against the natural disaster and the creation of better environment and health will be the important issues of the rock engineering in the future. In order to solve these difficult problems, the utilization of GIS technology can expect an effective and useful technology for decision making of them. On the future prospect of GIS application to rock engineering, the followings are important: 1) preparation of data, 2) coupling of GIS with various analysis, 3) establishment of synthetic assessment method and 4) temporal and spatial phenomenon analysis in GIS. And, to develop the future GIS application for rock engineering, not only the progress in GIS technology itself, but also the action of the rock engineers and the researchers are also important.
