Computer analysis of geographic information has become one of the most important tools in today's geoscience. Geogarphic information System (GIS) was developed in the early 1960 s in North America to cope with rapid rural population decrease and consequent urban development. In the 1960 s and 1970 s, when computer was small and with poor graphic capabilities, grid-square analysis was popular especially in universities.
In the 1980 s, the utilization of grid-square analysis in geography became unpopular in some countries, particularly in the USA. Technological development of computers enabled vector data processing by less expensive computers and interactive color graphics. Commercial GIS products appered in the early 1980 s, which released researchers from efforts of making GIS by themselves. Vector data provided by the central agencies, such as DIME and DLG, decreased the cost and time of converting data to digital formats.
In UK, grid-square data attracted considerable interest in the late 1960 s. Grid-square data was provided for 1971 population census for all the country, but in 1981 census, grid-square data was provided for less than 20 % of her area. Some other data, such as oil product comsumption data and environmental data were provided from national agencies. In China, with arising interests to GIS, grid-square analysis is becoming popular in universities.
Grid analysis still have benefits in spatial analysis of geographic data even though vector-based GIS has become majority. For further development of grid-square analysis of spatial data, it is critically impotant to understand the nature of geographic information. Users must be aware of accuracy of data, size of spatial size of data units and methods of analysis.
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