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Geographical Data Sets
Continuous Surface
Continuous surfaces are three-dimensional spatial objects with not only a position in space, a length and a width, but also a depth or height (in other words they have a volume). These spatial objects have not been discussed further because most GIS do not include real volumetric spatial data.
Geographic Data -- Linkages and Matching
Linkages
A GIS typically links different sets. Suppose you want to know the mortality rate to cancer among children under 10 years of age in each country. If you have one file that contains the number of children in this age group, and another that contains the mortality rate from cancer, you must first combine or link the two data files. Once this is done, you can divide one figure by the other to obtain the desired answer.
Exact Matching
Exact matching occurs when you have information in one computer file about many geographic features (e.g., towns) and additional information in another file about the same set of features. The operation to bring them together is easily achieved by using a key common to both files -- in this case, the town name. Thus, the record in each file with the same town name is extracted, and the two are joined and stored in another file.
| Name |
Populaiton |
| A |
4038 |
| B |
7030 |
| C |
10777 |
| D |
5798 |
| E |
5606 |
|
| Name |
Avg. housing
Cost |
| A |
30,500 |
| B |
22,000 |
| C |
100,000 |
| D |
24,000 |
| E |
24,000 |
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| Name |
Population |
Avg. Housing Cost |
| A |
4038 |
30,500 |
| B |
7030 |
22,000 |
| C |
10777 |
100,100 |
| D |
5798 |
24,000 |
| E |
5606 |
24,000 |
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