The Process of How to Create a Vector Database With GIS
- 1). Define the elements in your vector map to which you wish to assign attributes. A vector map is made up of points, straight lines, arcs (curved lines) and polygons (areas enclosed by lines and arcs), but, depending on the kind of information you wish to analyze with your GIS, you should focus your attention on a single kind of element. In order to analyze the length of roads between points, for instance, you would use lines and arcs (roads) as your elements. If your GIS analyzes area attributes, like literacy rates in different sections of a country, you would use the polygons in your map
- 2). Identify each of the elements you wish to analyze with an easy-to-remember name. Depending on your data, the geographic data may already have a name, such as "Highway 101" in the case of a line or "State of Kentucky" in the case of a polygon. If you are using geographic elements without a previous name, like an area made up of small parts of many different jurisdictions, be sure to use a name that will be easy to remember and manipulate when you work with your data.
- 3). Open a spreadsheet or database program. Alternatively, you can use the database function in any of the many specialized GIS softwares.
- 4). Create a title for the first column in your spreadsheet or database. Call the column "Element."
- 5). Fill the first column with all of the elements (lines, arcs, points or polygons) you wish to analyze in this GIS.
- 6). Create another column with the title "Attribute." You can also use a more specific title like "length" or "literacy rate."
- 7). Fill the second column with the relevant data for each attribute. If the inhabitants of the hypothetical polygon "Southwest 7," for example, have a literacy rate of 93 percent, write the value into the cell to the right of the element.
- 8). Create new columns with any more data that you can attribute to each element, such as "average temperature," "infant mortality rate" or "median income," and enter the relevant data.
- 9). Save your database. This database is the foundation of your GIS and contains all of the information about the geographic area you are studying, which you can later manipulate (separate into percentiles, organize into averages, etc.) or present graphically as a map.