1. Department of Geography, University College London, 1-19 Torrington Place, London WC1E 6BT, UK email m.batty@ucl.ac.uk web http://www.casa.ucl.ac.uk/ Methods in Human Geography: October 5th 2000 The MapInfo Software: GIS in general, desktop GIS in particular, specifically the MapInfo software

2. GIS in General Geographic(al) Information Systems deal with geometric objects which have attributes (characteristics) eg: different places with info about them like population

3. The essence of a GIS involves processing in some way the information about the objects - if all you want to do is to draw a map of the objects and colour it, then GIS is not for you - it’s too longwinded and you are better off using a drawing package

4. The geometric objects have data about their form which are usually represented as points, lines, and/or polygons Attributes which are associated with these objects are usually represented as text or numbers

5. An Example: Canada Object is the province of Ontario Note how we can edit it in the GIS Attributes are things like Population of Ontario at 1990, 1994 etc

6. Now what can we do with a GIS? First let’s make a distinction between workstation GIS and desktop GIS - we will use just desktop GIS as workstation GIS is basically a tool box, although increasingly workstation GIS is merging with desktop GIS

7. There are two main desktop GIS’s - ArcView which is baby ARC-INFO ( a popular workstation GIS) and MapInfo - we will use the latter - let me fire the thing up to show you what it looks like (fire up MapInfo………)

8. GIS’s have Functions (this is called ‘functionality’ and is generic to all software) a. INPUT functions - conversion of files scanning functions digitising functions address matching b. REPRESENTATION functions - scaling/zooming and panning level of detail

9. c. MEASURING functions - lines, distances areas, centroids bufferingtransformations d. STATISTICAL functions - averages, sums, deviations e. RETRIEVAL functions - queries, combining data f. OVERLAYING functions generating and transforming maps

10. g. PRESENTATION functions - various types of map like bar, pie and so on various drawing routines MORE COMPLEX FUNCTIONS usually as add-ons or plugins - contouring routines, 3D routines, models linked into the basic software and so on ALL THESE FUNCTIONS AND MORE EXIST IN MapInfo

11. Now we will deal with MapInfo 1 Functionality 2 Desktop Structure 3 Toolbars 4 Desktop Operations I am not going to tell you how to get the data into the package yet - we will deal with this later in a more leisurely fashion

12. 1 Functionality The KEY idea in MapInfo is that all data of whatever kind - geometric (sometimes called ‘digital’) and attribute - is called a TABLE - Tables can be viewed in 3 ways as Maps as Browsers (which are tables of data) as Graphs and there is a fourth way as a Layout

13. Let’s now look at MapInfo and we will switch between PowerPoint and MapInfo to illustrate how MapInfo works First we can see the desktop with the table for Canada displayed as a Map and as a Browser (load Canada) (This is a bit counter intuitive as a browser is better called a Table - but we will live with it)

15. 2 Desktop Structure a File b Edit c Objects d Query e Table f Options g Windows h Help

22. 3 Toolbars Main - zoom, pan, information, measuring, statistics Drawing - different types of geometric objects and text

24. 4 Desktop Operations mapping analysis querying presentation mapping transforming data calculating new data all these can be applied to both attribute and digital data singly or together

25. Let’s look at four things in MapInfo zooming and panning zooming and panning changing the projection changing the projection adding new data layers adding new data layers querying the map querying the map

26. Reading on MapInfo The MapInfo Professional “Your Turn” Manual is available in the library downstairs for reference Reading on General GIS Ian Heywood, Sarah Cornelius, and Steve Carver (1998) An Introduction to Geographical Inform- ation Systems, Prentice Hall, Harlow, UK look at http://www.mapinfo.com for an example of what these GIS vendors are on about

27. Getting Access to MapInfo login username password: ? C:ucftjmb>attach q: ucfadta C:ucftjmb>win OR if already in windows, find the MS-DOS utility, fire it up -ie double click on it, then you will see the DOS prompt appear as C:ucftjmb> C:ucftjmb>attach q: ucfadta C:ucftjmb>exit …… takes you back to WIN

28. Now go to the Main folder and find your FileManager, click on this and you will open areas of your storage space. Find the q: drive - the little icon like a hard disc with q: on it, double click on this go to Applications in the left hand window and click on this and then you will see another folder called MapInfo click on this and on the right frame you will see a bunch of files about mapinfo. Find the file mapinfow.exe, double click on this and this fires up the software - off you go: TRY this today or tomorrow