A Geographic Information System (GIS) is a system designed to capture, store, analyze, manage, and present all types of geographical data.  The key word to this technology is Geography – this means that some portion of the data is spatial.  In other words, data that is in some way referenced to locations on the earth.

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The Perkins County Government Offices use database management systems optimized to store and manage large volumes of attribute data.  Attribute data can be generally defined as additional information about each of the spatial features.  An example of this would be Parcel Data at the local Director of Equalization office. The actual location of the parcel is the spacial data. Additional information such as owner, physical address, property value and taxing districts would make up the attribute data.

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It is the partnership of these two data types that enables GIS to be such an effective problem solving tool through spatial analysis.