Overview of GIS Modelling

GIS modelling must start with a solid understanding of the natural landscape and its processes.
Land-based modelling such as tourism potential modelling is dependent on this understanding because
“this kind of model provides a system of relationships that link particular measurements into a larger
structure, eventually seeking to predict future configurations. These relationships come from an
understanding of environmental processes, not just from the map patterns.”13 The next step of most
GIS models is the overlay stage where factors are placed on top of each other in a process meant to
discover areas of overlap or where data gaps exist in the study (model) region.”14 The combination of
these overlay layers within the GIS environment and the ranking of each overlay layer helps the
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model make its final determination of suitability. In the case of tourism potential modelling this
would produce areas that are suitable or have potential for future tourism development. The benefit of
using the GIS model process is the ease of overlaying many data sets within the same geographic area
and the ability to assign rankings to each data set. To ensure accuracy in GIS modelling there must be
in-depth field research beforehand because “accuracy is a measure of how closely data represents
reality within specified tolerances.”
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