What is digitizing?

I thought it would be appropriate to add a few key terms in the GIS field. After all, I suspect many non-GIS users are now having to integrate some of their work with maps.

Digitizing in GIS is essentially digitally representing geographic features from a topographical perspective. Digitized records are in the form of a set of mathematical arrays, or more simply put, vectors.

When someone says "all the buildings in the Guelph cma have been digitized", they precisely mean than the outlines (depending on how detailed the user did it) of all the buildings in Guelph are now available in digital format.

Advantage: After digitizing, you know have a computerized record (spatially represented) of the object of interest. You can perform any types of modifications or analyses to this computerized record.

Above is an example of the Pentagon (because a pentagon shaped building is pretty cool) digitized. You can see to the left, I have the aerial image acquired directly from Google Maps. To the right, I used Google Maps once again, to create a polygon outlining the outer boundaries of the Pentagon, aka digitizing.

Coming soon: How to digitize with Google Maps, it is FREE!