Geographic Information Systems in Developing Countries: Opportunities and Options for Decision Support

Decision making at the national level in developing or developed countries requires the integrated use of information from a multitude of sources. This paper shows how geographic information systems technology provides a natural integration mechanism that is not naturally available in conventional systems. The capabilities of the technology and their contribution to strategic decision making are presented as is a flexible architecture for implementing a national level decision support system based on GIS technology. The most significant impediment to such a system is the availability of suitable data and strategies for developing data are also presented.