5. Conclusion

The early 2000s saw the emergence of several commercial GIS solutions, using more or less proprietary formats and languages. While these solutions were very powerful, in the years that followed they revealed their main weakness: the risk of the geomatician becoming locked into a "technical bubble". The approach favored over the last 10 years has tended towards free, open source solutions, based on non-proprietary programming languages and benefiting from active communities. These criteria should guide the choice of a geomatician or an organization (company or local authority) wishing to acquire or operate a geographic information system.

Geographic information is now widely used in the day-to-day lives of businesses, administrations and the general public. Used effectively, it significantly enhances the power of decision support and, more generally, communication....