About Applying GIS to Real Estate
Related pages: GIS real estate suitability Radon gas maps
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) can be applied to locate areas more suitable for real estate based on your particular criteria. An important feature of GIS is the ability to locate areas within a distance, farther than a distance, or within a range of distances from any particular feature (of any shape or size) or location. Areas that do not meet different criteria can be excluded, or any number of layers can be weighted together in different mathematically ways to produce a single layer to find more suitable locations.
In the example below, two layers are simply added to produce a new layer where higher values correspond to higher suitability (as previously mentioned, any number of layers can be weighted together in different mathematically ways).
Elevation is also important to assess when searching for the most suitable location for real estate particularly to determine if a location is in relatively higher or lower ground as shown in the GIS Real Estate Suitability page. Elevation values themselves can be analyzed or topography derived from elevation data can be assessed.