International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Vol XXXV, Part B2. Istanbul 2004 
  
1. INTRODUCTION 
Today the most important weapon of the developed 
countries has been the technology and the use of 
information technologies in the field. Since the beginning 
of the mankind, the intelligence about the enemy forces 
has played a critical role for the success against the 
enemy. But, the acquisition of the information, 
interpretation and transmission to the decision makers 
are also important parts of the decision making systems. 
The concepts come out with the transformation of the 
information pushes the value of the having the 
technology as a critical constraint. And this also shows 
the hardness of the production of the technology on the 
arena. For that reason it has been very important to 
produce the technology today [1]. 
As it is in the Gulf war, the technologies are fighting 
with each other. Sometimes with the technology the 
expectations are forced to the opposite without any war. 
And sometimes the war ends in a very short time due to 
the technology. 
One of the most important part of the all types of 
battlefield, the intelligence and operations information of 
the enemy and own units as updated, fast, accurate and 
interpretation of those, and the action plays very critical 
role for the success. 
This issue has been proved at the war of Iraq for the 
coalition forces. In an article, *Electronic Today of 
November 1996", Major General Gurbaksh Singh VSM, 
says that; "The lessons learned from the military history 
shows that without caring the size of the enemy forces, 
the key to win the war is to be one step further then the 
enemy in terms of time and accuracy for the command, 
control, communication, electronics and information 
systems. 
If the defense and the weapon system can warn the 
attack's time, and position with high accuracy and 
enough information then it is easier to get the required 
position before the enemy and destroy it"[1]. 
This approach shows the importance of the spatial 
information and its accuracy and timing in the command 
center for the commander/decision maker. 
2. DEFINING GIS IN MILITARY 
The rapidly developing technology and changing needs 
and increase of the population have forced importance of 
information. 
The effect of technological developments to human life 
can not be ignored. For the positive effect of those 
technologies to the public life, there is a huge need for all 
types of information. The acquisition of those 
information, storage of them, analyzing and make them 
ready for the use of people becomes very important for 
the advantages that is expected to provide. 
Together with obtaining the information it is also critical 
to present that information to the right place, at right time 
as accurate and updated. 
One of the technologies that are used to manage the 
information is Geographic Information Systems (GIS). 
This technology, via the link the various types of the 
642 
information in a computing environment provide 
analyzing tools for decision makers and save their 
time[1]. 
When we link the very complex spatial information with 
nonspatial information with a geographic model it 
becomes easier to make the analysis with and use it. 
At the spatial information systems, it becomes important 
to setup up and use a relational database with spatial and 
nonspatial information. For that reason, the collection, 
storage, processing and presentation for the usage of the 
spatial information is only possible with a good design of 
the system and with the tools that can do this. For those 
purposes there has been some special systems developed. 
Those are generally called GIS. According to Burrough 
(1986, p.6); ‘GIS, is the whole set of tools for collecting, 
storing, querying, transferring and displaying of all data 
on the earth surface for a specific goal." According to 
that there are 2 concepts that affect the definition; 
One is the different disciplines that uses may define GIS 
according to their scope. The second one is the experts at 
those disciplines use the GIS for their specific needs to 
be done. GIS, like any new technology that comes out, 
provides many tools to make the experts’ studies more 
valuable and productive. 
2.1 The Basic Components and Objectives of GIS; 
GIS, with a basic understanding, covers 4 components; 
a) Geographic data, 
b) Hardware and software, 
c) Experienced people, 
d) An objective for a specific problem. 
All those components above have equal importance for 
the success of GIS. 
Together with that, there are 3 basic objectives of GIS; 
l. The storage, management and integration of 
huge data. That spatial and  nonspatial 
information are related to each other and 
analyzed. Spatial data are point, line and area, 
and nonspatial data are descriptive information 
about those geographic features. At the end we 
do have two main different type of data that are 
managed in GIS; 
a) Cartographic data (point, line, area and 
grid). 
b) Attribute data (descriptive tables). 
2. To analyze the geographic data such as where 
are the areas that are under the coverage of 
enemy's weapons? Modeling of logistic routes 
for the battlefield, and etc. 
3. To manage all those types of data with the ease 
of use for the users. 
2.2 The Map Data in Military [2]; 
2.2.1 The Maps & Charts; For the use of GIS in 
CCIS we need the maps to be prepared and stored in 
databases for uses. There are different maps that can be 
used in CCIS systems fore various purposes; 
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