Effective monitoring of the environment and an improved understanding of the same requires valuable information and data that can be extracted through application of geospatial technologies. GIS can be used most effectively for environmental data analysis and planning. It allows better viewing and understanding physical features and the relationships that influence in a given critical environmental condition. GIS can help in effective planning and managing the environmental hazards and risks. In order to plan and monitor the environmental problems, the assessment of hazards and risks becomes the foundation for planning decisions and for mitigation activities. GIS supports activities in environmental assessment, monitoring, and mitigation and can also be used for generating environmental models. GIS can aid in hazard mitigation and future planning, air pollution & control, disaster management, forest fires management, managing natural resources, wastewater management, oil spills and its remedial actions etc.
Today, geo data has become a conventional and pervasively familiar data type seen at once to underpin and significantly re-characterize the digital world, with broad implications for both technology and society. Geospatial data are abundant, but access to data varies with the nature of the data, the user groups wishes to acquire it and for what purpose, under what conditions, and at what price geodata can be obtained. The explosive growth of geographic information contributed by users through various application programming interfaces has made geographic information a powerful media for the general public, but perhaps more importantly, geospatial information have also become media for constructive dialogs and interactions about social issues, recent growth of Web-based Geographic information and volunteered geographic information (VGI).