A SURVEY ON GIS BASED DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEMS BANITA CHADHA 1 , NEHA AGARWAL 2 & UMANATH VISHWAKARMA 3 1 Assistant Professor, IEC College, Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India 2 Assistant Professor, Amity University, Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India 3 Research Scholar, Amity University, Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India ABSTRACT Geographic Information Systems Have Been Widely Used in Decision Support Systems as They Provide Opportunities to Overcome Many of Computer Based Models in Terms of Data Preparation, Information Extraction and Visualization. The Main Objective of This Research Is to Understand and Analyze Several GIS Based Decision Support Systems and Then Comparing it With Ecosystem Management Software Provided by ICIMOD Organization. This Task Includes Finding Common Set of Features and Exploring Latest, Efficient and Effective Services of Different Architectures of GIS based Decision Support Systems. KEYWORDS: GIS, ICIMOD, DSS, SDSS INTRODUCTION Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Decision Support Systems (DSS) are mechanisms that can be used to provide managers with information needed to make sound resource management decisions [11]. Ecosystem Management in mountainous area has become a challenge for concerned organizations. Better and fast management might ensure their objectives to be achieved successfully. In this context, a GIS based Decision support system might provide a platform where they can handle issues regarding ecosystem in a very efficient way. Many GIS decision support systems have been proposed regarding different fields like watershed management, transportation management etc. Functionalities and services might vary depending on requirements. After studying and analyzing these systems, new functions could be added into previous version of ecosystem management software. Spatial data from different sources integrated within the environment of a GIS has been used in various applications. Users can link data, combine different information, visualize the results and find answers to multiple questions. Digital maps providing a global overview of the smaller or larger scale environment are used as background and help in the visualization of spatial data in revealing relations between them. GIS provides sound functionality for decision support systems. It generally includes visualization models of geographical data and they benefit from the integration of various models for the management of specific information. Hu Yingzhan et al. [1] proposed an automatic monitoring architecture and decision support system for control of water resources. Remote sensing devices have been used for input capturing. Thematic mapping, overlay analysis and spatial data mining have been used to analyze data spatially. Generally in GIS based DSS, spatial and attribute data is stored separately in databases. Rou Guanglei et al. [2] proposed an emergency decision support system which performs qualitative and quantitative analysis of pollution present in environment using Arc Objects Software. Spatial analysis functions like map operation, inquiring and locating sources have been used for analysis purpose. International Journal of Computer Science Engineering and Information Technology Research (IJCSEITR) ISSN 2249-6831 Vol. 3, Issue 2, Jun 2013, 341-350 © TJPRC Pvt. Ltd.