Research by the Matrosov Institute for System Dynamics in the Field of Geoinformatics: Past, Present, and Future

At the Institute for System Dynamics and Control Theory, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences (ISDCT SB RAS), research in the field of development and use of geoinformation technologies began at the early stages of their application back in the 1990s. Since then, we have developed a number of original geoinformation software libraries and systems and other software systems that support the presentation of information using electronic maps, as well as the systems for working with spatial information created using off-the-shelf software solutions. In this article, we consider the most interesting of these systems from a historical perspective. We discuss the experience gained in the course of developments, such as converters between different vector map formats, information and reference systems with map data representation, information–analytical and OLAP systems, systems for the Internet/intranet publishing of vector maps, the service for obtaining fragments of vector topographic maps, the original MRG file format for representing big raster data, an original library for working with triangulations and some of its applications, the municipal GIS and the Address Plan of Irkutsk, the GIS Investor of Irkutsk system, the geoportal software developed at the institute, the methods for processing remote sensing data using neural networks, and the digital environmental monitoring platform developed within the framework of a major scientific project (Fundamentals, Methods, and Technologies for Digital Monitoring and Forecasting the Environmental Situation of the Baikal Natural Territory (BNT)).