Geographic information systems (GIS) help visualize location data through digital maps and charts. GIS has its origins in maps from Babylonian times but the first true GIS was created in 1962 in Ottawa, Canada. It integrated data from government agencies. Today, GIS is used widely, from helping find directions to analyzing business issues like customer bases or transportation routes. GIS represents data as either raster grids of cells or vector shapes like points, lines, and polygons. This allows continuous data like temperature or discrete data like buildings to be mapped and analyzed.