Location: What is at a given location?

What exists at a particular location. Where are the sewer lines, where are all of the malls, where are the parks, etc. All of these questions can be answered with a GIS.

Condition: Where does something occur?

Find all of the parks that have basketball courts. A GIS can answer this question by using specific conditions (basketball courts) of the parks. The condition question seeks to find a location where certain conditions are satisfied. Another example is find all the houses that fall in the 100 year floodplain. This example is spatial in nature but is still
a condition of the house.

Trends: What has changed since ...?

Finding trends involves a combination of location and condition and seeks to find the differences within an area over time. For example, what is the change in traffic flow along Highway
101 from midnight to noon.

Routing: How can I get there?

How can I get there the quickest, with the least amount of traffic, without using an interstate, etc. These are questions a GIS can answer about routing.

Patterns: What spatial patterns exist?

You might ask this question to determine whether cancer is a major cause of death among residents near a nuclear power station. Just as important, you might want to know how many anomalies exist that don't fit the pattern and where
they are located.

Modeling: What if ...?

"What if..." questions are posed to determine what happens, for example, if a new road is added to a network or if a toxic
substance is dumped into a stream. Answering this type of question requires geographic data as well as other information.