GIS industry puts area on map

Northern Colorado has emerged as a centerpiece for one of the nation’s most promising new technologies.

Geographic information systems, which reveal relationships among geographically referenced data, support 45 businesses statewide, with annual revenues of $94.5 million, according to a survey by GIS World Inc., the Fort Collins-based publisher of several GIS magazines.

Many of those companies hail from Larimer and Weld counties, where GIS firms spun off from work done for federal natural-resource departments and research done at Colorado State University.

These locally based GIS companies and consultants provide products and services for customers and clients all over the world.

“Because 80 percent of…