首先分析了分布式计算技术的发展，详细介绍了当今主流的分布计算技术——Agent技术、分布式GIS技术是以分布式计算技术为依托的，Agent技术将为分布GIS带来新的技术发展；随后，深入分析了Agent技术在分布式GIS中的应用，并结合已有的研究重点介绍了基于Agent的分布式GIS建模、空间信息查找与获取、WebGIS服务体系、空间辅助决策以及GIS互操作等。

Distributed GIS is a complicated software system. Applying Agent technology into distributed GIS will provide a new concept and method to construct distributed GIS system and applications. In this paper, modeling distributed GIS, searching and retrieving spatial information on Internet, constructing service framework for WebGIS, building spatial decision-support system and interoperating in GIS are introduced.Firstly, an agent-based distributed GIS model named as Geo-Agents is studied, which consists of four types of GIS agent: Facilitator, general agent, GIS functional agent and GUServer. All of these agents cooperate to complete GIS tasks.Combining agent technology and spatial metadata to locate and retrieve spatial information is an effective method to process distributed spatial information. A hierarchical spatial metadata database framework is designed to manage spatial databases, layers and maps on network. With the help of spatial metadata, five agents are constructed to distribute on network, search, locate, retrieve and filter distributed spatial information initiatively and cooperatively.Then, an agent-based common WebGIS service framework is introduced, which is divided into three layers: user layer, application layer and service layer. It can provide GIS services for different applications and different groups of users at the same time.Also, an agent-based intelligent spatial decision-supporting system is presented, which is a federal system consisting of many agents. All of these agents cooperate to complete spatial decision-supporting tasks.Finally, an agent-oriented GIS interoperating specification is explored, which has common spatial data interface, common GIS agent descriptive specification and common agent communication mode.