In the years to follow many countries active on the island launched projects on geographic data management based on GIS. One of the earliest large scale data sets published in digital form was provided by China as ancillary data to the Antarctic Digital Database Version 1.0. In a Chilean project a GIS for the Fildes Peninsula and Ardley Island was established that is used mainly for administrative purposes. A project to establish a GIS for the Admiralty Bay ASMA was launched by Brazil. Unfortunately there was only marginal co-ordination between most of these projects. Different standards had been adopted and there was a lot of double production of data sets covering the same areas.

In its 1998-2000 Geographic Information Program SCAR WG GGI established the KGIS project. Under the co-ordination of Poland the project started with a scoping study on available geodetic and map data. Under the 2000-2002 Geographic Information program further key activities have been developed and co-ordination was transferred to Germany. The list of contributing nations was extended to include Argentina, Brazil, China, Chile, Korea, Russia, Poland and Uruguay and opened for further countries interested in participating. Since then the database has continiously been expanded and many tools to access and and make use of the data have been developed.

KGIS data is accessible in the data download area or through the interactive mapviewer that allows to create customized maps. Current activities include collecting and integrating new data sets, development of OGC compliant web services, and promotion of the project.