The article presents conceptual approaches and methods of organization of the geoinformation system within the framework of the project “Poly-scale geoinformation monitoring of the transformation of the ethnic structure of the population of urban and rural areas in Russia”. The author actively applies international experience in planning and organization of GIS systems for monitoring socio-economic, ethno-demographic processes, including implementing the methodology for the step-by-step process of creating a GIS project. The author offers seven stages of GIS planning, starting from the stages of strategic planning and setting of key tasks and priorities, selecting software products, discussing the future system with the professional community and potential users, and completing the stages of creating and testing the geoinformation system. The key place is taken by the conceptual scheme, which allows to show the process of creating a system of geoinformation monitoring.

Also, the article presents some scientific results obtained with GIS. In particular, the typology of the regions of Russia is presented in terms of the nature of the formation of the ethnic structure of the urban population, which is important when identifying regional features of the population structure. As an example, a cartographic plot is presented, which makes it possible to assess the geographical distribution of the peoples of Central Asia (Tajiks, Uzbeks, Kirghiz) who are actively migrating to Russia at the present stage. Presented are the possibilities of GIS in analyzing the dynamics of the geography of the settlement of individual ethnic groups, including using the centrographic method. This method makes it possible to identify in a temporary retrospective the peoples with different intensity of change in the geography of settlement.