GIScience: Is it developing into a scientific discipline?

GIScience: Is it developing into a scientific discipline?

Hurricane Sandy crisis map (Google, 2012)

Seminar paper submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of

GIScience: Theories and Concepts course

Course Code: 453 822

Masters in Applied Geoinformatics

University of Salzburg

OLOO Francis Omondi

Supervisors

Prof. Thomas Blaschke

Dr. Johannes Scholz

December, 2012

ii

Contents

Acronyms ....................................................................................................................................... iii

List of figures ................................................................................................................................. iv

List of tables ................................................................................................................................... iv

1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 1

2. Development of the field ......................................................................................................... 1

2.1 Key events in the development of GIScience .................................................................. 1

2.2 Components of Geographic Information Science ............................................................ 2

2.3 Laws and principles of Geographic Information Science ................................................ 3

3. Impacts of GIScience discipline .............................................................................................. 4

3.1 Literature analysis ............................................................................................................ 4

4. Results ..................................................................................................................................... 4

4.1 Temporal variation of publications and citations in GIScience ....................................... 4

4.2 Key conferences within Geographic Information Science community ........................... 7

4.3 Sub-disciplines within which GIScience related articles are published and cited ........... 8

4.4 Institutional framework within Geographic Information Science.................................... 8

4.4.1 University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS) ................... 9

4.4.2 Association of Geographic Information Laboratories in Europe (AGILE) .............. 9

4.4.3 UNIGIS International.............................................................................................. 10

4.5 Education in Geographic Information Science and Technology ................................... 11

4.6 Areas of application of Geographic Information Science research ................................ 12

5. Discussion and Conclusion .................................................................................................... 14

References ..................................................................................................................................... 16

iii

Acronyms

ACM Association for Computing Machinery

AGILE Association of Geographic Information Laboratories in Europe

COSIT Conference on Spatial Information Theory

ESRI Environmental Systems Research Institute

EUROGI European Umbrella Organization for Geographic Information

GIS Geographic Information Science

GIS & T Geographic Information Science and Technology

GIS & T-BoK Geographic Information Science and Technology Body of Knowledge

GIScience Geographic Information Science

GISSA Geo-Information Society of South Africa

IEEE Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineering

IGARSS International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium

ISI ISI Web of Science

JCDL Joint Conference on Digital Libraries

JCR Journal Citation Report

NCGIA National Centre for Geographic Information Analysis

OBIA Object Based Image Analysis

RS Remote Sensing

UCGIS University Consortium for Geographic Information Science

UNIGIS UNIGIS International Association

USA United States of America

iv

List of figures

Figure 1: Annual variation of publications and citations of GIScience related articles according

to Microsoft academic search website ............................................................................................ 5

Figure 2: Annual variation of publication records of GIScience related articles according to the

Web of Knowledge website ............................................................................................................. 5

Figure 3: Five year (2007 -2011) variation of impact factors of journals within GIScience and

related fields.................................................................................................................................... 7

Figure 4: AGILE Members within Europe (AGILE 2012) ........................................................... 10

Figure 5: Numbers of postgraduate courses in geographic information and related courses in

Europe ........................................................................................................................................... 12

List of tables

Table 1: The main conferences and the number of published articles as per the Web of

Knowledge....................................................................................................................................... 7

Table 2: The main conferences and the number of published articles as per Microsoft academic

search website ................................................................................................................................. 8

Table 3: Web of Science categories and publication records of GI related articles ...................... 8

Table 4: Main application areas of Geographic Information Science ......................................... 13

1

1. Introduction

Geographic information can be defined as the information derived from facts about geographic

features and phenomena in the vicinity of the earths surface (M. Goodchild et al. 1998).

Geographic Information Science (GIScience) on the other hand has been defined as a basic

research field whose aim is to define (or redefine) geographic concepts in the context of

geographic information systems (David Mark 2003) and other geographic information

technologies.

There have been three main motivations to the development of the field of GIScience (M.

Goodchild et al. 1998), these are i) Scientific motivation which promotes the development of

GIScience as a field to facilitate discovery of geographic truths in areas where they have not

been found, to contribute to conceptualization, tools and methods with which geographic

phenomena can be handled and to contribute to the general infrastructure of science given that

different disciplines have the earths surface as their domain of operation. ii) Technological

motivation which has directly and indirectly influenced GIScience to take advantage of the

developments in technology in ensuring logical and consistent representation of geographic

information. Similarly, the technological motivation also promotes research in GIScience as a

means of taking advantage of emerging geographic knowledge from such reseach to sharpen

geographic information technology. iii) Societal motivation which promotes GIScience as the

discipline to formalize human spatial thinking capabilities into geographic knowledge and to

address the impact of geographic information technology in societal issues including democracy

and privacy.

In this paper, the author hypothesises that GIScience is developing into a scientific discipline. In

order to confirm this hypothesis, the paper is organized into five main parts. In the first part,

there is a brief introduction on the general definition of geographic information and geographic

information science. In the second part, the key events in the development of GIScience research

discipline together with the important components of the discipline and some of the emerging

scientific principles within the discipline are looked at. In the third part, the methodology of

literature analysis that was carried out in this study is introduced. The fourth part outlines the

results of literature analysis and some other key developments that are deemed relevant in

confirming the hypothesis that has been set for this task. Finally, there is a discussion and

conclusion on the findings of this exercise.

2. Development of the field

2.1 Key events in the development of GIScience

While writing a motivation to advocate for a centre to be funded by the National Science

Foundation (Abler 1987), Abler suggested potential areas of research for a Nation Centre for

2

Geographic Information Analysis (NCGIA). Goodchild refined and expanded the research topics

and coined the term geographic information science (M. F. Goodchild 1992). In the same

paper he argued that a scientific investigation of the topics that he outlined would enable a

researcher in the discipline of geographic information to be considered for admission into the

National Academy of Sciences. Additionally, with the formation of University Consortium for

Geographic Information Science (UCGIS), more inclusive and formal definition of the field was

done and regular short and medium research priorities were formulated (David Mark 2003). By

reviewing different available literature (DM Mark 2003), David Mark published a

comprehensive definition of the field as the basic research field to define theories and concepts

of geographic information in the context of GIS and other geographic technologies. In the latter

years, a number of authors have published papers which have contributed to the definition and

understanding of the various components and sub-disciplines of GIScience.

2.2 Components of Geographic Information Science

Traditionally, the disciplines which have researched and contributed to the conceptualization

about geographic information technologies included; surveying, cartography, remote sensing,

geography, photogrammetry and geodesy among others. With the emergence of GIScience,

discussions on the topics to include in the discipline have been revolved around three broad areas

in the context of geographic information, these areas have been; people, society and computer (or

technology).

The first aspect in these domains has been on how people conceptualize about their geographic

environments. In particular, the focus has been on how to take advantage of human capabilities

in spatial thinking and spatial cognition to build robust tools that can be used to represent and to

make decisions about geographic phenomena. Similarly, GIScience has also focused on how to

formalize expert knowledge in designing geographic information technologies. One specific area

that has significantly employed domain expert knowledge in geo-information analysis has been

Object Based Image Analysis (OBIA)(Baraldi & Boschetti 2012)

The second critical question and component of GIScience has been on how societal factors

influence (or hinder) the adoption of geographic information technology and the impact of the

same technology on society. Research in these realm has helped in coming up with regulations

that ensure the use of socially sensitive geographic information technologies. In particular, legal

and privacy issues around geographic information and geographic technologies have been of key

concern in this particular area of research within GIScience.

The third and final domain within GIScience has been on how to formalize and integrate

conceptualization and theories about geographic phenomena to improve functionality of

geographic information tools and hence geographic information analysis and representation (M.

F. Goodchild 2010). Similarly, the research has revolved around ways of using emerging

3

technology trends to advance the development of scientifically sound geographic information

tools and promote the sharing of geographic information and knowledge across the globe.

With these three broad areas, GIScience research has been formulated to answer scientific

questions in different sub-topics including spatial cognition, ontology (including semantic and

spatial interoperability), user interface design, public participatory (or voluntary) GIS, spatial

uncertainty, spatial analysis, privacy, spatial data infrastructure, algorithm and data modelling

among others. At the same time, in recognition of the fact that GIScience is a multi-disciplinary

field whose realm of operation is shared by many other disciplines, clear criteria have been

formulated to draw the limits of GIScience research. Such criteria include; a) that the research

should be in areas of geographic information that have not yet been discovered; b) that the

research should be generic and not limited to the context of enquiry ; c) that the nature of the

research should be hard enough and should be recognized as such by scientists in other

disciplines (M. F. Goodchild 2010).

2.3 Laws and principles of Geographic Information Science

In the development of the discipline, a number of laws have emerged while some initially

existing laws and principles have become clearer (M. Goodchild 2010), starting with Toblers

First Law of geography which states that all things are related but near things are more related

than distant things. This law even though originally conceived in the context of the discipline of

geography, has now found an application home in GIScience with many applications in

geographic information tools including spatial autocorrelation, spatial interpolation, resampling,

and contour mapping among other areas.

Secondly, the principle of spatial heterogeneity which implies that due to the structural

difference of locations on the surface of the earth, the results of any spatial analysis depends on

the bounds of the analysis; as a result any change in the extent of analysis leads to a change in

the results.

The third principle is the fractal principle which implies that a geographic phenomenon reveals

additional information the closer one looks at it. The law has been applied albeit almost sub-

consciously in satellite image acquisition and image analysis where the higher the spatial

resolution of the imagery, the more the information is retrievable from such imagery. In the same

line, various web mapping applications have applied this principle to introduce hierarchies of

zoom levels when visualizing the map data.

Finally, the principle of spatial uncertainty which acknowledges that geographic world is

complex and every representation of (or abstraction from) geographic phenomena contains an

uncertainty (Anselin 1989). Such uncertainties can be due to measurement errors, specification

errors or a combination of both.

4

3. Impacts of GIScience discipline

GIScience has made significant inroads in the world of science through the variety of high

impact publications that have been cited in different scientific disciplines. (Blaschke & Eisank

2012) looked at how influential GIScience publications have been. This they did by looking at

the citations of GIScience research publications within Web of Science (ISI), Google Scholar

and Elseviers SciVerse Scopus. (Caron et al. 2008) used Delphi method and Journal Citation

Reports (JCR) to rank various journals within GIScience and related fields.

3.1 Literature analysis

In this paper, citation records of GIScience related publications were used to investigate the

impact of GIScience to the general infrastructure of science. This was done mainly by analysing

the number of GIScience related publications within Thompson Reuters Web of Knowledge

database (Thomson Reuters 2012) and also on Microsoft academic search website (Microsoft

Corporation 2012). The other information which was identified included the most significant

conferences and journals from which GIScience related publications emerge and the temporal

variation of GIScience related citations. Specifically, the search terms used in Web of

Knowledge were Geographic Information Science or Geographical Information Science or

GIScience. Additionally, the temporal variation of the impact factors of some of the GIScience

related journals available within the JCR database was also mapped.

Apart from the citations, institutional membership to some of the emerging international

GIScience institutions , the proliferation of GIScience related academic courses and the common

areas of application of GIScience related concepts and tools was also looked at.

4. Results

4.1 Temporal variation of publications and citations in GIScience

In figure 1, the annual variation (from 1992 to 2011) of the number of publications and citations

of articles searched with the keywords Geographic Information Science on Microsoft

academic search website are presented. In the figure, it can be seen that when Michael Goodchild

introduced the term Geographic Information Science for the first time in 1992. The term did not

instantly become common in publications and citations. However from 1997, there appears to be

a constant rise in the number of publications and citations of articles with the terms. While there

is no specific reason for this rise, it was noted that it is during the same time that the International

Journal of Geographic Information Systems was renamed to the International Journal of

Geographic Information Sciences.

5

Figure 1: Annual variation of publications and citations of GIScience related articles according to Microsoft

academic search website

In figure 2, the results of a similar analysis as the one presented above was done against

Thomson Reuters Web of Knowledge website. The keywords used were Geographic

Information Science* OR Geographical Information Science* OR GIScience*. The figure

shows the annual variations in publication records from 1991-2012

Figure 2: Annual variation of publication records of GIScience related articles according to the Web of Knowledge

website

In figure 3, the 5 year (2007 -2011) variations in the impact factors of the main (and other

related) journals within the discipline of GIScience are presented. The impact factor is a measure

of the ratio of the number of citations to the number of publications of articles in a journal within

1992 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 2000 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 2011

Publications 1 0 0 2 0 2 3 8 17 16 15 23 23 27 30 25 30 52 36 25

Citations 2 5 3 19 13 1 3 17 19 42 55 86 104 118 150 187 262 320 339 265

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

400

0

50

100

150

200

250

Pub

lica

tio

n r

eco

rds

6

a given period of time 11 journals available within Thomson Reuters Journal Citation Reports

database were considered for this exercise. The specific journals were;

Geoinformatica,

Geographic Information Science and Remote Sensing Journal,

International journal of Digital Earth

International Journal of Geographic Information Science

Journal of Geographical Sciences

Journal of Spatial Science

Landscape and Urban Planning

Annals of Association of American Geographers

Cartography and Geographic Information Science

Computers Environments and Urban Systems

Journal of Geographical Systems

The inclusion of Landscape and Urban Planning, Annals of American Geographers and

Computers Environments and Urban Systems journals was particularly to allow for comparison

between GIScience specific journals and other journals in which GIScience related article may

be published even though such journals belong to other disciplines. In the figure 3 it can be seen

that International Journal of Geographic Information Science which is one of the journals

dedicated to GIScience research publications, had the highest impact factor of 1.82 in the year

2007. Geoinformatica is the other journal that has consistently shown positive improvement in

the impact factor values. The journal had an impact factor of 0.87 in 2007 and this increased

consistently and reached the peak of 1.36 in 2010. In 2011, the journal had an impact factor of

1.14. It can also be seen that Landscape and Urban Planning and Annals of Association of

America Geographers journals have had impact factors of more than 1.6 in the past five years.

7

Figure 3: Five year (2007 -2011) variation of impact factors of journals within GIScience and related fields

4.2 Key conferences within Geographic Information Science community

Within the Microsoft academic search website and also on the Web of Knowledge it is possible

to visualize the source of the articles retrieved from a search query. In this exercise, an analysis

showed that of the approximately 2000 articles retrieved with the Geographic Information

Science keywords, approximately 25% were articles from conference proceedings. In the same

records it was seen that the articles originated from 57 conferences in different other disciplines.

In table 1, the five main conferences and the number of articles published from the respective

conferences are shown. These are according to the Web of Knowledge results.

Table 1: The main conferences and the number of published articles as per the Web of Knowledge

Conference Title Articles

International Conference on Geoinformatics 22

IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium IGARSS 15

International Conference on Spatial Thinking And Geographic Information Sciences 7

International Conference on Spatial Information Theory COSIT 6

International Conference GIScience 6

In table 2, the 5 main conferences from which the articles within the Microsoft academic search

website originated are presented.

Geoinfor

matica

GIScience

& RS

Int J Dig

Earth

Int J of

GIScience

J

Geographi

cal Sciences

J Spat

Science

Landscape

& Urban

Planning

An Asso

Amer

Geog

Carto &

GIScience

Comps

Environs

& Urban Sys

J of

Geographi

cal Systems

2007 0.87 1.82 1.63 2.96

2008 1.10 0.71 0.00 1.60 1.95 2.68 1.03 1.25

2009 1.23 0.96 0.86 1.53 0.52 0.36 2.17 2.57 1.15 1.28

2010 1.36 1.00 1.45 1.49 0.67 1.00 2.00 1.89 1.18 1.29

2011 1.14 0.64 1.08 1.47 0.83 0.33 2.17 2.17 0.83 1.80 1.17

0.00

0.50

1.00

1.50

2.00

2.50

3.00

3.50

8

Table 2: The main conferences and the number of published articles as per Microsoft academic search website

Conference Title Articles

International Conference on Geoinformatics 10

International Conference on Geographic Information Science 8

International Conference on Spatial Information Theory COSIT 7

IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium IGARSS 6

JCDL ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries 5

4.3 Sub-disciplines within which GIScience related articles are published and cited

By using the Web of Knowledge, it was possible to identify the different Web of Science

categories from which the identified articles originated. In total, all the articles in the search

results were categorized in to 139 Web of Science categories. Table 3 outlines all the categories

from which at least 100 articles were retrieved.

Table 3: Web of Science categories and publication records of GI related articles

Web of Science Categories records

Geography 336

Environmental Sciences 294

Geosciences Multidisciplinary 248

Geography Physical 220

Ecology 193

Computer Science Information Systems 189

Computer Science Interdisciplinary Applications 175

Environmental Studies 160

Information Science Library Science 142

Remote Sensing 126

Public Environmental Occupational Health 106

Water Resources 104

Engineering Environmental 100

4.4 Institutional framework within Geographic Information Science

Within the two decades of the existence of GIScience research field, different institutions have

come up to drive the agenda of GIScience research across the globe. In this section, the main

institutions which according to the author have formally been driving the GIScience agenda are

9

highlighted. In particular, the mission of such institutions and the composition of the

membership were considered.

4.4.1 University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS)

UCGIS was formed in 1994 by the recommendation of the National Centre for Geographic

Information Analysis (NCGIA) as a body to look into the multidisciplinary nature of GIS and to

bring synergy between the different sub-disciplines within geographic information science. The

main disciplines under consideration at the time of the formation of UCGIS were; cartography,

cognitive science, computer science, engineering and land surveying, environmental science,

geodetic science, geography, landscape architecture, law and public policy, remote sensing and

photogrammetry, and statistics. The focus was on how all these disciplines contributed to

various aspects of geographic Information.

The mission statement of UCGIS which was approved in October, 2012 (UCGIS 2012)

summarises the mission of UCGIS in four specific objectives, these are; i) to advance research in

the field of Geographic Information Science ii) to expand and strengthen Geographic

Information Science education iii) to advocate policies for the promotion of the ethical use of

and access to geographic information and technologies; and iv) to build scholarly communities

and networks to foster multi-disciplinary GIS research and education

UCGIS has four main categories of membership which are; regular membership, affiliate

membership, international affiliate membership and government affiliate membership. The

regular members are different academic institutions within the United States which are dedicated

to research and training in geographic information science. There are currently 76 members

within this category. Affiliate members are the various industry players who are developing

geographic information tools or members of other associations with closer ties to GIScience

research community. There are 8 affiliate members including ESRI, Oracle, Intergraph

Corporation among others. International affiliate membership is open to either research or

academic institutions in the realm of GIScience but located outside of the USA. Currently there

are 3 such members including the Centre for Geoinformatics of the University of Salzburg in

Austria, Centro Geo in Mexico and Technical University of Viena in Austria.

4.4.2 Association of Geographic Information Laboratories in Europe (AGILE)

AGILE was established in 1998 as a body to promote teaching and research in GIS within

Europe (AGILE 2012). The objective is pursued by i) organizing of initiatives on specific topics

which are intended to inform the future directions of geographic information research within

Europe. ii) Facilitating interaction of the different organizations involved in teaching and

research in geographic information within Europe. This is done through focus group meetings

and also through conferences. The term laboratories was chosen to signify that AGILE is an

10

association of groups and not of individuals. Figure 4 shows a map of the spatial distribution of

the members of AGILE within Europe.

Figure 4: AGILE members (AGILE 2012)

4.4.3 UNIGIS International

UNIGIS is a worldwide collaboration of universities that offers postgraduate certificate, diploma

and Masters courses in Geographic Information Systems and Sciences through distance learning.

There are 9 UNIGIS member universities and additional 10 UNIGIS study centers across the

globe.

The other notable international institutions in geographic information are; the Geo- Information

Society of South Africa (GISSA) and the European Umbrella Organization for Geographic

Information (EUROGI) among others.

11

4.5 Education in Geographic Information Science and Technology

In the earlier phase of the introduction of GIS and Remote Sensing courses in higher education,

they were either introduced as single or elective courses within the departments of geography or

surveying. Furthermore GIS was viewed more as tool for spatial analysis and mapping while

remote sensing was viewed as one of the sources of GIS data. However, with the emergence of

the new discipline of GIScience, different initiatives have been taken to formalize education and

training in geographic information science and technology.

One of the main initiatives has been the publication of Geographic Information Science and

Technology Body of Knowledge (GIS & T-BoK) (Dibiase & Model Curricula Task Force 2006).

This was an initiative by UCGIS and the American Association of Geographers to come up with

a model curriculum that would act as a reference for curriculum planners for courses in

GIScience in higher education and training. Additionally, the body of knowledge was envisaged

to act as a platform for professional certification and academic accreditation.

The body of knowledge was a community effort which involved the collaboration between

editors, task force members, an advisory board and the input of different scholars and

practitioners. Ultimately 10 different knowledge areas that span the breadth of GIS & T were

identified as outlined below

Analytical methods

Conceptual foundations

Cartography and Visualization

Design aspects

Data modelling

Data manipulation

Geo-computation

Geospatial data

GIS & T and Society

Organization and Institutional aspects

Further, within each knowledge area, additional constituent units were also defined. The units

were designated either as core or elective with the core units being those that any graduate of

the GIS & T degree or certificate program should have some mastery in. In conclusion of the

report, it was noted that the effective implementation of the body of knowledge should not be left

to the initiatives of individual institutions but should be leveraged by having collaborative efforts

between institutions. Such efforts may include consortia of universities to offer GIS &T training

through exchange programs and through online study frameworks.

Apart from the formal GIS & T body of knowledge training, different other academic institutions

are offering courses in geographic information and related disciplines all over the globe. By

12

simply carrying out a search on study portal (Study Portals 2012) for masters level study

programs in geographic information and related course in Europe, a total of 159 such courses

were retrieved in different institutions in different countries within Europe. Figure 5 is a chart of

the number of geographic information and related courses offered in different countries in

Europe.

Figure 5: Numbers of postgraduate courses in geographic information and related courses in Europe

4.6 Areas of application of Geographic Information Science research

Geographic information has become an essential part of the decisions that we make in our daily

lives. In fact geographic information is one of the essential parts of any decision support systems.

Given the multi-disciplinary nature of Geographic Information Science, the knowledge from the

discipline has been applied and is being applied in many other disciplines. We are living at a

time when any disaster management plan would not be complete without a consideration of the

geographic information of the area under consideration.

In this study, the research areas from which GIScience related literature originated were used to

gain insight on the possible areas of application of geographic information research and

technology. In particular, the articles from the Web of Knowledge were grouped according to the

8

7

1

1

2

3

7

15

1

6

1

1

17

1

1

4

8

6

6

1

59

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70

Austria

Belgium

Czech Republic

Denmark

Estonia

Finland

France

Germany

Greece

Ireland

Italy

Luxemboug

Netherlands

Norway

Poland

Portugal

Spain

Sweden

Switzerland

Turkey

United Kingdom

Masters in GI and related courses

13

different research areas. According to the results, all the approximately 2000 articles could be

categorised into 96 research areas or application fields. Table 4 represents 30 top application

areas from which the retrieved articles originated.

Table 4: Main application areas of Geographic Information Science

Application areas Publications

Environmental Sciences Ecology 498

Computer Science 416

Geography 336

Geology 256

Engineering 243

Physical Geography 220

Agriculture 157

Information Science Library Science 142

Remote Sensing 126

Public Environmental Occupational Health 106

Water Resources 104

Urban Studies 76

Business Economics 62

Imaging Science Photographic Technology 57

Forestry 56

Meteorology Atmospheric Sciences 45

Operations Research Management Science 43

Public Administration 41

Transportation 40

Marine Freshwater Biology 39

Education Educational Research 36

Biodiversity Conservation 34

Oceanography 33

Social Sciences Other Topics 30

Mathematics 25

Energy Fuels 24

Veterinary Sciences 24

Parasitology 23

Plant Sciences 23

Geochemistry Geophysics 22

14

5. Discussion and Conclusion

In this study, an attempt has been made to look at the various aspects that would give an

indication of the development of GIScience as a scientific discipline. In the first part, a brief

history of the GIScience discipline was looked at. In particular, the motivations of the discipline,

key of which is the scientific motivation of GIScience as a discipline to use scientific methods to

find truths about geographic information that are yet to be revealed and thereby contributing to

the general infrastructure of science. In the same section, the key components of GIScience were

summarised as humans, society and computer (technology) and their interactions with

geographic information.

For any scientific discipline, there are laws and principles that are clear and that are held as true

within the discipline and recognized as such by other disciplines. In this study, it has been shown

that there are laws and principles that have become clearer while some are taking root within

GIScience. The key principles looked at in this study were; Toblers first law of geography,

principle of spatial heterogeneity, fractal principle and the principle of spatial uncertainty. These

principles have been implemented in different geographic information tools and in finding

solutions to a variety of geographic problems.

In an attempt to ascertain the impact of GIScience research to the general infrastructure of

science, literature analysis was carried out using Microsoft academic research tools, Thomson

Reuters Web of Knowledge and Journal Citation Report tools. In the analysis, it was shown that

in the two decade of the existence of the discipline, there has been consistent increase in the

number of publication from GIScience research and similarly a consistent increase in the number

of citations made against such publications.

It was also clear that there are journals which have either come up or have been renamed to

publish materials from GIScience research. Key among these are, International Journal of

Geographic Information Science (formally called the International Journal of Geographic

Information Systems), Geoinformatica, Cartography and Geographic Information Science

(formally Cartography and Geographic Information Systems). Apart from the GIScience specific

journals, there are other journals with broad relevance to GIScience which were also considered.

Key among these were; Annals of Association of American Geographers, Landscape & Urban

Planning and Computers, Environments and Urban Systems.

Apart from the journals, another important source of GIScience research articles was

conferences. This was due to the fact that such conferences provide an avenue for researchers in

GIScience to present their research findings and also to set scientific agenda for future research

directions. Additionally, due to the multi-disciplinary nature of GIScience, some of the

conferences also provide an avenue for collaborations with researchers in other related fields.

According to the results from Microsoft academic search and also from Web of Knowledge,

15

some of the high impact conferences within GIScience are; International Conference of

Geoinformatics, COSIT and IGARSS.

The other notable aspect of GIScience as a discipline has been the developing institutional

frameworks within the discipline. Such institutions bring together experts both from research

(and academics) and industries with the aim of having a united front in setting up the GIScience

scientific agenda in different communities. Additionally, such institutions also aim at building

the legal and operational frameworks to oversee the activities of GI professionals in different

areas. Notable among such institutions are UCGIS in USA, AGILE and EUROGI in Europe.

Because of the unique niche of geographic information professionals in the job market, there

have been efforts to standardize the education curricula within GIScience. Such efforts led to the

publication of GIS & T body of knowledge which sets out a model curriculum for education and

training in GIScience. The model has led to collaborative training of GI professionals at post

graduate levels and is better exemplified through the UNIGIS online study programs and also

through the Erasmus Mundus Masters of Science in Geospatial Technologies which allows

students to study in three different universities within Europe. Apart from the formal training in

GIScience specific courses, there are currently several learning institutions that offer geographic

information training. A simple search of Masters Programs in GI related courses in Europe

resulted in 159 of such programs spread across the continent.

With these developments within the field, there have naturally been an increase in the application

of geographic information and geographic information technologies in different aspects of

human life. Geographic information has become important for every decision in our daily lives.

In this study, an analysis of literature showed that the main consumers of GIScience research and

knowledge are found in the application areas of environmental sciences, computer sciences,

geography, and engineering among others. GIScience has become important to even unlikely

fields like linguistics and psychology.

From this study it is evident that, in the short period of the existence of GIScience as a field, it

has made significant progress and continues to develop into a fully fledged scientific discipline.

This progress has been made possible by the clarity in definition of the field and its domain of

operation. As a result, different laws and principles have emerged which continue informing

decisions that have to do with geographic phenomena. Additional, there are now institutional

frameworks that will further enhance the structural development of the discipline. Similarly the

proliferation of scientific journals and conferences to document and to share research findings

from GIScience research has created an ever increasing demand for GI knowledge that can only

be satisfied by proper and consistent research in GIScience. This coupled with emerging study

curricula in geographic information science and technology to act as a model for professional

training of GI professionals and the broad areas of applications of geographic information will

forever cement the position of GIScience as a scientific discipline. It is therefore the view of this

author that GIScience is indeed developing into a scientific field.

16

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