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GIScience from Viewpoint of Information Science

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New Thinking in GIScience
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Abstract

The term “Geographical Information Science” (GIScience) was formally introduced in 1992, after 30-year development of Geographical Information Systems (GIS). The authors believe that it is the appropriate time to reexamine what GIScience should actually be, as it has reached an age of 30 years. In this article, it is noted that GIScience at its current content is focused on the “G” aspect and deals with the theoretical aspect of spatial data handling. However, it is argued that GIScience should also be a type of specialized information science (or a branch of information science) as geographical information is a special type of information. Then, it is pointed out that the foundation of developing GIScience as a branch of information science has been laid down already and it is time to develop theories behind such a science. This article provides an insight into the future development of GIScience.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by a NSFC key project (41930104, 41971330 and 42101442) and a Hong Kong RGC GRF project (#152219/18E).

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Correspondence to Zhilin Li .

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Li, Z., Lan, T. (2022). GIScience from Viewpoint of Information Science. In: Li, B., Shi, X., Zhu, AX., Wang, C., Lin, H. (eds) New Thinking in GIScience. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3816-0_5

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