Geographic information systems (GIS) technology and methods have transformed decision-making in society by bringing geographic analysis to the desktop computer. Although some educators consider GIS to a promising means for implementing reform, it has been adopted by less than 2% of American high schools. The reasons behind the interest in GIS, its slow implementation, and its effectiveness in t...

In the mid-1990s, several critical texts raised concerns about the social, political, and epistemological implications of GIS. Subsequent responses to these critiques have fundamentally altered the technological, political, and intellectual practices of GIScience. Participatory GIS, for instance, has intervened in multiple ways to try to ameliorate uneven access to GIS and digital spatial data ...

The combination of "voice technology" and "Mobile GIS", has greatly improved the intelligent degree of mobile GIS. Recently, significant attention in the field of scientific research is turning to how to realize quick conversion between natural language and GIS commands. However, the current study mostly concentrates on rules of conversion between natural language sentences and GIS commands fro...

The paradigm of geographic information systems (GISs) is shifting from a closed, centralized GIS architecture, to an open, distributed geographic information services (GIServices) framework. With advances in computer networking and wireless communication technology, GIS is moving toward an integration of GIServices and spatial analysis functions via the internet and wireless communication. Wire...

Mapping of diseases has, since John Snow produced his famous cholera maps of London in 1854, been recognised as an essential tool in public health. A Geographical Information System (GIS) is more than mapping diseases: it manages, analyses and presents data that are linked to geographical locations. GIS enables creation of maps and can present data on national and regional level, but also on ve...

The early optimism surrounding GIS has now faded. Few GIS implementations have lived up to expectation. The most successful have been those at the operational level where their main role has been to replace paper maps with digital ones. However, as the cost of GIS implementation falls and spatial data becomes more readily available there is a need to consider the future of GIS and spatial analy...