People centric GIS -is it the only way?

The paper by Miller is concerned with the shift in perspective of making GIS people centric rather than Geography centric. The rapid development in the field of GIS has spawned several new applications like Location Based Services which essentially look into the more commercial aspect of spatial information. Innovative applications of LBS have been developed where the most important piece of information required is the location of the user. Location based advertisements and offers are just one side of the spectrum. On the other side of the spectrum are more futuristic developments like Google Goggles or other augmented reality based applications.

However, it is to be noted that GIS does not merely encompass the likes of the above mentioned applications. GIS has evolved into a scientific discipline which encompasses a whole range of problems. The “people centric” approaches to GIS will thus essentially only a part of the larger scientific discipline. New data models and new analysis techniques will be developed for addressing the specific issues of these applications, but by and large the main focus of GIScience will continue to be Geography or the spatial domain.

-Dipto Sarkar

Reference:
What about People in Geographic Information Science?- by Harvey J. Miller

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