This paper written by Stan Openshaw in 1992 introduces concept of artificial intelligence application in GIS to us by explain how AI emerged and being applied in geographic information system development and why AI is inevitably needed and matters a lot in spatial modelling and analysis. AI does bring a lot to GIS development concerning large spatial database management, spatial data pattern recognition and modifying spatial statistics analysis. Neurocomputing, as a revolution of the century, makes it possible for large data sets analysis and modelling, both supervised classification and unsupervised classification eliminate the difficulties and uncertainty of manual analysis and computing for pattern studies. And AI is definitely unavoidable to be referred to when applying spatial data mining to study large spatial data sets. The paper has a clear structure and explain well the complicated concept of AI application in GIS with a strong background of how and why AI should be used in GIS though I do not fully understand the specific method like expert system and ANN.
As we all known, spatial data in GIS is quite different from general type of data with characteristics of spatial dependencies, space- time dependencies, non-stationarities, etc. and AI technologies give more chance to deal with those complex properties. However, I am wondering if these characteristics in spatial data sets and special way in treating them using AI help develop Ai technologies itself (method structure, algorithm development). Will GIS bring opportunities and development for AI? What GIS have brought for AI?