CyberGIS – Wang

With technological advancements expanding, more funding, and an upsurge in spatially aware data, Wang’s article CyberGIS (2015) discusses the emerging field of cyberGIS and its applications that fall between computing and geographic information. After reading this article, it seems that cyberGIS is the toolmaker for GIScience because the “interdisciplinary field” aims to develop improved “cyberinfrastructure” for GIScience applications (1). This parallels how GIS tools have toolmakers to improve its software. Like GIScience, cyberGIS encompasses multiple disciplines and gains its uniqueness through dealing with spatial data (i.e. geographic information). Because of this, I question its legitimacy; is it really an “interdisciplinary field” or is it just a toolmaker that improves the efficiency of GIScience applications (maybe it is both an “interdisciplinary field” and a toolmaker)? Since cyberGIS enhances agent-based modeling and it also introduces efficient mechanisms for calculating vast amounts of spatial data that is produced through the Web 2.0, is it really introducing new concepts or just improving already existing concepts?

For instance, Wang highlights how volunteered geographic information (VGI) is becoming a more important strategy to deal with “emergency management” because mobile technology such as smart phones provide locational information. CyberGIS has helped compose strategies, such as software, to collect large quantities of VGI in an “efficient and scalable manner” (6). Since there are lots of concern over VGI data accuracy and quality, cyberGIS could also make software that can efficiently filter through VGI and categorize data as valid or invalid. This allows researchers to avoid manually sifting through thousands or millions of VGI data (e.g. Twitter or Facebook posts). Because cyberGIS crosses many disciplines and it works on improving/developing already existing disciplinary fields such as VGI, I believe cyberGIS is more of a toolmaker that “plays important roles in seeking solutions to challenging and important geographic problems” (9).

-MTM

 

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