Vom GIS zur Geodateninfrastruktur

Geographische Informationssysteme sind nicht mehr ausschlie?lich ein Werkzeug für Spezialisten. In immer mehr Bereichen der raumbezogenen Dokumentation, Planung und Analyse werden diese Werkzeuge eingebunden. Der Beitrag beschreibt die Entwicklung und analysiert die technologischen Hintergründe. Viel wichtiger als technologische Ver?nderungen aber sind organisatorische und gesellschaftliche Ver?nderungen, die auf dem Wege zur Informations- und Wissensgesellschaft eine neue Bewertung des Nutzens von Geoinformation bewirken. Geoinformation wird zunehmend als Wirtschaftsgut betrachtet, das am Markt gehandelt werden kann und ein erhebliches Wirtschaftspotential aufweist. Allerdings ist der Markt für Geoinformationen durch Strukturen gepr?gt, die die Nutzung des wirtschaftlichen Potentials deutlich behindern. Geodateninfrastrukturen gelten als ein wichtiges Instrument zur überwindung der Marktbarrieren und zur Etablierung neuartiger Wertsch?pfungsketten und innovativer Jobchancen für Experten für die Veredlung und Verdichtung von raumbezogenen Informationen.     

Vom Denken in Analogien

Analogy as a scientific method has been criticized during the last decades; only for heuristic purposes it has been accepted. On the other side especially proportional analogies have a long tradition in European thought since Plato and Aristotle, for, as Aristotle puts it, analogies allow a connection between different and unbridgeable ontological areas. As examples for such connections the analogia entis of Thomas of Aquino and the Kantian Analogies of Experience are discussed. They give us hints for a new view of analogies, which during the Middle Ages were not only of heuristic value, but were accepted as a proof: Analogies do not only produce hypotheses, moreover, they build up new views of the world, they are the background of paradigms, for they create structures by introducing similarities and proportions.     

Vom Nutzen des Augenblicks für die Projekte der Wissenschaft

Using the Instant for the Projects of Science . Focusing on Bachelard's books L'Intuition de l'instant (1932) and La dialectique de la durée (1936), the paper deals with Bachelard's discontinuous and serial concept of time that is formulated against Henri Bergson's concept of duration. With a view to the philosophical concept of monadology, to the theory of relativity, and to the contemporary psychological and neurological research, the paper points to the significance of the instant for Bachelard's concept of temporality, for his desubjectified concept of the individual as well as his discontinuous concept of matter. Moreoever, the paper explores the discontinuous conception of temporality in Bachelard's epistemological writings. The paper argues that Bachelard's discontinuous concept of the specific temporality of science is based on a fundamental discontinuity of reality of both physical as well as psychological processes.     

Wissenschaft im Gehäuse: Vom Nutzen und Nachteil institutionengeschichtlicher Perspektiven

Research is realized in social and cultural context, it is established in institutions, as far as different forms and conditions of practice are concerned. In this article some German examples demonstrate how flexible and varied the institutions of research can be during the course of history of science. The first part deals with historically grown, yet chronologically overlapping institutions of research: beginning with the lonely scholar, going on to hierarchally organized big science and ending up with virtual institutions. In the second part, at the intersection of political‐social administration and styles of scientific thought terms like German Realpolitik, science in context, and science policy are discussed within the modernization process.     

Bridging GIS Success

This article shares the first-time geographic information system (GIS) experiences of two advanced placement human geography classes. The teacher had participated in a summer GIS workshop and then brought those skills into her classroom for the students' benefit. Eighteen students shared their experiences researching their family history, working to map the migration of their genealogy to the United States, and presenting their findings to their classmates. Researchers were on hand to observe presentations and collected survey data from the students. Overall it was a very successful educational experience in which students utilized a “new” technology in the context of their own lives.     

Teaching critical open GIS

Higher-education geographic information system (GIS) curricula largely marginalize and separate instruction of critical GIS and open GIS, paralleling a divide between GIS and non-GIS in geography. GIS is typically represented as a singular, infallibly objective, and universally applicable technology. GIS generally dismisses the critiques from human geography, while critical human geography dismisses GIS for its association with positivism and unethical applications. Teaching critical open GIS may bridge this divide, creating a transformative pedagogical space for human geography to affectively and effectively engage with open GIS technology at the level of code. Critical open GIS students practice and critique GIS as conflicted insiders, bridging the divide between GIS and non-GIS in their geography education. Reviews of GIS curricula find support for teaching critical and open GIS, but reviews of texts and syllabi confirm their marginalization and separation. A new critical open GIS course is introduced, using GIS in development and political ecology as integrative frameworks.     

Our GIS is too small

GIScience and GISystems have been successful in tackling many geographical problems over the last 30 years. But technologies and associated theory can become limiting if they end up defining how we see the world and what we believe are worthy and tractable research problems. This paper explores some of the limitations currently impacting GISystems and GIScience from the perspective of technology and community, contrasting GIScience with other informatics communities and their practices. It explores several themes: (i) GIScience and the informatics revolution; (ii) the lack of a community‐owned innovation platform for GIScience research; (iii) the computational limitations imposed by desktop computing and the inability to scale up analysis; (iv) the continued failure to support the temporal dimension, and especially dynamic processes and models with feedbacks; (v) the challenge of embracing a wider and more heterogeneous view of geographical representation and analysis; and (vi) the urgent need to foster an active software development community to redress some of these shortcomings. A brief discussion then summarizes the issues and suggests that GIScience needs to work harder as a community to become more relevant to the broader geographic field and meet a bigger set of representation, analysis, and modelling needs.     

Placing GIS in sustainability education

As public awareness about sustainability grows and as higher education advances sustainability more comprehensively, geographers have an opportunity to take a role in sustainability education. This article examines (1) what constitutes sustainability education, (2) how geographic concepts and Geographic Information System (GIS) are relevant to sustainability education, and (3) how geospatial thinking can be incorporated into the sustainability curriculum using GIS. This research proposes five geospatial inquiries that students can make to explore sustainability issues using GIS, which are spatial distribution, spatial interactions, spatial relationships, spatial comparisons, and temporal relationships. Definition, examples, and uses of these five geospatial inquiries supported by GIS are provided.